her woe. That this
concerned him, Jerry knew, for her grief tore sharply, albeit vaguely, at
his sensitive, passionate heart. What it presaged he knew not, save that
it was disaster and catastrophe connected with him. As he looked back at
her, rough-coated and grief-stricken, he could see Terrence hovering
solicitously near her. He, too, was rough-coated, as was Michael, and as
Patsy and Kathleen had been, Jerry being the one smooth-coated member of
the family.

Further, although Jerry did not know it and Tom Haggin did, Terrence was
a royal lover and a devoted spouse. Jerry, from his earliest
impressions, could remember the way Terrence had of running with Biddy,
miles and miles along the beaches or through the avenues of cocoanuts,
side by side with her, both with laughing mouths of sheer delight. As
these were the only dogs, besides his brothers and sisters and the
several eruptions of strange bush-dogs that Jerry knew, it did not enter
his head otherwise than that this was the way of dogs, male and female,
wedded and faithful. But Tom Haggin knew its unusualness. "Proper
affinities," he declared, and repeatedly declared, with warm voice and
moist eyes of appreciation. "A gentleman, that Terrence, and a
four-legged proper man. A man-dog, if there ever was one, four-square as
the legs on the four corners of him. And prepotent! My word! His
blood'd breed true for a thousand generations, and the cool head and the
kindly brave heart of him."

Terrence did not voice his sorrow, if sorrow he had; but his hovering
about Biddy tokened his anxiety for her. Michael, however, yielding to
the contagion, sat beside his mother and barked angrily out across the
increasing stretch of water as he would have barked at any danger that
crept and rustled in the jungle. This, too, sank to Jerry's heart,
adding weight to his sure intuition that dire fate, he knew not what, was
upon him.

For his six months of life, Jerry knew a great deal and knew very little.
He knew, without thinking about it, without knowing that he knew, why
Biddy, the wise as well as the brave, did not act upon all the message
that her heart voiced to him, and spring into the water and swim after
him. She had protected him like a lioness when the big _puarka_ (which,
in Jerry's vocabulary, along with grunts and squeals, was the combination
of sound, or word, for "pig") had tried to devour him where he was
cornered under the high-piled plantation hou