s
only just in time to prevent the catastrophe!

"The 'nasty sneak,' as my nephew Harry called her when he heard the
story, was almost able before I could stop her to fulfil her wicked
intentions. Happily, his lordship was unconscious of her inhospitable
purpose, and when I caught her up only said: 'Poor little dog! don't
trouble, Mrs. Hamilton, I am not at all nervous about dogs.'

[Illustration: AT THE SHOW.]

"Another time I remember taking Snap to a meeting got up to further the
interests of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

"All went well till a clergyman rose and addressed the meeting, when
Snap jumped up also, barking ferociously, and tried to bite him. She was
carried out struggling and yelping with rage.

"'Yon tyke can't do with a parson,' is the dictum of the villagers when
they see her go by with me. Snap is very faithful, very crotchety,
distrusting nearly everybody, greeting every fresh acquaintance with
marked suspicion, and going through life with a most exalted and
ridiculous notion of her own importance, and also of that of her master
and mistress."

* * * * *

"Snap's dislike to the clergy reminds me," said Colonel Hamilton, "of a
story I heard the other day from my friend Gordon, the artist: You must
know that last year the county gave old Vaughan of Marshford Grange, for
his services as M.F.H., a testimonial. 'Old V.,' as he is known, has
the hereditary temper of all the Vaughans--in fact, might vie with 'Our
Davey' of Indian fame. Gordon, as you know, was selected by the Hunt
Committee to paint the picture, and he went to stay at the Grange.

"The day after his arrival he went down to breakfast, but found nobody
there but the old squire seated at his table, and by him a favourite
large lean white bull terrier.

"'Bob,' he declared, looked at him out of the corner of his evil eye,
and therefore it was with some trepidation that he approached the table.

"'Swear, man, swear, or say something that he'll take for swearing,'
exclaimed his host. 'If Bob takes you for a parson he'll bite you.' The
explanation of this supposed hostility on Bob's part to the clergy
consisted in the known and open warfare that existed between Vaughan and
his parson.

"Some forty years before, the Squire had given his best living to his
best college friend, and ever since there had been internecine war as a
consequence.

"Poor Gordon was that curious anomaly,