After a while, the fountain of tears was for the time exhausted, and she sat disconsolately gazing at the old cow feeding away, as if food were everything and a _roup_ nothing at all, when footsteps approached the _byre_, and, to her dismay, two men, whom she did not know, came in, untied Brownie, and actually led her away from before her eyes.

She still stared at the empty space where Brownie had stood,--stared like a creature stranded by night on the low coast of Death, before whose eyes in the morning the sea of Life is visibly ebbing away.

At last she started up.

How could she sit there without Brownie! Sobbing so that she could not breathe, she rushed across the yard, into the crowded and desecrated house, and up the stair to her own little room, where she threw herself on the bed, buried her eyes in the pillow, and, overcome with grief, fell fast asleep.
When she woke in the morning, she remembered nothing of Betty's undressing and putting her to bed.

The dreadful day that was gone seemed only a dreadful dream, that had left a pain behind it.