Page:Oregon, her history, her great men, her literature.djvu/385

384 you approach them and tell them they need not wait for their friend; he is never coming back."

By this time I had realized all. I could recognize his every feature, even to the little black, glossy soft eyes, which were now half open. Father asked if I saw what had happened, and said, "I'll tell you, as I believe you are too dumb to comprehend. Your friend that used to be has brought that band of geese five hundred or a thousand miles out of their beaten course that he might bring them here where a lover of birds and things treated him so well. They likely objected, but he persuaded and finally they have obeyed, and he left them there at a safe distance and came to see you, and so perhaps renew his love, and there he lies, and if you never commit another murder I hope this one will punish you to your grave. Some murders can be explained to the dead one's relatives, but you can never explain this one and I want to show you his right wing.

I didn't want to see his wing, but father was determined, and as he lifted the feathers at the middle joint, we saw a scar, a knot in the bone where it had healed.

Everybody is a criminal more or less, and some of the crimes are done by stupid people. Thus I console myself in a way over the death of the Hutchins goose, that perhaps I am a murderer through stupidity and not by premeditation.—'The Country Boy."