The girl, who had drawn near, looked from him to the dead chipmunk, and
back again. Then she burst suddenly into tears.
"Oh, cruel, cruel!" she sobbed. "What did I do it for? What did you
_let_ me do it for?"
Her distress was so keen that the young man hastened to relieve it.
"There," he reassured her lightly, "don't do that! Why, you are a great
hunter. You got your game. And it was a splendid shot. We'll have him
skinned when we get back home, and we'll cure the skin, and you can
make something out of it--a spectacle case," he suggested at random. "I
know how you feel," he went on, to give her time to recover, "but all
hunters feel that way occasionally. See, I'll put him just here until
we get ready to go home, where nothing can get him."
He deposited the squirrel in the cleft of a rock, quite out of sight,
and stood back as though pleased. "There, that's fine!" he concluded.
With one of those instantaneous transitions, which seemed so natural to
her, and yet which appeared to reach not at all to her real nature, she
had changed from an aspect of passionate grief to one of solemn
inquiry.
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