f him an' Burlman
Rennuls, too. Den we skins de bars, an' we kindles a fire; briles some
uf de bar meat on de coals, streeks uf lean an' lumps uf fat; an' den we
sets down an' shakes hans--me an' Grumbo--ober de sweetest dinner eber
et in ol' Kaintuck. An' now you say Grumbo got no human feelin's in him.
Git out!"

Should any of the white hunters choose to hint a doubt as to the truth
of this story, Big Black Burl had but to point to the bear-skin bed in
his cabin, on which he slept; to the bear-skin rug under the shed at his
door, where Grumbo slept by day and watched by night; to his bear-skin
leggins, his bear-skin hunting-shirt, and bear-skin war-cap--and the
thing was settled and established beyond doubt or controversy.

Concerning these and the like points Grumbo himself maintained a grim
and dignified reserve, never speaking of them to common dogs, nor even
to his master, excepting when the subject was forced upon him; though
that was certainly frequent enough for wholesome airing. Grand, gloomy,
and peculiar, he sat upon his bear-skin, a maneless lion, wrapped in the
solitude of his own originality. Aloof from the vulgar pack, he lived
and moved and had his being but in the atmosphere of the Fighting
Nigger, in whose society only could he hope to find a little congenial
companionship, and to whom only he unbosomed the workings of his mighty
heart.

Methinks I see him now, with that air of consequence and mystery hanging
about him, like the fog from his own shaggy hide after a winter wetting;
with those short ears perpetually cocked, as if he felt that his destiny
was cast in an age and a land where to hunt, kill, and utterly root out
bears, panthers, wolves, and Indians from the top of the earth was the
sole end and aim of existence. I see him with that great brush of a tail
curled tightly--nay, inflexibly--over his right leg, as if his was a
will and a spirit not to be subdued or shaken by any power less than
that irresistible and inexorable fate which has declared, and without
repeal, that "every dog shall have his day." All this methinks I see,
and as vividly too as if I had the living Grumbo before my bodily eyes;
for, in the course of his long and eventful career, it grew to be as
characteristic of our canine hero as, twenty years later, became a
little cocked hat, a gray great-coat, military boots, and a certain
attitude, of that famous Corsican, Napoleon the First--commonly,
vulgarly, bogusly called th