e, is the Scotch form of
"dog-oned." But Mr. Barrie uses the same form apparently for "dog-on it"
in the following passage:

"Ay, there was Ruth when she was na wanted, but Ezra, dagont, it looked
as if Ezra had jumped clean out o' the Bible!"

Strangely enough, this word as a verb is not to be found in Jamieson's
dictionary of the Scottish dialect, but Jamieson gives "dugon" as a
noun. It is given in the supplement to Jamieson, however, as "dogon,"
but still as a noun, with an ancient plural _dogonis_. It is explained
as "a term of contempt." The example cited by Jamieson is Hogg's "Winter
Tales," I. 292, and is as follows:

"What wad my father say if I were to marry a man that loot himsel' be
thrashed by Tommy Potts, a great supple wi' a back nae stiffer than a
willy brand? . . . When one comes to close quarters wi' him he's but a
dugon."

Halliwell and Wright give _dogon_ as a noun, and mark it Anglo-Norman,
but they apparently know it only from Jamieson and the supplement to
Jamieson, where _dogguin_ is cited from Cotgrave as meaning "a filthie
old curre," and _doguin_ from Roquefort, defined by "brutal, currish"
[hargneux]. A word with the same orthography, _doguin_, is still used in
French for puppy. It is of course a question whether the noun _dogon_
and its French antecedents are connected with the American verb
_dog-on_. It is easy to conceive that such an epithet as _dogon_ might
get itself mixed up with the word dog, and so become an imprecation. For
instance, a servant in the family of a friend of mine in Indiana,
wishing to resign her place before the return of some daughters of the
house whom she had never seen, announced that she was going to leave
"before them dog-on girls got home." Here the word might have been the
old epithet, or an abbreviated participle. _Dogged_ is apparently a
corruption of dog-on in the phrase "I'll be dogged." I prefer _dog-on_
to _dogone_, because in the dialect the sense of setting a dog on is
frequently present to the speaker, though far enough away from the
primitive sense of the word; perhaps.]

CHAPTER II.

A SPELL COMING.

There was a moment of utter stillness; but the magnetism of Ralph's eye
was too much for Bill Means. The request was so polite, the master's
look was so innocent and yet so determined. Bill often wondered
afterward that he had not "fit" rather than obeyed the request. But
somehow he put the dog out. He was partly surprised, partly invei