“Why, what’s the matter?” I exclaimed as I ran to the side of the shed in which Mrs. Ewe and the lambs resided.  “Strike your cigar-lighter quick, Matt.”

As Matthew shed a tiny light from a silver tube upon the situation, I sank to my knees with a cry.  There upon the grass lay one of my lambkins, and red blood was oozing from its woolly white throat.  As I lifted it on my arm, its little body gave a shudder and then lay so still that I knew it was dead.  Mother Ewe stood near in the shadow and gave a plaintive bleat as she came to my side.

“Oh,” I sobbed as I looked up at Matthew, “it’s dead.  What did it?”

“A dog,” answered Matthew, as he knelt beside me and laid the tiny dead lamb back on the ground.

“Not Peckerwood Pup!” I exclaimed.

“No, she’s too young; some stray,” answered Matthew as he look savagely around into the shadows.

“It’s the littlest one, and she licked my hand the last thing before I left.  I can’t bear it all, Matthew—­this is too much for me,” I said, and I sobbed into my hands as I sank down into a heap against the side of the bereaved sheep mother, who was still uttering her plaintive moans of question.

I say now and I shall always maintain that the most wonderful tenderness in the world is that with which a man who had known a woman all his life, who has grown with her growth, has shared her laughter and her tears, and knows her to her last feminine foible or strength, takes her into his arms.  Matthew crouched down upon the grass beside me and gathered me against his breast, away from the dreadful monster-inhabited shadows, and made me feel that a new day could dawn upon the world.  I think from the way I huddled to his strength that he knew that I had given up the fight and that his hour was at hand.

“Do you want me now, Ann?” he asked me; gently as he pressed his cheek against my hair.

“If you want me, take me and help me find that dog to-morrow,” I answered as I again reached out my hand and put it for the last time on the pathetic little woolly head.  I couldn’t hold back the sob.

“Go in the house to bed, dear, for you are completely worn out.  I’ll bury the lamb and look for any traces that may help us to find the savage,” said Matthew as he drew me to my feet and with quiet authority led me to the back door and opened it for me.  For a second I let him take me again into his strong arms, but I wilted there and I simply could not raise my lips to his.  The first time I remember kissing Matthew Berry was at his own tenth birthday party, and he had dropped a handkerchief behind me that I had failed to see as all of the budding flower and chivalry of Hayesville stood in a ring in his mother’s drawing-room.

“Dear old Matt,” I murmured to myself as I again fell dead between the posts of the ancestral bed.