ome low cornel bushes, his brown eyes regarding
me questioningly.

He fawned on me, of course, and I made friends with him, fondled him,
pulled his ears and played with him a while.

Agathemer tartly enquired whether we really had time to waste on
skylarking with strange dogs. I laughed, picked up my wallet, and started
to follow him as he swung round and strode on, ordering the dog to go back
home, a command which, from me, almost always won instant compliance and
disembarrassed me of any casual roadside friends.

But the dog did not obey. He pawed at me, whined, and caught my cloak in
his teeth, tugging at it and whining. I could not induce him to let go,
could not shake him off, and was much puzzled. Agathemer, impatient and
irritated, halted again and urged our need of haste.

After exhausting every wile by which I had been accustomed to rid myself
of too fond animals, I began to realize that the dog did not want to
follow us, did not want us to remain where we were and go on playing with
him, but, as plainly as if he spoke Latin, he was begging us to accompany
him somewhere.

I said to Agathemer:

"I'm going with this dog; come along."

He remonstrated.

I declared that I had an intuition that to follow the dog was the right
thing to do. Agathemer, contemptuous and reluctant, yielded. The dog led
us along an all but undistinguishable track through densely growing trees,
up steep slopes and out into a flattish glade or clearing at the brow of
the slope, overhung by merely a few hundred feet of wooded mountain side
and bare cliffs to the crest. The clearing was clothed in soft, late,
second-growth grass, and had plainly been mown at haying time and pastured
on since. In it we found some well-built, well-thatched farm-buildings: a
sheepfold, a goatpen, a cowshed, a strongly built structure like a granary
or store-house, another like a repository for wine-jars and oil-jars;
hovels such as all mountain farms have for slave-quarters and a house or
cabin little better than a hut, mud-walled, like the other buildings, but
new thatched. It was nearly square and had no ridge-pole, the four slopes
of the roof running together, at the top, yet not into a point, but as if
there were a smoke-vent: in fact I thought I saw a suggestion of smoke
rising from the peak of the roof.

To this hut the dog led us. The heavy door of weathered, rough-hewn oak
was shut, but, when I pushed it, proved to be unfastened. I found myself