She raised her fowling-piece, took aim, fired, and in another instant a rush and whirr of wings swooped down through the air, and a white pigeon, the hapless laggard, or perhaps the pioneer of some flock, dropped bleeding at their feet. “Admirable!” exclaimed Augustus. The wild girl’s dark eyes flashed under their long lashes, and her white teeth gleamed between her smiling lips as she noticed his surprise. But Rosalia gazed in tearful sorrow at the wounded and fluttering bird—and— “Poor, poor thing!” she said, “it was going home, thinking of no harm or danger!” and her tears fell mingling with and diluting the blood that crimsoned the white feathers of its bosom. “Ah! it was cruel in Hagar to kill the pigeon, wasn’t it?” inquired Gusty, derisively, relapsing into boyish rudeness. “No! I do not say it was cruel _in_ Hagar because she didn’t stop to think; but it was cruel _to_ the bird, poor, dear thing! Can’t you do anything for it, Gusty?” Now this was asked so naively through her tears, that Gusty, rude hobble-de-hoy, burst into a loud laugh, and at its end assumed gravity and answered,— “Yes, we can send for a surgeon!” Rosalia alighted cautiously from her horse, and kneeling down on the turf gazed mournfully at the glazing eyes of the bird—it fluttered violently once or twice, and then grew still. She burst into tears and sobbed convulsively. “Why, Rose!” “Why, what a baby!” exclaimed Hagar and Augustus in the same breath. “Oh! but, poor thing, what harm had it done? It was sailing so blithely through the sky, and now it is quite dead—not even gone to Heaven, where I wish it could go. I am sorry for you, too, Hagar, for I know you feel so bad about shooting the poor bird, now that it is done.” And suffering herself to be lifted into her saddle by Gusty, who had alighted for the purpose, she ambled up to the side of Hagar and held out her hand—“I know you are sorry, Hagar! are you not?” The face of the dark girl was sparkling with mirth. “No, my little white dove,” she answered, “not at all; and as for your bird, though its spirit is not probably yet in Heaven, it may be on its way there!” “What is that you say, Hagar?” queried Gusty. Hagar reined up her horse, and stooping, lifted the dead bird; she asked— “Where is the spirit, the life that animated this bird, Gusty?” “Why, _dead_, of course.” “Pooh! _this_ that I hold in my hand is dead, but the life—the life—where is that?” “Gone, of course, gone; where else should it be?” “‘Gone’—_where_?” “Where?—why, where?—why, gone—_away_.” “Thank you! perfectly satisfactory,” said Hagar, and her wild eyes flashed, and her white teeth gleamed with suppressed mirth. “Tell me—tell me, Hagar!” said little Rosalia, “do you think, _sure enough_, that birds _do_ go to Heaven? Sometimes _I_ think so, too; they are so beautiful and good, you know! But then the Holy Bible says,—‘The beasts that perish,’ therefore, of course, they must perish.”