ad heard his father say that a great many of those animals lived
together in houses under ground,--that they placed sentinels at their
doors to watch, and held a town-meeting when any danger approached.
When Willie was summoned from his exploring excursions, he often
remonstrated, saying, "Mother, what makes you blow the horn so _soon_?
You never give me time to find a prairie-dog. It would be capital fun
to have a dog that knows enough to go to town-meeting." Charley took
particular pleasure in increasing his excitement on that subject.
He told him he had once seen a prairie-dog standing sentinel at the
entrance-hole of their habitations. He made a picture of the creature
with charcoal on the shed-door, and proposed to prick a copy of it into
Willie's arm with India-ink, which was joyfully agreed to. The likeness,
when completed, was very much like a squash upon two sticks, but it
was eminently satisfactory to the boys. There was no end to Willie's
inquiries. How to find that hole which Charley had seen, to crawl into
it, and attend a dogs' town-meeting, was the ruling idea of his life.
Unsentimental as it was, considering the juvenile gallantry he had
manifested, it was an undeniable fact, that, in the course of a few
months, prairie-dogs had chased Wik-a-nee almost beyond the bounds of
his memory.

Autumn came, and was passing away. The waving sea of verdure had become
brown, and the clumps of trees, dotted about like islands, stood denuded
of their foliage. At this season the cattle were missing one day, and
were not to be found. A party was formed to go in search of them,
consisting of all the men from both homesteads, except Mr. Wharton, who
remained to protect the women and children, in case of any unforeseen
emergency. Charley obtained his father's permission to go with Uncle
George; and Willie began to beg hard to go also. When his mother told
him he was too young to be trusted, he did not cry, because he knew it
was an invariable rule that he was never to have anything he cried
for; but he grasped her gown, and looked beseechingly in her face, and
said,--

"Oh, mother, do let me go with Charley, just this once! Maybe we shall
catch a prairie-dog."

"No, darling," she replied. "You are not old enough to go so far. When
you are a bigger boy, you shall go after the cattle, and go a-hunting
with father, too, if you like."

"Oh, dear!" he exclaimed, impatiently, "when _shall_ I be a bigger boy?
You _never_ wil