ccess that she had expected, she abandoned it and stood
for several minutes irresolute, munching her cud in a half-hearted way,
but obviously thinking very hard. Then she began nosing along the ground
as if wholly absorbed in a search for something that she had lost,
tacking about hither and thither, but all the time drawing nearer to the
object of her wicked intention. Arrived within speaking distance, she
stood for a little while confronting the fraudful figure, then put out
her nose toward it, as if to be caressed, trying to create the
impression that fondling and dalliance were more to her than wealth,
power and the plaudits of the populace--that she had been accustomed to
them all her sweet young life and could not get on without them. Then
she approached a little nearer, as if to shake hands, all the while
maintaining the most amiable expression of countenance and executing all
manner of seductive nods and winks and smiles. Suddenly she wheeled
about and with the rapidity of lightning dealt out a terrible kick--a
kick of inconceivable force and fury, comparable to nothing in nature
but a stroke of paralysis out of a clear sky!

The effect was magical! Cows kick, not backward but sidewise. The impact
which was intended to project the counterfeit theologian into the middle
of the succeeding conference week reacted upon the animal herself, and
it and the pain together set her spinning like a top. Such was the
velocity of her revolution that she looked like a dim, circular cow,
surrounded by a continuous ring like that of the planet Saturn--the
white tuft at the extremity of her sweeping tail! Presently, as the
sustaining centrifugal force lessened and failed, she began to sway and
wabble from side to side, and finally, toppling over on her side, rolled
convulsively on her back and lay motionless with all her feet in the
air, honestly believing that the world had somehow got atop of her and
she was supporting it at a great sacrifice of personal comfort. Then she
fainted.

How long she lay unconscious she knew not, but at last she unclosed her
eyes, and catching sight of the open door of her stall, "more sweet than
all the landscape smiling near," she struggled up, stood wavering upon
three legs, rubbed her eyes, and was visibly bewildered as to the points
of the compass. Observing the iron clergyman standing fast by its faith,
she threw it a look of grieved reproach and hobbled heart-broken into
her humble habitation