A Dangerous Triumph.

Waikato Times, Volume XXIII, Issue 1935, 29 November 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

A Dangerous Triumph.

" This is the crop that never fails," said the ostrich hoarsely, as she swallowed a half-inch iron nut, two gimlet -pointed screws and a baseball. And with a fiendish chuckle she strode away. The goat of the valley, after looking after her, sighed and felt a yearning for something higher and better than as yet his undeveloped life had known. He felt, after seeing what had passed before his eyes, that after all he was only a goat, and beneath his gay smile he wore a hollow, hungry heart that not all the glittering tomato-cans and discarded corsets in this vain world could fill. He started and pressed his flagrant brow feverishly against a passing child, as he saw the ostrich, beautiful as a dream of spring, bend gracefully over a close board fence, and, lightly tossing her head, swallow a sad-iron without a grimace. " So cold, so soulless, so icy in repose," murmured the poor goat ; " and yet when she wakens to aotion and does a thing like that the beautiful marble becomes a thing of life." The gaudy circus-poster filled the nigbJboring fence with the blossoming hues of apring. Far off along the white line of the misty horizon the stately ship, like ghastly, Bhadowy sails, went drifting by. From the grey corner near at hand the sobbing organ made all the still air tremble with the melting strains of "■Nancy Lee" with a weird, sweet melody. Something, he know not what, lured him on to greater deeds than hitherto he had known. His face lighted up with a strangely mingled look of triumph. He turned suddenly, as one turns away from a great temptation, and, climbing up the side of a wool-shed, leaped lightly into a back yard. A child sat on a low chair eating its luncheon. "It is mine ! " he shouted, hoarsely, and with one quick movement he had torn the luncheon from the hands of the terrified child and fled. Yes, he had triumphed, but his life was the price of his triumph ; and, after all, what a pitiful victory it wasl Once, twice, thrice and again he struggled to swallow it, his eyes grew dim, he fell fainting upon his side; he lay there, dying; the waves down on the beach sang on in slow and solemn monotone ; suddenly, as each passed from his choking gaze, there, radiant as a vision of the moonlight, her eyes full of radiant fire, white, pure, pale, the sunlight shimmering in the fluttering masses of her costly tips and plumes, the ostrich stood by his side, and plucking from his pallid jaws the coveted tidbit, bolted it with a smile and so brought him back to life. •• That was pie," the ostrich said, kindly ; " It takes a woman to get away with that." A goat is only a goat, after all. — R. J. Bur* dette.