it in the water by
the hay-stack where I found it. I had some conversation with that
farmer. 'That's right,' he said, 'but who was to know? I couldn't have
my sheep worried. The brute had blood on his muzzle. These curs do a
lot of harm when they've once been blooded. You can't run risks."' Our
friend cut viciously at a dandelion with his stick. "Run risks!" he
broke out suddenly: "That was it from beginning to end of that poor
beast's sufferings, fear! From that fellow on the bicycle, afraid of the
worry and expense, as soon as it showed signs of distemper, to myself and
the man with the pitch fork--not one of us, I daresay, would have gone
out of our way to do it--a harm. But we felt fear, and so by the law of
self-preservation, or what ever you like--it all began, till there the
poor thing was, with a battered head and a hole in its neck, ravenous
with hunger, and too distraught even to lap my bread and milk. Yes, and
there's something uncanny about a suffering animal--we sat watching it,
and again we were afraid, looking at its eyes and the way it bit the air.
Fear! It's the black godmother of all damnable things!"

Our friend bent down, crumpling and crumpling at his dog's ears. We,
too, gazed at the ground, thinking of, that poor lost puppy, and the
horrible inevitability of all that happens, seeing men are what they are;
thinking of all the foul doings in the world, whose black godmother is
Fear.

"And what became of the poor dog?" one of us asked at last.

"When," said our friend slowly, "I'd had my fill of watching, I covered
it with a rug, took this fellow away with me, and went to bed. There was
nothing else to do. At dawn I was awakened by three dreadful cries--not
like a dog's at all. I hurried down. There was the poor beast--wriggled
out from under the rug-stretched on its side, dead. This fellow of mine
had followed me in, and he went and sat down by the body. When I spoke
to him he just looked round, and wagged his tail along the ground, but
would not come away; and there he sat till it was buried, very
interested, but not sorry at all."

Our friend was silent, looking angrily at something in the distance.

And we, too, were silent, seeing in spirit that vigil of early morning:
The thin, lifeless, sandy-coloured body, stretched on those red mats; and
this black creature--now lying at our feet--propped on its haunches like
the dog in "The Death of Procris," patient, curious, ungriev