e winter was very sharp already. That night, after they had reached
the hut, snow fell; and fell for very many days after that, so that the
paths and the divisions in the fields were all obliterated, and all the
smaller streams were frozen over, and the cold was intense upon the
plains. Then, indeed, it became hard work to go round for the milk while
the world was all dark, and carry it through the darkness to the silent
town. Hard work, especially for Patrasche, for the passage of the years,
that were only bringing Nello a stronger youth, were bringing him old
age, and his joints were stiff and his bones ached often. But he would
never give up his share of the labor. Nello would fain have spared him
and drawn the cart himself, but Patrasche would not allow it. All he
would ever permit or accept was the help of a thrust from behind to the
truck as it lumbered along through the ice-ruts. Patrasche had lived in
harness, and he was proud of it. He suffered a great deal sometimes from
frost, and the terrible roads, and the rheumatic pains of his limbs, but
he only drew his breath hard and bent his stout neck, and trod onward
with steady patience.

"Rest thee at home, Patrasche,--it is time thou didst rest,--and I can
quite well push in the cart by myself," urged Nello many a morning; but
Patrasche, who understood him aright, would no more have consented to
stay at home than a veteran soldier to shirk when the charge was
sounding; and every day he would rise and place himself in his shafts,
and plod along over the snow through the fields that his four round feet
had left their print upon so many, many years.

"One must never rest till one dies," thought Patrasche; and sometimes it
seemed to him that that time of rest for him was not very far off. His
sight was less clear than it had been, and it gave him pain to rise
after the night's sleep, though he would never lie a moment in his straw
when once the bell of the chapel tolling five let him know that the
daybreak of labor had begun.

"My poor Patrasche, we shall soon lie quiet together, you and I," said
old Jehan Daas, stretching out to stroke the head of Patrasche with the
old withered hand which had always shared with him its one poor crust of
bread; and the hearts of the old man and the old dog ached together with
one thought: When they were gone who would care for their darling?

One afternoon, as they came back from Antwerp over the snow, which had
become hard and s