For two summers she was a wellspring of pleasure and profit in my farm of one acre, when, in an evil moment, I resolved to part with her and try another.  In an evil moment I say, for from that time my luck in cattle left me.  The goddess never forgave me the execution of that rash and cruel resolve.

The day is indelibly stamped on my memory when I exposed my Chloe for sale in the public market-place.  It was in November, a bright, dreamy, Indian summer day.  A sadness oppressed me, not unmixed with guilt and remorse.  An old Irish woman came to the market also with her pets to sell, a sow and five pigs, and took up a position next me.  We condoled with each other; we bewailed the fate of our darlings together; we berated in chorus the white-aproned but blood-stained fraternity who prowled about us.  When she went away for a moment I minded the pigs, and when I strolled about she minded my cow.  How shy the innocent beast was of those carnal marketmen!  How she would shrink away from them!  When they put out a hand to feel her condition she would “scrooch” down her back, or bend this way or that, as if the hand were a branding-iron.  So long as I stood by her head she felt safe—­deluded creature!—­and chewed the cud of sweet content; but the moment I left her side she seemed filled with apprehension, and followed me with her eyes, lowing softly and entreatingly till I returned.

At last the money was counted out for her, and her rope surrendered to the hand of another.  How that last look of alarm and incredulity, which I caught as I turned for a parting glance, went to my heart!

Her stall was soon filled, or partly filled, and this time with a native,—­a specimen of what may be called the cornstalk breed of Virginia; a slender, furtive, long-geared heifer just verging on cowhood, that in spite of my best efforts would wear a pinched and hungry look.  She evidently inherited a humped back.  It was a family trait, and evidence of the purity of her blood.  For the native blooded cow of Virginia, from shivering over half rations of cornstalks in the open air during those bleak and windy winters, and roaming over those parched fields in summer, has come to have some marked features.  For one thing, her pedal extremities seem lengthened; for another, her udder does not impede her traveling; for a third, her backbone inclines strongly to the curve; then, she despiseth hay.  This last is a sure test.  Offer a thorough-bred Virginia cow hay, and she will laugh in your face; but rattle the husks or shucks, and she knows you to be her friend.

The new-comer even declined corn-meal at first.  She eyed it furtively, then sniffed it suspiciously, but finally discovered that it bore some relation to her native “shucks,” when she fell to eagerly.