savage wrath,
pushed the cart lazily along the road up hill, and left the dying dog
there for the ants to sting and for the crows to pick.

It was the last day before Kermesse away at Louvain, and the Brabantois
was in haste to reach the fair and get a good place for his truck of
brass wares. He was in fierce wrath, because Patrasche had been a strong
and much-enduring animal, and because he himself had now the hard task
of pushing his charette all the way to Louvain. But to stay to look
after Patrasche never entered his thoughts: the beast was dying and
useless, and he would steal, to replace him, the first large dog that he
found wandering alone out of sight of its master. Patrasche had cost him
nothing, or next to nothing, and for two long, cruel years he had made
him toil ceaselessly in his service from sunrise to sunset, through
summer and winter, in fair weather and foul.

He had got a fair use and a good profit out of Patrasche: being human,
he was wise, and left the dog to draw his last breath alone in the ditch,
and have his bloodshot eyes plucked out as they might be by the birds,
whilst he himself went on his way to beg and to steal, to eat and to
drink, to dance and to sing, in the mirth at Louvain. A dying dog, a dog
of the cart,--why should he waste hours over its agonies at peril of
losing a handful of copper coins, at peril of a shout of laughter?

Patrasche lay there, flung in the grass-green ditch. It was a busy road
that day, and hundreds of people, on foot and on mules, in wagons or in
carts, went by, tramping quickly and joyously on to Louvain. Some saw
him, most did not even look: all passed on. A dead dog more or less,--it
was nothing in Brabant: it would be nothing anywhere in the world.

After a time, amongst the holiday-makers, there came a little old man
who was bent and lame, and very feeble. He was in no guise for feasting:
he was very poorly and miserably clad, and he dragged his silent way
slowly through the dust amongst the pleasure-seekers. He looked at
Patrasche, paused, wondered, turned aside, then kneeled down in the rank
grass and weeds of the ditch, and surveyed the dog with kindly eyes of
pity. There was with him a little rosy, fair-haired, dark-eyed child of
a few years old, who pattered in amidst the bushes, that were for him
breast-high, and stood gazing with a pretty seriousness upon the poor
great, quiet beast.

Thus it was that these two first met,--the little Nello and t