Madge watched him go with a look of keen distress upon her fresh and
beautiful young face. She must not let him say what he had almost said,
for she shrank from the thought of wounding him with the answer she felt
in her heart that she would have to make. He had slouched off, half-way
down the trail and out of sight, before she put the thoughts of the
unpleasant situation from her mind and turned again to the great matter
which had brought her there, that day.

With a last glance at the gap in the rail fence, to make sure that it
had been carefully replaced, so that there could be no danger of finding
her ox gone when she returned, she started down the mountain, by a path
different from that which Joe had taken.

She had not gone very far, when, from a clump of bunch-grass just in
front of her, only partly, yet, renewed by the new season, a hare hopped
awkwardly, endeavoring to make off. Its progress was one-sided,
difficult.

Instantly she saw that it was wounded and with a little cry she ran
toward it and caught it. Instinctively the tiny animal seemed to
recognize her as a friend and ceased to struggle. One of its fore legs
had been broken, as she quickly saw.

With a little exclamation of compassion, she sat down upon a hummock,
tore from her skirt a bit of cloth, found, on the ground, two twigs,
made of these crude materials rude splints and bandages, bound the
wounded creature, and sent it on its painful way again. She sighed as,
after having watched it for a moment, she arose.

"Pears like us human bein's always was a-hurtin' somethin'," she