e massacres of the helpless which had of late
occurred, and wondering that they should have been committed by the
soldiery of so civilised a State, when, in a momentary pause of our
astonishment, our friend, who had been listening in silence, crumpling
the drooping soft ear of his dog, looked up and said, "The cause of
atrocities is generally the violence of Fear. Panic's at the back of
most crimes and follies."

Knowing that his philosophical statements were always the result of
concrete instance, and that he would not tell us what that instance was
if we asked him--such being his nature--we were careful not to agree.

He gave us a look out of those eyes of his, so like the eyes of a mild
eagle, and said abruptly: "What do you say to this, then?..... I was out
in the dog-days last year with this fellow of mine, looking for Osmunda,
and stayed some days in a village--never mind the name. Coming back one
evening from my tramp, I saw some boys stoning a mealy-coloured dog. I
went up and told the young devils to stop it. They only looked at me in
the injured way boys do, and one of them called out, 'It's mad, guv'nor!'
I told them to clear off, and they took to their heels. The dog followed
me. It was a young, leggy, mild looking mongrel, cross--I should
say--between a brown retriever and an Irish terrier. There was froth
about its lips, and its eyes were watery; it looked indeed as if it might
be in distemper. I was afraid of infection for this fellow of mine, and
whenever it came too close shooed it away, till at last it slunk off
altogether. Well, about nine o'clock, when I was settling down to write
by the open window of my sitting-room--still daylight, and very quiet and
warm--there began that most maddening sound, the barking of an unhappy
dog. I could do nothing with that continual 'Yap yap!' going on, and it
was too hot to shut the window; so I went out to see if I could stop it.
The men were all at the pub, and the women just finished with their
gossip; there was no sound at all but the continual barking of this dog,
somewhere away out in the fields. I travelled by ear across three
meadows, till I came on a hay-stack by a pool of water. There was the
dog sure enough--the same mealy-coloured mongrel, tied to a stake,
yapping, and making frantic little runs on a bit of rusty chain; whirling
round and round the stake, then standing quite still, and shivering. I
went up and spoke to it, but it backed into