It was Millie who first noticed something was wrong with Bossy. It was right after she had found her grazing in the chestnut grove. All the young growth had been cut out and the branches of the trees formed a solid shade so that coming out of the sunlight into the grove Millie blinked and groped in the darkness with hands out before her, feeling her way and calling, "Sook, Bossy! Sook! Sook!" Millie all but stumbled over the cow down on her all fours. She coaxed and patted for a long time before Bossy finally got to her feet and waddled slowly out of the shaded grove into the sunlit meadow. That evening Robert did the milking. But before he began he stroked Bossy's nose and bent close. "I've caught the stench of her breath!" he cried. "Sniff for yourself, Millie!" Millie did. "Smells worser'n a dung pile," she gasped, hand to stomach. Quick as a flash Robert put the tin pail under Bossy's bag and began to milk with both hands. There was scarcely a pint in the bucket until Robert gaped at Millie. "Look! It don't foam!" His eyes widened with apprehension. He took a silver coin from his pocket, dropped it into the pail and waited. In a few moments he fished it out. "Black as coal!" gasped Robert. "Our cow's got milk sick!" Bossy slumped to the ground. By sundown the cow was stark dead. Before dark Robert himself grew deathly ill. They remembered that at noon time he had spread a piece of cornbread with Bossy's butter. He had drunk a cup of her milk. Millie lost no moment. She mixed mustard in a cup of hot water and Robert downed it almost at a gulp. "He begun to puke and purge until I thought his gizzard would sure come up next," Millie told it afterward. "All that live-long night he puked and strained till he got so weakened his head hung over the side of the bed and hot water poured out of his mouth same as if he had water brash. Along toward morning Doc Robbins come riding by. He had a bottle of apple brandy and we mixed it with wild honey. It wasn't long till Robert got ease. Doc set a while and about the middle of the morning he give Robert two heaping spoonfuls of castor oil." From then on no one could coax Robert Burns to touch a mouthful of butter nor drink a cup of sweet milk. Though he drank his fill of buttermilk with never a pain. As for the shaded grove where the cow had grazed, every tree was cleared away--at Doc Robbins's orders. The sunlight poured into the place and soon there was a green meadow where once the shaded plot had been covered with a poisoned vegetation. Cows grazed at their will over the place with no ill effects. Still Robert had no hankering for butter or sweet milk.