n't to sit alone in a room
with him.'

'Why? He's as meek as Moses,' I said.

'He fair gives me the creeps. P'r'aps he'll go out in fits.'

But Harvey, as I wrote his mistress from time to time, throve, and when
he grew better, would play by himself grisly games of spying, walking
up, hailing, and chasing another dog. From these he would break off of a
sudden and return to his normal stiff gait, with the air of one who had
forgotten some matter of life and death, which could be reached only by
staring at me. I left him one evening posturing with the unseen on the
lawn, and went inside to finish some letters for the post. I must have
been at work nearly an hour, for I was going to turn on the lights,
when I felt there was somebody in the room whom, the short hairs at the
back of my neck warned me, I was not in the least anxious to face. There
was a mirror on the wall. As I lifted my eyes to it I saw the dog Harvey
reflected near the shadow by the closed door. He had reared himself
full-length on his hind legs, his head a little one side to clear a sofa
between us, and he was looking at me. The face, with its knitted brows
and drawn lips, was the face of a dog, but the look, for the fraction of
time that I caught it, was human--wholly and horribly human. When the
blood in my body went forward again he had dropped to the floor, and was
merely studying me in his usual one-eyed fashion. Next day I returned
him to Miss Sichliffe. I would not have kept him another day for the
wealth of Asia, or even Ella Godfrey's approval.

Miss Sichliffe's house I discovered to be a mid-Victorian mansion of
peculiar villainy even for its period, surrounded by gardens of
conflicting colours, all dazzling with glass and fresh paint on
ironwork. Striped blinds, for it was a blazing autumn morning, covered
most of the windows, and a voice sang to the piano an almost forgotten
song of Jean Ingelow's--

Methought that the stars were blinking bright,
And the old brig's sails unfurled--

Down came the loud pedal, and the unrestrained cry swelled out across a
bed of tritomas consuming in their own fires--

When I said I will sail to my love this night
On the other side of the world.

I have no music, but the voice drew. I waited till the end:

Oh, maid most dear, I am not here
I have no place apart--
No dwelling more on sea or shore,
But only in thy heart.

It seemed to me a poor life that