, so that they might bring the
bird again to the surface and thus afford him sport. The moorhen,
meanwhile, invariably escaped; yet Bob failed to understand that he was
the only diver in the pack.

His antics were comical in the extreme if a vole eluded him by diving to
the lower entrance of its burrow beneath the surface of a backwater.
Having missed his opportunity, but unable to comprehend how he had
missed it, the terrier left the water, stood on the roots of a tree over
the entrance to the vole's burrow, and furiously barked instructions to
his companions swimming in the pool. Disgusted at last by their
inattention to his orders, he plunged headlong into the stream and
vanished for a few moments; then he reappeared, proud of his superior
bravery, sneezing and coughing, and with a mouthful of stones and soil
torn from the bank in his desperate efforts to force his way to the spot
whither the object of the chase had gone from view.

Bob long survived the big dog Joker, and in his old days loved as well
as ever the excitement of a hunt. His originality was preserved to the
end; stiffened by rheumatism and almost choked by asthma, he always,
when in search of rabbits, ran up-hill and walked down-hill, thus losing
both energy and breath that might with advantage have been kept in
reserve.

With the passing of the years, many changes have occurred to sunder the
friendships formed during those boylike expeditions. I smile when I
think how impossible it would be, now that the veneer of town life has
been thinly spread over the life of our village, for the man of law to
go wading, with tucked-up trousers, after rats; how impossible, also,
for him to frequent with me the bathing pool, as was sometimes his wont,
and swim idly hither and thither, while the moon peered between the
trees and the vague witchery of the summer night filled his spirit and
my own. My youthful feelings, long preserved, have been irrevocably
lost; and yet, if only for memory's sake, I would willingly hunt with
him again, and, when night had fallen, swim with him once more in the
dim, mysterious pool below the garden. But the old hunting party could
never be complete. Death makes gaps that Time fails to fill.

Those evenings were delightful, not only because of unrestrained mirth
and innocent sport, but also because we took a keen interest in our
surroundings, seeing the world of small things by the river-bank with
eyes such as belonged to anglers a