n half cream."

The minister's wife assented to all this, thinking that if Buttercup
would give up her habit of turning completely round in the road to roll
her eyes and elevate her white-tipped eyebrow, she might indeed be an
enjoyable companion; but in her present state of development her society
was not agreeable, even did she give sixty-one quarts of milk a day.
Furthermore, when Mrs. Baxter discovered that she never did any of these
reprehensible things with Bill Peters, she began to believe cows more
intelligent creatures than she had supposed them to be, and she was
indignant to think Buttercup could count so confidently on the weakness
of a small boy and a timid woman.

One evening, when Buttercup was more than usually exasperating, Mrs.
Baxter said to the Prophet, who was bracing himself to keep from being
pulled into a wayside brook where Buttercup loved to dabble, "Elisha, do
you know anything about the superiority of mind over matter?"

No, he didn't, though it was not a fair time to ask the question, for he
had sat down in the road to get a better purchase on the rope.

"Well, it doesn't signify. What I mean is that we can die but once, and
it is a glorious thing to die for a great principle. Give me that rope.
I can pull like an ox in my present frame of mind. You run down on the
opposite side of the brook, take that big stick wade right in--you
are barefooted,--brandish the stick, and, if necessary, do more than
brandish. I would go myself, but it is better she should recognize you
as her master, and I am in as much danger as you are, anyway. She may
try to hook you, of course, but you must keep waving the stick,--die
brandishing, Prophet, that's the idea! She may turn and run for me, in
which case I shall run too; but I shall die running, and the minister
can bury us under our favorite sweet-apple tree!"

The Prophet's soul was fired by the lovely lady's eloquence. Their
spirits mounted simultaneously, and they were flushed with a splendid
courage in which death looked a mean and paltry thing compared with
vanquishing that cow. She had already stepped into the pool, but the
Prophet waded in towards her, moving the alder branch menacingly. She
looked up with the familiar roll of the eye that had done her such good
service all summer, but she quailed beneath the stern justice and the
new valor of the Prophet's gaze.

In that moment perhaps she felt ashamed of the misery she had caused the
helpless mi