e seemed
to understand what was told him, and his expression would change
according as the words addressed to him, in the same tone of voice, were
flattering or injurious. He rolled his eyes, turned up his lips,
indulged in the wildest of nervous twitchings, or else grinned and
showed his white teeth, obtaining in this way most comical effects of
which he was perfectly conscious. He would often try to talk; laying his
paw on my knee, he would fix on me that earnest gaze of his and begin a
series of murmurs, sighs, and grunts, so varied in intonation that it
was hard not to recognise them as language. Sometimes in the course of a
conversation of this sort, Dash would break out into a bark or a yelp,
and then I would look sternly at him and say: "That is barking, not
speaking. Is it possible that you are an animal?" Dash, feeling
humiliated at the suggestion, would go on with his vocalisation, giving
it the most pathetic expression. We used to say then that Dash was
telling his tale of woe.

He was passionately fond of sugar, and at dessert, when coffee was
brought in, he would invariably beg each guest for a piece with such
insistence that he was always successful. He had ended by transforming
this merely benevolent gift into a regular tax which he collected with
unfailing regularity. He was but a little mongrel, yet with the frame of
a Thersites he had the soul of an Achilles. Infirm though he was, he
would attack, with madly heroic courage, dogs ten times his size and
was regularly and terribly thrashed by them. Like Don Quixote, the brave
Knight of La Mancha, he set out triumphantly and returned in most evil
plight. Alas! he was destined to fall a victim to his own courage. Some
months ago he was brought home with a broken back, the work of a
Newfoundland, an amiable brute, which the next day played the same trick
to a small greyhound.

Dash's death was the first of a series of catastrophes: the mistress of
the house where he met with the death-stroke was, a few days later,
burned alive in her bed, and the same fate overtook her husband who was
trying to save her. This was merely a fatal coincidence and by no means
an expiation, for these people were of the kindest and as fond of
animals as is a Brahmin, besides being wholly innocent of our poor
Dash's tragic fate.

It is true that I have still another dog, called Nero, but he is too
recent an inmate of our home to have a story of his own.

(NOTE.--Alas! Nero has