scenery. I was but vaguely
aware that not far off loomed a gateway, adorned with a figure of the
Virgin. A curving avenue led to shadowy, neglected lawns, dimly
suggesting some faded romance of history.

Presently, from between the open gates came a man in khaki, accompanied
by a tall, slim, and graceful dog. It was he, not the man, that caught
my eye and for an instant snatched my thought from Little Boy Jim
rescuing a rocking-horse at the risk of his life. He was a police dog
with the dignity of a prince and the lightness of a plume.

"Lovely creature!" I said to myself, as he and the khaki man swung
toward us down the road. And I wished that Brian could see him, for the
dog Brian loved and lost at the Front was a Belgian police dog.

Perhaps, Padre, Brian wrote you about his wonderful pet, that he thought
worthy to name after the dog-star Sirius. I've forgotten to ask if he
did write; but I seldom had a letter from him from the trenches that
didn't mention Sirius. Everyone seemed to adore the dog, which developed
into a regimental mascot. What his early history was can never be known:
but Brian rescued him from a burning chateau in Belgium, just as Jim
rescued the rocking-horse of Mother Beckett's nursery story, though with
rather more risk! It was a chateau where some hidden tragedy must have
been enacted, because the Germans took possession of it with the family
still there--such of the family as wasn't fighting: two young married
women, sisters, wives of brothers. But when the Germans ran before the
British, and fired the chateau as they went, not a creature living or
dead was left in the house--except the dog--and nothing has ever been
heard of the sisters.

The fire was raging so fiercely when Brian's regiment arrived that no
one would have ventured into the house if a dog hadn't been heard to
howl. You know how Brian loves dogs. When he found that the sound came
from a certain room on the ground floor, he determined to get in
somehow. Masses of ivy cloaked that side of the chateau. It was
beginning to crackle with fire that flamed out from other windows, but
Brian climbed the thick, rope-like stems, hundreds of years old, and
smashed his way through the window. The room was filling with smoke. The
dog's voice was choked. Brian's eyes streamed, but he wouldn't give up.
Only by crawling along the floor under the smoke curtain could he get at
the dog. Somebody had meant to murder the animal, for he had been
c