s pride in her splendid flow of milk--grown fond
of her, in a word, and now she was choking to death. A skinny little
pipe stem is capable of a deal at such a time, and only a slender hand
and arm could have done the work.

Elisha trembled with nervousness, but he made a dexterous and dashing
entrance into the awful cavern of Buttercup's mouth; descended upon the
tiny clump of green spills or spikes, wound his little fingers in among
them as firmly as he could, and then gave a long, steady, determined
pull with all the strength in this body. That was not so much in itself,
to be sure, but he borrowed a good deal more from some reserve quarter,
the location of which nobody knows anything about, but upon which
everybody draws in time of need.

Such a valiant pull you would never have expected of the Little Prophet.
Such a pull it was that, to his own utter amazement, he suddenly found
himself lying flat on his back on the barn floor with a very slippery
something in his hand, and a fair-sized but rather dilapidated turnip at
the end of it.

"That's the business!" cried Moses.

"I could 'a' done it as easy as nothin' if my arm had been a leetle mite
smaller," said Bill Peters.

"You're a trump, sonny!" exclaimed Uncle Cash, as he helped Moses untie
Buttercup's head and took the gag out.

"You're a trump, Lisha, and, by ginger, the cow's your'n; only don't you
let your blessed pa drink none of her cream!"

The welcome air rushed into Buttercup's lungs and cooled her parched,
torn throat. She was pretty nearly spent, poor thing, and bent her head
(rather gently for her) over the Little Prophet's shoulder as he threw
his arms joyfully about her neck, and whispered, "You're my truly cow
now, ain't you, Buttercup?"

"Mrs. Baxter, dear," said Rebecca, as they walked home to the parsonage
together under the young harvest moon; "there are all sorts of cowards,
aren't there, and don't you think Elisha is one of the best kind."

"I don't quite know what to think about cowards, Rebecca Rowena," said
the minister's wife hesitatingly. "The Little Prophet is the third
coward I have known in my short life who turned out to be a hero when
the real testing time came. Meanwhile the heroes themselves--or the ones
that were taken for heroes--were always busy doing something, or being
somewhere, else."

Eighth Chronicle. ABNER SIMPSON'S NEW LEAF

Rebecca had now cut the bonds that bound her to the Riverboro district
schoo