king one day along a very lonely country lane, when
she suddenly observed an enormous Newfoundland dog following in her wake
a few yards behind. Being very fond of dogs, she called out to it in a
caressing voice and endeavoured to stroke it. To her disappointment,
however, it dodged aside, and repeated the manoeuvre every time she
tried to touch it. At length, losing patience, she desisted, and resumed
her walk, the dog still following her. In this fashion they went on,
until they came to a particularly dark part of the road, where the
branches of the trees almost met overhead, and there was a pool of
stagnant, slimy water, suggestive of great depth. On the one side the
hedge was high, but on the other there was a slight gap leading into a
thick spinney. Miss Lefanu never visited the spot alone after dusk, and
had been warned against it even in the daytime. As she drew near to it,
everything that she had ever heard about it flashed across her mind, and
she was more than once on the verge of turning back, when the sight of
the big, friendly-looking dog plodding behind, reassuring her, she
pressed on. Just as she came to the gap, there was a loud snapping of
twigs, and, to her horror, two tramps, with singularly sinister faces,
sprang out, and were about to strike her with their bludgeons, when the
dog, uttering a low, ominous growl, dashed at them. In an instant the
expression of murderous joy in their eyes died out, one of abject terror
took its place, and, dropping their weapons, they fled, as if the very
salvation of their souls depended on it. As may be imagined, Miss Lefanu
lost no time in getting home, and the first thing she did on arriving
there was to go into the kitchen and order the cook to prepare, at once,
a thoroughly good meal for her gallant rescuer--the Newfoundland dog,
which she had shut up securely in the back yard, with the laughing
remark, "There--you can't escape me now." Judge of her astonishment,
however, when, on her return, the dog had gone. As the walls of the back
yard were twelve feet high, and the doors had been shut all the
while--no one having passed through them--it was impossible for the
animal to have escaped, and the only interpretation that could possibly
be put on the matter was that the dog was superphysical--a conclusion
that was subsequently confirmed by the experiences of various other
people. As the result of exhaustive enquiries Miss Lefanu eventually
learned that many years bef