oad and stopped, and with a stone I knocked it over. Tenderly I picked
it up, felt its fluttering heart, and groaned inwardly when the little
heart was stilled. I called myself a murderer, an Anglo-Saxon brute, to
kill a harmless creature merely upon a devilish impulse, and in the
gravelly ground I began to dig a grave with my knife, and I was so much
taken up with this work and with my grief, that I heeded not the
approach of a wagon.

"What are you doing there?" some one called.

I looked up. A farmer had stopped his blowing horses and was looking at
me. "I'm digging a grave," I answered.

"Diggin' a grave? Why, who's dead?"

"A rabbit." He moved uneasily, and gave me a searching look. And I saw
that he took me to be insane. "I killed the poor thing," I explained,
"killed it out of mere wantonness, and I am so grief-stricken that I am
going to do the best I can for the poor thing--going to give it a
Christian burial."

The man laughed. "I wish you would kill the last one of them," he said.
"Set out as nice a young orchard as you ever saw last winter, and the
devilish rabbits killed every one of the trees."

"Then I am not so much of a murderer after all," I replied. "I might
have known that rabbits are not altogether harmless. How far do you go
on this road?"

"About ten miles."

"Will you let me ride with you?"

"Yes, be glad to have you."

I put the rabbit into his grave, raked the dirt on him with my
foot--hardly a Christian-like way, I admit--placed my trunk into the
body of the wagon, and took a seat beside the man. And there was
something about him that at once interested me. His hat was off and the
breeze was stirring his grizzly hair. His nose was large and thin, and
when he turned his face square upon me, I saw that his eyes were gray
and clear. He wore no coat, his shirt sleeves were rolled back, and
though he must have been more than fifty years old, I could see that he
had enormous strength in his arms. And he was looking at me admiringly,
for he said, "You must be pretty much of a man."

"I am not a child except in my lack of wisdom," I answered.

"Gad, you talk like a preacher. Which way are you going?"

"Over to Lim Jucklin's house."

He gave me another square look and remarked, "That's my name."

"You don't tell me so?"

"Didn't you hear me tell you so?"

"Yes, but----"

"Well, then, I did tell you so."

"I am delighted to meet you, sir. I am a school teacher, and I hear that