g Toby down among
his feet, and threatening him with instant death two or three times a
day. To him Toby paid a visit that very evening, down into his den, and
walked about, as much as to say "Come on, Macduff!" but Macduff did not
come on, and henceforward there was an armed neutrality, and they merely
stiffened up and made their backs rigid, pretended each not to see the
other, walking solemnly round, as is the manner of dogs. Toby worked his
new-found faculty thoroughly, but with discretion. He killed cats,
astonished beggars, kept his own in his own garden against all comers,
and came off victorious in several well-fought battles; but he was not
quarrelsome or foolhardy. It was very odd how his carriage changed,
holding his head up, and how much pleasanter he was at home. To my
father, next to William, who was his Humane Society man, he remained
stanch. And what of his end? for the misery of dogs is that they die so
soon, or as Sir Walter says, it is well they do; for if they lived as
long as a Christian, and we liked them in proportion, and they then
died, he said that was a thing he could not stand.

His exit was miserable, and had a strange poetic or tragic relation to
his entrance. My father was out of town; I was away in England. Whether
it was that the absence of my father had relaxed his power of moral
restraint, or whether through neglect of the servant he had been
desperately hungry, or most likely both being true, Toby was discovered
with the remains of a cold leg of mutton, on which he had made an ample
meal;[5] this he was in vain endeavoring to plant as of old, in the hope
of its remaining undiscovered till to-morrow's hunger returned, the
whole shank bone sticking up unmistakably. This was seen by our
excellent and Radamanthine grandmother, who pronounced sentence on the
instant; and next day, as William was leaving for the High School, did
he in the sour morning, through an easterly _haur_, behold him "whom he
saved from drowning," and whom, with better results than in the case of
Launce and Crab, he had taught, as if one should say, "thus would I
teach a dog," dangling by his own chain from his own lamp-post, one of
his hind feet just touching the pavement, and his body preternaturally
elongated.

[5] Toby was in the state of the shepherd boy whom George Webster
met in Glenshee, and asked, "My man, were you ever fou'?"
"Ay, aince" speaking slowly, as if remembering--"Ay, aince."