, and find some new abode.'

Little persuasion was required to reconcile Barnaby to anything that
promised change. In another minute, he was wild with delight; in
another, full of grief at the prospect of parting with his friends the
dogs; in another, wild again; then he was fearful of what she had said
to prevent his wandering abroad that night, and full of terrors and
strange questions. His light-heartedness in the end surmounted all his
other feelings, and lying down in his clothes to the end that he might
be ready on the morrow, he soon fell fast asleep before the poor turf
fire.

His mother did not close her eyes, but sat beside him, watching. Every
breath of wind sounded in her ears like that dreaded footstep at the
door, or like that hand upon the latch, and made the calm summer night,
a night of horror. At length the welcome day appeared. When she had made
the little preparations which were needful for their journey, and had
prayed upon her knees with many tears, she roused Barnaby, who jumped up
gaily at her summons.

His clothes were few enough, and to carry Grip was a labour of love. As
the sun shed his earliest beams upon the earth, they closed the door of
their deserted home, and turned away. The sky was blue and bright.
The air was fresh and filled with a thousand perfumes. Barnaby looked
upward, and laughed with all his heart.

But it was a day he usually devoted to a long ramble, and one of the
dogs--the ugliest of them all--came bounding up, and jumping round him
in the fulness of his joy. He had to bid him go back in a surly tone,
and his heart smote him while he did so. The dog retreated; turned
with a half-incredulous, half-imploring look; came a little back; and
stopped.

It was the last appeal of an old companion and a faithful friend--cast
off. Barnaby could bear no more, and as he shook his head and waved his
playmate home, he burst into tears.

'Oh mother, mother, how mournful he will be when he scratches at the
door, and finds it always shut!'

There was such a sense of home in the thought, that though her own eyes
overflowed she would not have obliterated the recollection of it, either
from her own mind or from his, for the wealth of the whole wide world.

Chapter 47

In the exhaustless catalogue of Heaven's mercies to mankind, the power
we have of finding some germs of comfort in the hardest trials must ever
occupy the foremost place; not only because it supports and upholds