minance, was driven off to his stable and
imprisoned. He was not let out again for two whole days. And by that
time another fence, parallel with the first and some five or six feet
distant from it, had been run up between his range and that of the
moose. Over this impassable zone of neutrality, for a few days, the
two rivals flung insult and futile defiance, till suddenly, becoming
tired of it all, they seemed to agree to ignore each other's
existence.

After this, Last Bull's sullenness of temper appeared to grow upon
him. He was fond of drawing apart from the little herd, and taking up
his solitary post on the knoll, where he would stand for an hour at a
time motionless except for the switching of his long tail, and
staring steadily westward as if he knew where the great past of his
race had lain. In that direction a dense grove of chestnuts, maples,
and oaks bounded the range, cutting off the view of the city roofs,
the roar of the city traffic. Beyond the city were mountains and wide
waters which he could not see; but beyond the waters and the mountains
stretched the green, illimitable plains--which perhaps (who knows?) in
some faint vision inherited from the ancestors whose myriads had
possessed them, his sombre eyes, in some strange way, _could_ see.
Among the keepers and attendants generally it was said, with anxious
regret, that perhaps Last Bull was "going bad." But the head-keeper,
Payne, himself a son of the plains, repudiated the idea. _He_ declared
sympathetically that the great bull was merely homesick, pining for
the wind-swept levels of the open country (God's country, Payne called
it!) which his imprisoned hoofs had never trodden.

Be this as it may, the fact could not be gainsaid that Last Bull was
growing more and more morose. The spectators, strolling along the wide
walk which skirted the front of his range, seemed to irritate him, and
sometimes, when a group had gathered to admire him, he would turn his
low-hung head and answer their staring eyes with a kind of heavy fury,
as if he burned to break forth upon them and seek vengeance for
incalculable wrongs. This smouldering indignation against humanity
extended equally, if not more violently, to all creatures who appeared
to him as servants or allies of humanity. The dogs whom he sometimes
saw passing, held in leash by their masters or mistresses, made him
paw the earth scornfully if he happened to be near the fence. The
patient horses who pulled t