At length he exhausted all my father's
patience by his mischief. One of his last tricks was this. He gnawed a
hole in a bag of meal, and after eating as much as he could (and this
was but little, for we fed him as often as he needed to eat, and
oftener too) he carried away large quantities of the meal, and wasted
it. He never worked harder in his life, not even when he was trying to
get away from the jaws of the old cat, than he did when he was
scattering this meal over the yard. Well, we had a sort of a court about
Billy, after this. My father's corn-house was the court room, and my
father himself was the judge. We all agreed that Billy was guilty,
though we differed as to the punishment that ought to be inflicted. The
question seemed to be, according to the language they use in courts of
law, whether the theft was a _petty larceny_ or a _grand larceny_. Alas
for Billy and Billy's friends! My father decided, in his charge to the
jury, that the crime must be ranked under the head of grand larceny, and
the jury brought in a verdict accordingly. My father pronounced the
sentence, which was that the offending squirrel must die that same day.
Billy seemed to be aware of what was going on, for he did not come near
the house again till almost night; and when he did come, one of my
father's men shot him, and just as the sun was going down he died. For a
long time after that, I cried whenever I thought of poor Billy.
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