which seize the sheep by the throat, bite them, and
suck the blood, and then leave them to perish. In a single night one dog
has been known to "worry" forty sheep. No wonder such animals are a
terror to farmers. Besides, if a dog once takes to "worrying" sheep, he
never leaves off the habit.

One evening as the farmer sat by his fire smoking and conversing with a
neighbor, Keeper as usual basking by the fire, and waiting the expected
call of his dog companion, the conversation turned on the great number
of sheep that had been lately "worried" and destroyed, and the loss that
would ensue to the farmers.

"Well," said the neighbor, "we caught one on 'em, with his mouth and
coat bloody, and we hanged him up on the spot. They do say thy dog
Keeper was with un."

"It is too true, he was there," replied the farmer; then looking at the
apparently sleeping dog, and shaking his head at him, he said, "Thee
knows thee has been with un. Thy turn will come next. We'll hang thee up
to-morrow."

Keeper lay still, pretending sleep, but with his ears open. He had heard
his death-warrant, and was determined that it should not be carried into
execution if he could prevent it. When the outer door was opened, he
slunk off quietly, and was never seen again.

What became of him was never known.

Who will say after this that dogs do not understand the conversation of
men, especially when it relates to "worrying" sheep, and the punishment
it entails on the guilty dogs?

[Illustration: Music: A Fox went out in a hungry plight.]

* * * * *

=The Lesson of the Bath.=--One of the most valuable discoveries made by
Archimedes, the famous scholar of Syracuse, in Sicily, relates to the
weight of bodies immersed in water. Hiero, King of Syracuse, had given a
lump of gold to be made into a crown, and when it came back he suspected
that the workmen had kept back some of the gold, and had made up the
weight by adding more than the right quantity of silver; but he had no
means of proving this, because they had made it weigh as much as the
gold which had been sent. Archimedes, puzzling over this problem, went
to his bath. As he stepped in he saw the water, which his body
displaced, rise to a higher level in the bath, and to the astonishment
of his servants he sprang out of the water, and ran home through the
streets of Syracuse almost naked, crying, "_Eureka! Eureka!_" ("I have
found it! I have found it!").