he ball had struck a vital part; it would not move
from the place where it fell, but lay there struggling in mortal agony,
while the rest of the herd kept on their headlong career across the
prairie.

Dismounting, I now fettered my horse to prevent his straying, and
advanced to contemplate my victim. I am nothing of a sportsman: I had
been prompted to this unwonted exploit by the magnitude of the game and
the excitement of an adventurous chase. Now that the excitement was
over, I could but look with commiseration upon the poor animal that lay
struggling and bleeding at my feet. His very size and importance, which
had before inspired me with eagerness, now increased my compunction. It
seemed as if I had inflicted pain in proportion to the bulk of my
victim, and as if there were a hundred-fold greater waste of life than
there would have been in the destruction of an animal of inferior size.

To add to these after-qualms of conscience, the poor animal lingered in
his agony. He had evidently received a mortal wound, but death might be
long in coming. It would not do to leave him here to be torn piecemeal,
while yet alive, by the wolves that had already snuffed his blood, and
were skulking and howling at a distance, and waiting for my departure,
and by the ravens that were flapping about croaking dismally in the air.
It became now an act of mercy to give him his quietus and put him out of
his misery. I primed one of the pistols, therefore, and advanced close
up to the buffalo. To inflict a wound thus in cool blood I found a
totally different thing from firing in the heat of the chase. Taking
aim, however, just behind the fore shoulder, my pistol for once proved
true; the ball must have passed through the heart, for the animal gave
one convulsive throe and expired.

While I stood meditating and moralizing over the wreck I had so wantonly
produced, with my horse grazing near me, I was rejoined by my
fellow-sportsman the Virtuoso; who, being a man of universal adroitness,
and withal, more experienced and hardened in the gentle art of
"venerie," soon managed to carve out the tongue of the buffalo, and
delivered it to me to bear back to the camp as a trophy.

Our solicitude was now awakened for the young count. With his usual
eagerness and impetuosity he had persisted in urging his jaded horse in
pursuit of the herd, unwilling to return without having likewise killed
a buffalo. In this way he had kept on following them hither