ad not been as generous in
protecting his master against the weather. Although of a subarctic
breed, fitted to live shelterless if need be, and to earn his living by
native wit, Bobby had the beauty, the grace, and the charming manners of
a lady's pet. In a litter of prick-eared, wire-haired puppies Bobby was
a "sport."

It is said that some of the ships of the Spanish Armada, with French
poodles in the officers' cabins, were blown far north and west, and
broken up on the icy coasts of The Hebrides and Skye. Some such crossing
of his far-away ancestry, it would seem, had given a greater length
and a crisp wave to Bobby's outer coat, dropped and silkily fringed his
ears, and powdered his useful, slate-gray color with silver frost. But
he had the hardiness and intelligence of the sturdier breed, and the
instinct of devotion to the working master. So he had turned from a
soft-hearted bit lassie of a mistress, and the cozy chimney corner of
the farm-house kitchen, and linked his fortunes with this forlorn old
laborer.

A grizzled, gnarled little man was Auld Jock, of tough fiber, but
worn out at last by fifty winters as a shepherd on the bleak hills
of Midlothian and Fife, and a dozen more in the low stables and
storm-buffeted garrets of Edinburgh. He had come into the world unnoted
in a shepherd's lonely cot. With little wit of mind or skill of hand he
had been a common tool, used by this master and that for the roughest
tasks, when needed, put aside, passed on, and dropped out of mind.
Nothing ever belonged to the man but his scant earnings. Wifeless,
cotless, bairnless, he had slept, since early boyhood, under strange
roofs, eaten the bread of the hireling, and sat dumb at other men's
firesides. If he had another name it had been forgotten. In youth he was
Jock; in age, Auld Jock.

In his sixty-third summer there was a belated blooming in Auld Jock's
soul. Out of some miraculous caprice Bobby lavished on him a riotous
affection. Then up out of the man's subconscious memory came words
learned from the lips of a long-forgotten mother. They were words not
meant for little dogs at all, but for sweetheart, wife and bairn. Auld
Jock used them cautiously, fearing to be overheard, for the matter was
a subject of wonder and rough jest at the farm. He used them when Bobby
followed him at the plow-tail or scampered over the heather with him
behind the flocks. He used them on the market-day journeyings, and on
summer nights, whe