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She had been running around for some time when she discovered four buckskin legs sticking up out of a trough-like hollow in the dried mud. She rushed with fear to her mother who lay motionless upon her back, either unable to get up or strangely unwilling to. She was very glad to see her and much of the fear that she had just experienced left her at the very sight of her beloved mother; but she slowly became conscious of something incomprehensibly dreadful in the situation.

Queen looked at her curiously and called half anxiously, half admonishingly, as if to say, “Why do you lie there like that when I want you, and want you standing up straight as one ought to stand?” Receiving no answer to her calling Queen ceased and gazed at her with growing terror. There was something so frightfully unusual about her. Queen began to shake herself as if she hoped to shake off the something that seemed to cling to her and dim and blur everything for her. She sniffed at the dear old head and sprang away in terror. There was a pool of blood near the open mouth and the beloved lips, always so warm and so soft, were cold and strangely hard. She became more and more alarmed and confused. But in her little soul there was still hope. Her beloved mother, so capable of solving the hardest problems, would solve this one. She approached again and sniffed and sniffed and called and called. But the more she sniffed and called in vain, the more intense grew her fear.