e, two white feet, a white tassel on his tail, and a
little belt of white under his body. Grandfather had unexpectedly sold
this calf's mother, a fine, large, line-backed cow, to a friend at the
village on that very morning.

The old gentleman kindly showed me how to milk and how to hold the pail,
then gave me a milking-stool and sat me down to milk "Lily-Whiteface."
She was not a hard milker, but it did seem to me that after I had
extracted about three quarts of milk, my hands were getting paralyzed.
Halstead, who sat milking a few yards away, had, meanwhile, been adding
to my troubles by squirting streams of milk at my left ear, till Gramp
caught him in the act and bade him desist.

The old gentleman presently finished with his two cows, and went away
with his buckets of milk toward the house. Then, with soothing guile
which I had not yet learned to detect, Halstead offered to finish
milking my cow for me. I was glad to accept the offer. My untrained
fingers were aching so painfully that I could now hardly draw a drop of
milk. My knees, too, were tremulous from my efforts to clasp the pail
between them.

"It made mine ache at first," said Halstead with comforting sympathy as
he sat down on my stool and took my pail between his knees. I stood
gratefully by, and after a few moments he looked up and said, "While I
finish milking your cow, you run over to the west barn and get Little
Dagon. He is dreadfully hungry. His mother was sold this morning, and we
have got to teach him to drink his milk to-night."

"He had better not try to lead that calf!" Addison called out from his
stool, at a distance.

"Why not?" Halse exclaimed. "Oh, he can lead him all right. All he has
to do is to untie the calf's rope from the staple in the barn post. He
will come right along, himself."

It seemed very simple as Halstead put it, and I started off at once.
Addison said no more; he gave me an odd look as I hastened past him, but
I hardly noticed it at the time.

Little Dagon was making the rafters re-echo as I entered the bay. When
he saw me, he jumped to the end of his rope and fairly went into the
air. He had sucked the bow-knot of the rope till it was as slippery as
if soaped, and when I strove to untie it, he grabbed my hands in his
mouth. At length I untied him and then with a clatter on the loose
boards, we went out of the hay-bay, pranced across the barn floor and
out at the great doors.

No one has ever explained satisfact