gers, and on-lookers, and other dogs, were
shouting and barking and trying to separate the combatants. At the end
of a second ten minutes Mop--minus a piece of the other ear--was back in
his ambulance: conquered, but happy. He never saw the butcher's dog or
Onteora again.

To go back a little. Mop was the first person who was told of his
master's engagement, and he was the first to greet the wife when she
came home, a bride, to his own house. He had been made to understand,
from the beginning, that she did not care for dogs--in general. And he
set himself out to please, and to overcome the unspoken antagonism. He
had a delicate part to play, and he played it with a delicacy and a tact
which rarely have been equalled. He did not assert himself; he kept
himself in the background; he said little; his approaches at first were
slight and almost imperceptible, but he was always ready to do, or to
help, in an unaggressive way. He followed her about the house, up-stairs
and down-stairs, and he looked and waited. Then he began to sit on the
train of her gown; to stand as close to her as was fit and proper; once
in a while to jump upon the sofa beside her, or into the easy-chair
behind her, winking at his master, from time to time, in his quiet way.

And at last he was successful. One dreary winter, when he suffered
terribly from inflammatory rheumatism, he found his mistress making a
bed for him by the kitchen fire, getting up in the middle of the night
to go down to look after him, when he uttered, in pain, the cries he
could not help. And when a bottle of very rare old brandy, kept for some
extraordinary occasion of festivity, was missing, the master was
informed that it had been used in rubbing Mop!

Mop's early personal history was never known. Told once that he was the
purest Dandie in America, and asked his pedigree, his master was moved
to look into the matter of his family tree. It seems that a certain
sea-captain was commissioned to bring back to this country the best
Dandie to be had in all Scotland. He sent his quartermaster to find him,
and the quartermaster found Mop under a private carriage, in Argyle
Street, Glasgow, and brought him on board. That is Mop's pedigree.

Mop died of old age and of a complication of diseases, in the spring of
1892. He lost his hair, he lost his teeth, he lost everything but his
indomitable spirit; and when almost on the brink of the grave, he stood
in the back-yard--literally, on th