The spring Little Sister was three years old the Colonel came in to breakfast one morning with a cloud on his brow. It was a great disappointment to him--old Betty, his saddle mare, the mare he had ridden for fifteen years, “the best bred mare in Tennessee,” had brought into the world a most unpromising offspring. “It is weak, puny and no ’count, John,” he said to his son; “deformed, or something, in its front legs, knuckles over and can’t stand up, the most infernally curby-legged thing I ever saw.” “That’s too bad,” remarked Uncle John, as he helped himself to another battercake. “I’ll go out after breakfast and look at the poor little thing.” “No use,” remarked the Colonel gravely, “it’s deformed--can’t stand up; and out of compassion for it I’ve ordered Jim to knock it in the head. It’ll be better dead than alive.” Little Sister, with her big, inquisitive eyes, had been taking it all in, as she gravely ate her oatmeal and cream. But the last remark of Grandpa stopped the spoon half way to her mouth. The next instant, unobserved, she had slipped out of her high-chair and flown to the barn. “I tell you, John,” remarked the old Colonel, “I sometimes think this breeding horses is pure lottery. To think of old Betty, the gamest, speediest mare I ever rode, having such a colt as that; and by Brown Hal, too--the best young pacing horse I ever saw. It makes me feel bad to think of it. Now, take old Betty’s pedigree----” But the old Colonel never got any further, for piercing screams from Little Sister came from the barn. Uncle John glanced at her empty chair, turned pale with fright, kicked over the two chairs which stood in his way, then his favorite setter dog that blockaded the door, and rushed hatless to the barn. There a pathetic sight met his eyes. A negro stood in old Betty’s stall door with an axe in his hand. In a far corner, on some straw, lay a sorry-looking, helpless colt. But it was not alone, for a three-year-old tot knelt beside it, and held the colt’s head in her lap while she shook her tiny fist at the black executioner, and screamed with grief and anger: “You shan’t kill this baby colt--you shan’t--you shan’t! Don’t you come in here--don’t you come! How dare you?” And, child though she was, the flash of her keen, blue Rutherford eyes, like the bright sights of the muzzle of two derringers, had awed the negro in the doorway and stopped him in hesitancy and confusion. “Go away, Jim,” said Uncle John, as he took in the situation. “Come, Little Sister,” he said, “let’s go back to Grandma.” But for once in her life Uncle John had no influence over the little girl. She was indignant, shocked, grieved. She fairly blazed through her tears and sobs. She would never speak to Grandpa again as long as she lived. She intended her very self to kill Jim just as soon as she “got big enough,” and as for Uncle John, she would never even love him again if he did not promise her the baby colt should not be killed.