, "and
ginst I got there to where she was usin' I scratched the calf of my leg
on a briar."

Robert eyed her swollen limb. "Seein' your meat black like it is and the
risin' in your calf so angry, I'm certain you've got dew pizen."

Sure enough she had. Millie lay for days and when the rising came to a
head in a place or two, Robert lanced it with the sharp blade of his
penknife.

Some weeks later old Doc Robbins who chanced by wondered how Millie had
escaped death from blood poison from the knife blade, until the young
husband told casually how when he was a little set along child he had
seen an old doctor dip the blade of a penknife in a boiling kettle of
water and lance a carbuncle on another's neck. He had done the same for
Millie.

No sooner was she up and about than something else happened.

Millie and Robert had just the one cow but soon they had none. Even so
Millie said things might have been worse. "It could have been Robert
that was taken." And he said, bearing their loss stoically, "What is to
be will be, if it comes in the night."

It was Millie who first noticed something was wrong with Bossy. It was
right after she had found her grazing in the chestnut grove. All the
young growth had been cut out and the branches of the trees formed a
solid shade so that coming out of the sunlight into the grove Millie
blinked and groped in the darkness with hands out before her, feeling
her way and calling, "Sook, Bossy! Sook! Sook!" Millie all but stumbled
over the cow down on her all fours. She coaxed and patted for a long
time before Bossy finally got to her feet and waddled slowly out of the
shaded grove into the sunlit meadow.

That evening Robert did the milking. But before he began he stroked
Bossy's nose and bent close. "I've caught the stench of her breath!" he
cried. "Sniff for yourself, Millie!"

Millie did. "Smells worser'n a dung pile," she gasped, hand to stomach.

Quick as a flash Robert put the tin pail under Bossy's bag and began to
milk with both hands.

There was scarcely a pint in the bucket until Robert gaped at Millie.
"Look! It don't foam!" His eyes widened with apprehension. He took a
silver coin from his pocket, dropped it into the pail and waited. In a
few moments he fished it out. "Black as coal!" gasped Robert. "Our cow's
got milk sick!"

Bossy slumped to the ground. By sundown the cow was stark dead.

Before dark Robert himself grew deathly ill.

They remembered that at noon t