ady to break his heart. Father said he was sorry,
but told us our tears would not bring him back, and advised us to bear
the loss of him with more fortitude, took William on his lap, and read a
story to divert him. We got tolerably cheerful and went down to tea; but
as soon as my brother took up his bread and butter, the thoughts of
Hector always jumping up to him for a bit, and how he would bark and
snap in play at his fingers, quite overcame his firmness, and he could
not touch a morsel. Well, to make short of the story, the next morning
John came in and told father that Squire Sutton's gamekeeper, not
knowing to whom he belonged, had shot him for running after the deer.
"Why now," said I, "if he had but stayed away from the park till Jemima
had brought him a collar he would not have been killed. Poor Hector! I
shall hate Ben Hunt as long as I live for it." "Fie, Charles," said my
father. "Hector is dead, sir," said I; and I did not then stay to hear
any further. But since that we have talked a great deal about love and
forgiveness; and I find I must love Ben Hunt, even though I now see poor
Hector's tomb in the garden. For John went to fetch him, and we buried
him under the lilac-tree, on the right hand side, just by the large
sun-flower. And we cried a great deal, and made a card tomb-stone over
his grave; and father gave us an old hatband and we cut it into pieces
and we went as mourners. His coffin was carried by Tom Wood, the
carpenter's son, whose father was so kind as to make it for us, while
James Stavely (the clerk's nephew), my brother, and I, followed as chief
mourners, and old nurse and Peggy put on their black hoods which they
had when Jane Thompson died, and went with us, and we had the kitchen
table-cloth for a pall, with the old black wrapper put over it which
used to cover the parrot's cage; but we did not read anything, for that
would not have been right, as you know. After all, he was but a dog.
Father, however, to please us, wrote the following epitaph, which I very
carefully transcribed and affixed over his grave:

'"Here Hector lies, more bless'd by far
Than he who drove the victor's car;
Who once Patroclus did subdue,
And suffer'd for the conquest too.
Like him, o'ercome by cruel fate,
Stern fortune's unrelenting hate;
An equal doom severe he found,
And Hunt inflicts the deadly wound.
Less cruel than Pelides, he
His manes were pursuits to be;
And s