d
reward, ever offered to him. But Patrasche was beyond the reach of any
torture or of any curses. Patrasche lay, dead to all appearances,
down in the white powder of the summer dust. After a while, finding
it useless to assail his ribs with punishment and his ears with
maledictions, the Brabantois--deeming life gone in him, or going, so
nearly that his carcass was forever useless, unless, indeed, some one
should strip it of the skin for gloves--cursed him fiercely in farewell,
struck off the leathern bands of the harness, kicked his body aside into
the grass, and, groaning and muttering in savage wrath, pushed the cart
lazily along the road uphill, and left the dying dog for the ants to
sting and for the crows to pick.

It was the last day before kermess away at Louvain, and the Brabantois
was in haste to reach the fair and get a good place for his truck of
brass wares. He was in fierce wrath, because Patrasche had been a strong
and much-enduring animal, and because he himself had now the hard task
of pushing his _charette_ all the way to Louvain. But to stay to look
after Patrasche never entered his thoughts; the beast was dying and
useless, and he would steal, to replace him, the first large dog that he
found wandering alone out of sight of its master. Patrasche had cost him
nothing, or next to nothing, and for two long, cruel years he had made
him toil ceaselessly in his service from sunrise to sunset, through
summer and winter, in fair weather and foul.

He had got a fair use and a good profit out of Patrasche; being human,
he was wise, and left the dog to draw his last breath alone in the
ditch, and have his bloodshot eyes plucked out as they might be by the
birds, whilst he himself went on his way to beg and to steal, to eat and
to drink, to dance and to sing, in the mirth at Louvain. A dying dog, a
dog of the cart--why should he waste hours over its agonies at peril of
losing a handful of copper coins, at peril of a shout of laughter?

Patrasche lay there, flung in the grass-green ditch. It was a busy road
that day, and hundreds of people, on foot and on mules, in waggons or
in carts, went by, tramping quickly and joyously on to Louvain. Some saw
him; most did not even look; all passed on. A dead dog more or less--it
was nothing in Brabant; it would be nothing anywhere in the world.

After a time, among the holiday-makers, there came a little old man who
was bent and lame, and very feeble. He was in no guise