orily what that instinct is which
guides young animals unerringly back home, or in the direction of their
kin. Hungry Little Dagon, tied up in the barn, could hardly have noted
with eyes or ears the direction in which his mother had been driven
away; but as soon as we were out at the barn doors, instead of rushing
to the other barn, where he had hitherto found his mother night and
morning, the rampant little beast headed straight past the house and
down the lane to take the road for the village.

A man could have held him without difficulty. I was in my thirteenth
year, and may have weighed seventy-five pounds, but did not have weight
enough. In the exuberance of his young muscle, Little Dagon erected his
tail and made a bolt in the direction which instinct bade him take.

My one chance of holding him would have been to noose the rope about his
nose and seize him close by the neck, at the start; but this I did not
understand, and, in fact, had no time to study the problem. I clung to
the end of the rope, and away we went. I was not leading the calf.
Little Dagon was leading me. First I took one long step, and then such
strides as I had never made before.

Halstead and Addison had jumped up from their milking-stools and come to
the barnyard bars. "Hold him! Hold him!" they shouted. "Don't let him
get away!"

Grandfather, too, had now come to the kitchen door. "Hold him! Hold that
calf!" he called out, and I clung to the knot in the end of the rope,
with determination.

In a moment Little Dagon was towing me down the long lane to the road.
The gate stood open, and out we went into the highway, on the jump.
There, however, the calf pulled up short, to smell the road. I tried to
catch the strap round his neck and turn him back, but he seized my arm
in his mouth to suck it; and being unused to calves, I was afraid he
would bite me. When I attempted to lead him about, that eager impulse to
find his mother again possessed him, and away he ran down the long
orchard hill.

I do not now see how I contrived to hold on to the rope, but I remember
thinking that if I let go Addison and Halstead would laugh at me, and
that Gramp would blame me.

We raced down that long hill, my feet seeming hardly to touch the
ground, and struck a level, sandy stretch at the foot of it. The sand
felt queer to the calf's feet, and he stopped to smell it. By this
time I was badly out of breath, but I turned his head homeward and began
towing hi