Willing once more to gratify the children, as well as to solve the
enigma of whether it must be inevitable to lose by keeping these
animal, we became the possessors of these superior creatures, with the
understanding that no one was to have anything to do with them but
Tom, the said Tom saying, with perfect confidence, that "he would
'warrant' they should weigh five pounds each in six weeks."

Not being learned in rabbits, we trusted to his experience and
promises that we should always from that have a brace for the table
whenever we wished for them. What was our disappointment, then, when a
week after we heard of the death of one of them! This was soon
followed by another, and another, till the whole seven little
"bunnies" shared the grave under the walnut-tree, and in a day or two
the doe likewise departed: I concluded she died of grief for the loss
of her offspring.

In vain did we endeavor to discover the reason of this mortality; it
could not have been for want of food, for they consumed nearly as many
oats as the pony. At last Tom thought of the hutch, or "locker," as he
called it. "It must," said he, gravely, "have had _the_ disease." So
what that fatal complaint among rabbits is, remains a profound mystery
to us.

Now this hutch was made of new wood, in a carpenter's shop, at a cost
of nearly $10, and how it could have become infected with this fearful
complaint we could not comprehend. However, from that time we
abandoned rabbit-keeping, and resolved not, for the future, to keep
any live stock which we could not look after ourselves. We did not
attempt to do so in this case, because we were frightened at the
responsibility Tom threw on our shoulders, if we looked at them the