, who happened to be near, noticed that he had a big
splinter in his foreleg. "She gave him water," says Dr. Brown, "and by
her woman's wit got his lame paw under a door, so that he couldn't
suddenly get at her; then with a quick firm hand she plucked out the
splinter, and put in an ample meal. She went in some time after, taking
no notice of him, and he came limping up, and laid his great jaws in her
lap." From that moment they became friends. A little later James was in
a lonely part of the woods when a robber sprang at him and demanded his
money. "Weel a weel, let me get it," said James, and stepping back he
whispered to Rab, "Speak till him, my man." Rab had the robber down in
an instant.

In "Rab and his Friends" the great mastiff shows just the qualities that
we should expect from this account of his earlier career. But his
sympathy and affection for Ailie, shown so tenderly in the hospital
scenes, find an added pathos in the thought that he was serving his
first and best friend, one who had healed his hurt as he would have
healed hers if he could.]

Four-and-thirty years ago, Bob Ainslie and I were coming up Infirmary
Street from the Edinburgh High School, our heads together, and our arms
intertwisted, as only lovers and boys know how, or why.

When we got to the top of the street, and turned north, we espied a
crowd at the Tron Church. "A dog-fight!" shouted Bob, and was off; and
so was I, both of us all but praying that it might not be over before we
got up! And is not this boy-nature? and human nature too? and don't we
all wish a house on fire not to be out before we see it? Dogs like
fighting; old Isaac says they "delight" in it, and for the best of all
reasons; and boys are not cruel because they like to see the fight. They
see three of the great cardinal virtues of dog or man--courage,
endurance, and skill--in intense action. This is very different from a
love of making dogs fight, and enjoying, and aggravating, and making
gain by their pluck. A boy,--be he ever so fond himself of fighting,--if
he be a good boy, hates and despises all this, but he would have run off
with Bob and me fast enough: it is a natural, and a not wicked interest,
that all boys and men have in witnessing intense energy in action.

Does any curious and finely-ignorant woman wish to know how Bob's eye at
a glance announced a dog-fight to his brain? He did not, he could not
see the dogs fighting; it was a flash of an inference, a