wouldn't have done it."

When he drew near, however, "the little one" did not, as he had hoped
and expected, jump up and run again. With sinking heart Clare went
close up, and looked down on it. It lay stretched out, motionless.
With death in his own bosom he stooped and tenderly lifted it. The
rabbit was stone-dead! The poor boy gazed at it, pressed it tenderly
to his heart, and went with it to find his mother. The tears kept
pouring down his face, but he uttered no cry till he came to her. Then
a low groaning howl burst from him; he laid the dead thing in her lap,
and threw himself on the floor at her feet in an abandonment of
self-accusation and despair.

It was long before he was able to give her an intelligible account of
what had taken place. She asked him if he had found it dead. In answer
he could only shake his head, but that head-shake had a whole tragedy
in it. Then she examined "the little one," but could find no mark of
any wound upon it. When at length she learned how the case was, she
tried to comfort him, insisting he was not to blame, for he did not
mean to kill the little one. He would not hearken to her loving
sophistry.

"No, mother!" he said through his sobs; "I wouldn't have blamed
myself, though I should have been very sorry, if I had killed him by
accident--if I had stepped upon him, or anything of that kind; but I
meant to frighten him! I looked bad at him! I made him think I was an
enemy, and going to kill him! I shammed bad--and so was real bad."

He stopped with a most wailful howl.