An Alternate Fourth Reader

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: VII. ?THE LOST CHILD AND THE DOG. 1. A gentleman who was living near one of the American prairies was one morning visited before daybreak by a woman, the wife of a German, who was living not far off, and who came to beg of him to take with him his dog Fidele, and help her to seek for her little boy who had strayed away the day before. Two children had been lost within the last two years, and she was almost out of her mind with distress. 2. The dog, though not a regular hound, was remarkably clever in tracking game; the poor woman had seen him hunting wild turkeys for his master on the prairie, and nothing would persuade her but that he could find her child. 3. The gentleman was quite willing to try what the dog could do, and on their way to her house she told him that the day before, having gone with dinner for her husband and a neighbor who were working at some little distance, she left the child playing at the door, and when she came back he was nowhere to be found. She ran hither and thither and called to no purpose; her husband and the neighbor and the few scattered peoplewho dwelt about, all came, and men and women sought far and wide till it was dark. 4. Through the long night also she and her husband had remained out, calling to the child and shouting to frighten away the wild beasts, lest he should be seized by them as one of the other lost children had been. Morning came and he was not found; and now there seemed no hope unless in Fidele. 5. By sunrise Fidele and his master were at the house, a very humble dwelling built of turf. Here and there, to the north and east, other little emigrant dwellings lay scattered; whilst to the south and west stretched out the vast prairie to the very horizon, like a boundless sea. A little piece of unenclosed land was...