When we reached the cart, Selina was again fast asleep. Gently we raised her from the pony’s side, and I had to almost use force to unfasten the grip of her arm on its neck. I whispered to her that we were going to take Fan and Elimelech too, and she made no more resistance, but lay down quietly on some straw in a corner of the waggon. It was hard work to get poor Fan in after her; but she was so small and thin that at last we managed it. Elimelech perched himself upon his friend’s motionless body, and so we set off, a strange funeral procession. Arrived at the village, I roused the neighbours, and Selina, now almost unconscious, was put to bed by kindly hands. Fan we deposited in her old hovel, and Elimelech, subdued and puzzled, was left there too. Next morning Selina was unable to get out of her bed, though she struggled hard to do so; fatigue and exposure on the wet grass had brought her very low, and the doctor thought she would hardly get over it. We had to tell her that she would see Fan no more. She only sighed, and asked for Elimelech. I went down to the hovel; the men were come to take the poor old pony away. Elimelech was there, not upon poor Fan’s body, but upon a rafter; and when the pony was taken out, he followed, and evaded all my efforts to catch him. I saw the cart with its burden turn the corner of the street, with the bird perched on the edge of it, fluttering his wings, as if he were expostulating with the ruthless driver. I returned to Selina. “Elimelech is gone to see the last of poor Fan,” I said; “but we shall see him back here before long.” “He loves me,” answered she; “but he loves Fan better, and I don’t think he’ll come back.” And Elimelech did not return that day. But the next morning I found him sitting on her bed. She told me that he must have come back to the hovel, and when he found that shut, have come in by the front door and made his way upstairs. “And now poor Fan is gone, he loves me better than any one,” she said. Selina is still alive, as I said at the beginning of this tale; she still finds work to do, and does it with all her might. All her animals are gone now—cats, fowls, ducks, and pony; Elimelech alone remains; he has never been unfaithful to her. But they are both growing old—too old to last much longer; and all we can hope is that Elimelech will be the survivor. TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING “Bessie, my lassie,” exclaimed the Poet, as they entered their new garden for the first time together, “what a time we shall have!”