Dave had been prepared for some discussion of his action. But he was not prepared for just this. He drew himself up.
"I did think ye was a woman grown; an' for all yer idees were kind of far-fetched, I've respected 'em a heap; an' I won't say but what they've influenced me, too. But now I see ye're but a silly child an' don't reason. Did ye think, maybe, these here leetle mites o' things could live an' take keer o' themselves?"
He spoke coldly, scornfully; and there was a kind of mastery in his voice that quelled her. She was astonished, too. The colour in her face deepened, but she dropped her eyes.
"I wanted to take them home, and tame them," she explained, quite humbly.
"Ye'd never 'a' been able to raise 'em. They're too young, a sight too young. See, their eyes ain't open. They'd have jest died on yer hands, Mirandy, sure an' sartain!"
"But--how _could_ you!" she protested, with no more anger left, but a sob of pity in her throat.
"It was jest what _you_ do to the fish ye ketch, Mirandy, to stop their sufferin'."
Miranda looked up quickly, and her eyes grew large.
"Do you know, I never thought of that before, Dave," she replied. "I'll never catch a fish again, long as I live! Let's get away from here."
"Ye see," began Dave, making up his mind to sow a few seeds of doubt in Miranda's mind as to the correctness of her theories, "ye see, Mirandy, 'tain't possible to be consistent right through in this life; but what ye'll find, life'll make a fool o' ye at one point or another. I ain't a-goin' to say I think ye're all wrong, not by no means. Sence I've seen the way ye understand the live critters of the woods, an' how they understand you, I've come to feel some different about killin' 'em myself. But, Mirandy, Nature's nature, an' ye can't do much by buckin' up agin her. Look now, ye told me to shoot the lou'-cerfie coz he killed the deer kid. But he didn't go to kill it for ugliness, nor jest for himself to make a dinner off of--you know that. He killed it for his mate, too. Lou'-cerfie ain't built so's they can eat grass. If the she lou'-cerfie didn't git the meat she needed, her kittens'd starve. She's jest _got_ to kill. Nature's put that law onto her, an' onto the painters, an' the foxes an' wolves, the 'coons an' the weasels. An' she's put the same law, only not so heavy, onto the bears, an' also onto humans, what's all built to live on all kinds of food, meat among the rest. An' to live right, and be their proper selves, they've all got to eat meat sometimes, for Nature don't stand much foolin' with her laws!"
