The goat acquired a troublesome habit of wandering off in the woods, with an inclination not to return for several days.  From this cause the bell became useful as a signal to indicate the animal’s whereabouts.  It rarely wandered beyond hearing, and caused no more trouble than would have resulted from a cow under the same circumstances.  For the last few weeks it had been the duty, or rather privilege, of Charley to bring his playmate home, and the child had become so expert that the father had little hesitation in permitting him to go out for it.  The parent had misgivings, however, in allowing him to leave the house, so near dark, to go beyond his sight if not beyond his hearing; and for some time he had strenuously refused to permit the boy to go upon his errand; but the little fellow plead so earnestly, and the father’s ever-present apprehensions having gradually dulled by their want of realization, he had given his reluctant consent, until it came to be considered the special province of the boy to bring in the goat every evening just before nightfall.

The afternoon wore away, and still the missionary sat with folded hands, gazing absently off in the direction of the wood.  The boy at length aroused him by running up and asking: 

“Father, it is getting late.  Isn’t it time to bring Dolly home?”

“Yes, my son; do you hear the bell?”

“Listen!”

The pleasant tink-a-link came with faint distinctness over the still summer air.

“It isn’t far away, my son; so run as fast as you can and don’t play or loiter on the way.”

The child ran rapidly across the Clearing in the direction of the sound, shot into the wood, and, a moment later, had disappeared from his father’s sight.

The father still sat in his seat, and was looking absently toward the forest, when a startled expression flashed over his face and he sprung to his feet.  What thus alarmed him? It was the sound of the goat-bell.

All of my readers who have heard the sound of an ordinary cow-bell suspended to the neck of an animal, have observed that the natural sound is an irregular one—­that is, there is no system or regularity about the sound made by an animal in cropping the grass or herbage.  There is the clapper’s tink-a-link, tink-a-link—­an interval of silence—­then the occasional tink, tink, tink, to be followed, perhaps, by a repetition of the first-named sounds, varied occasionally by a compound of all, caused by the animal flinging its head to free itself from troublesome flies or mosquitoes.  The bell in question, however, gave no such sounds as these, and it was this fact which filled the missionary with a sudden, terrible dread.

Suppose a person take one of these bells in his hand, and give a steady, uninterrupted motion.  The consequence must be a regular, unvarying, monotonous sound, which any ear can distinguish from the natural one caused by the animal itself.  It was a steady tink, tink, tink, that the bell in question sent forth.