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 mite. At any rate, actuated by fear,
surprise, or remorse, she turned and walked back into the road

without a sign of passion or indignation, leaving the boy and the
lady rather disappointed at their easy victory. To be prepared

for a violent death and receive not even a scratch made them fear
that they might possibly have overestimated the danger.

They were better friends than ever after that, the young
minister's wife and the forlorn little boy from Acreville, sent

away from home he knew not why, unless it were that there was
little to eat there and considerably more at the Cash Cames', as

they were called in Edgewood. Cassius was familiarly known as
Uncle Cash, partly because there was a disposition in Edgewood to

abbreviate all Christian names, and partly because the old man
paid cash, and expected to be paid cash, for everything.

The late summer grew into autumn, and the minister's great maple
flung a flaming bough of scarlet over Mrs. Baxter's swing-chair.

Uncle Cash found Elisha very useful at picking up potatoes and
apples, but the boy was going back to his family as soon as the

harvesting was over.
One Friday evening Mrs. Baxter and Rebecca, wrapped in shawls and

"fascinators," were sitting on Mrs. Came's front steps enjoying
the sunset. Rebecca was in a tremulous state of happiness, for

she had come directly from the Seminary at Wareham to the
parsonage, and as the minister was absent at a church conference,

she was to stay the night with Mrs. Baxter and go with her to
Portland next day.

They were to go to the Islands, have ice cream for luncheon, ride
on a horse-car, and walk by the Longfellow house, a programme

that so unsettled Rebecca's never very steady mind that she
radiated flashes and sparkles of joy, making Mrs. Baxter wonder

if flesh could be translucent, enabling the spirit-fires within
to shine through?

Buttercup was being milked on the grassy slope near the shed
door. As she walked to the barn, after giving up her pailfuls of

yellow milk, she bent her neck and snatched a hasty bite from a
pile of turnips lying temptingly near. In her haste she took more

of a mouthful than would be considered good manners even among
cows, and as she disappeared in the barn door they could see a

forest of green tops hanging from her mouth, while she painfully
attempted to grind up the mass of stolen material without

allowing a single turnip to escape.
It grew dark soon afterward and they went into the house to see

Mrs. Came's new lamp lighted for the first time, to examine her
last drawn-in rug (a wonderful achievement produced entirely from

dyed flannel petticoats), and to hear the doctor's wife play "Oft
in the Still Night," on the dulcimer.

As they closed the sitting-room door opening on the piazza facing
the barn, the women heard the cow coughing and said to one

another: "Buttercup was too greedy, and now she has indigestion."
Elisha always went to bed at sundown, and Uncle Cash had gone to

the doctor's to have his hand dressed, for he had hurt it is some
way in the threshing-machine. Bill Peters, the hired man, came in

presently and asked for him, saying that the cow coughed more and
more, and it must be that something was wrong, but he could not

get her to open her mouth wide enough for him to see anything.
"She'd up an' die ruther 'n obleege anybody, that tarnal, ugly

cow would!" he said.
When Uncle Cash had driven into the yard, he came in for a

lantern, and went directly out to the barn. After a half-hour or
so, in which the little party had forgotten the whole occurrence,

he came in again.
"I'm blamed if we ain't goin' to lose that cow," he said. "Come

out, will ye, Hannah, and hold the lantern? I can't do anything
with my right hand in a sling, and Bill is the stupidest critter

in the country."
Everybody went out to the barn accordingly, except the doctor's

wife, who ran over to her house to see if her brother Moses had
come home from Milltown, and could come and take a hand in the

exercises.
Buttercup was in a bad way; there was no doubt of it. Something,

one of the turnips, presumably, had lodged in her throat, and
would move neither way, despite her attempts to dislodge it. Her

breathing was labored, and her eyes bloodshot from straining and
choking. Once or twice they succeeded in getting her mouth partly

open, but before they could fairly discover the cause of trouble
she had wrested her head away.

"I can see a little tuft of green sticking straight up in the
middle," said Uncle Cash, while Bill Peters and Moses held a

lantern on each side of Buttercup's head; "but, land! It's so far
down, and such a mite of a thing, I couldn't git it, even if I

could use my right hand. S'pose you try, Bill."
Bill hemmed and hawed, and confessed he didn't care to try.

Buttercup's grinders were of good size and excellent quality, and
he had no fancy for leaving his hand within her jaws. He said he

was no good at that kind of work, but that he would help Uncle
Cash hold the cow's head; that was just as necessary, and

considerable safer.
Moses was more inclined to the service of humanity, and did his

best, wrapping his wrist in a cloth, and making desperate but
ineffectual dabs at the slippery green turnip-tops in the

reluctantly opened throat. But the cow tossed her head and
stamped her feet and switched her tail and wriggled from under

Bill's hands, so that it seemed altogether impossible to reach
the seat of the trouble.

Uncle Cash was in despair, fuming and fretting the more because
of his own crippled hand.

"Hitch up, Bill,:" he said, "and, Hannah, you drive over to
Milliken's Mills for the horse-doctor. I know we can git out that

turnip if we can hit on the right tools and somebody to manage em
right; but we've got to be quick about it or the critter'll choke

to death, sure! Your hand's so clumsy, Mose, she thinks her
time's come when she feels it in her mouth, and your fingers are

so big you can't ketch holt o' that green stuff thout its
slippin'!"

"Mine ain't big; let me try," said a timid voice, and turning
round, they saw little Elisha Simpson, his trousers pulled on

over his night-shirt, his curly hair ruffled, his eyes vague with
sleep.

Uncle Cash gave a laugh of good-humored derision. "You--that's
afraid to drive a cow to pasture? No, sir; you hain't got sand

enough for this job, I guess!"
Buttercup just then gave a worse cough than ever, and her eyes

rolled in her head as if she were giving up the ghost.
"I'd rather do it than see her choke to death!" cried the boy, in

despair.
"Then, by ginger, you can try it, sonny!" said Uncle Cash. "Now

this time we'll tie her head up. Take it slow, and make a good
job of it."

Accordingly they pried poor Buttercup's jaws open to put a wooden
gag between them, tied her head up, and kept her as still as they

could while the women held the lanterns.
"Now, sonny, strip up your sleeve and reach as fur down's you

can! Wind your little fingers in among that green stuff stickin'