ould have run him out of the place. He intended me to come here
and find every animal lying dead.

"He even had a rope around the pig's neck. Harry, my boy, let us go and
look after them again. I love a dumb brute too well to let it suffer,
but in this case I'd give two hundred dollars more if I could make them
live and have Barron know it."

They left the room, and Miss Laura sat turning the sheet of paper over
and over, with a kind of horror in her face. It was a very dirty piece
of paper, but by-and-by she made a discovery. She took it in her hand
and went out-doors. I am sure that the poor horse lying on the grass
knew her. He lifted his head, and what a different expression he had now
that his hunger had been partly satisfied. Miss Laura stroked and patted
him, then she called to her cousin, "Harry, will you look at this?"

He took the paper from her, and said: "That is a crest shining through
the different strata of dust and grime, probably that of his own family
We'll have it cleaned, and it will enable us to track the villain. You
want him punished, don't you?" he said, with a little, sly laugh at Miss
Laura.

She made a gesture in the direction of the suffering horse, and said,
frankly, "Yes, I do."

"Well, my dear girl," he said, "father and I are with you. If we can
hunt Barron down, we'll do it." Then he muttered to himself as she
turned away, "She is a real Puritan, gentle, and sweet, and good, and
yet severe. Rewards for the virtuous, punishments for the vicious," and
he repeated some poetry:

"She was so charitable and so piteous,
She would weep if that she saw a mouse
Caught in a trap, if it were dead or bled."

Miss Laura saw that Mr. Wood and Mr. Harry were doing all that could be
done for the cow and horse, so she wandered down to a hollow at the back
of the house, where the Englishman had kept his pig. Just now, he looked
more like a greyhound than a pig. His legs were so long, his nose so
sharp, and hunger, instead of making him stupid like the horse and cow,
had made him more lively. I think he had probably not suffered so much
as they had, or perhaps he had had a greater store of fat to nourish
him. Mr. Harry said that if he had been a girl, he would have laughed
and cried at the same time when he discovered that pig. He must have
been asleep or exhausted when we arrived, for there was not a sound out
of him, but shortly afterward he had set up a yelling that attracted Mr.
Harry's a