said, "I agree with you completely."

His face lighted up, and he continued eagerly:

"And I tell 'em: You just go ahead and try for heaven; don't pay any
attention to all this talk about everlasting punishment."

"Good advice!" I said.

It had begun to grow dark. The brown cow was quiet at last. We could
hear small faint sounds from the calf. I started slowly through the
bracken. Mr. Purdy hung at my elbow, stumbling sideways as he walked,
but continuing to talk eagerly. So we came to the place where the calf
lay. I spoke in a low voice:

"So boss, so boss."

I would have laid my hand on her neck but she started back with a wild
toss of her horns. It was a beautiful calf! I looked at it with a
peculiar feeling of exultation, pride, ownership. It was red-brown, with
a round curly pate and one white leg. As it lay curled there among the
ferns, it was really beautiful to look at. When we approached, it did
not so much as stir. I lifted it to its legs, upon which the cow
uttered a strange half-wild cry and ran a few steps off, her head thrown
in the air. The calf fell back as though it had no legs.

"She is telling it not to stand up," said Mr. Purdy.

I had been afraid at first that something was the matter!

"Some are like that," he said. "Some call their calves to run. Others
won't let you come near 'em at all; and I've even known of a case where a
cow gored its calf to death rather than let anyone touch it."

I looked at Mr. Purdy not without a feeling of admiration. This was a
thing he knew: a language not taught in the universities. How well it
became him to know it; how simply he expressed it! I thought to myself:
There are not many men in this world, after all, that it will not pay
us to go to school to--for something or other.

I should never have been able, indeed, to get the cow and calf home,
last night at least, if it had not been for my chance friend. He knew
exactly what to do and how to do it. He wore a stout coat of denim,
rather long in the skirts. This he slipped off, while I looked on in
some astonishment, and spread it out on the ground. He placed my staff
under one side of it and found another stick nearly the same size for
the other side. These he wound into the coat until he had made a sort of
stretcher. Upon this we placed the unresisting calf. What a fine one it
was! Then, he in front and I behind, we carried the stretcher and its
burden out of the wood. The cow followed, sometimes th