Job Nutt took a deep draw at his pipe, and turned and looked down at
Murphy, now just over three years old.

"I likes that dog; well, I've allus liked un. Train un to sheep? I
believe as I could, were I to be so minded: I do believe as I could."

The two had to part then. It was dusk, and looked like wet; moreover,
some wether sheep in the fold, far down in the valley, were "howling" for
rain: they were true weather-prophets always.

So he might be trained to sheep. Job Nutt's words kept repeating
themselves in the mind--"I believe as I could; I do believe as I could."
What the shepherd had said was a testimony to this dog's marvellous
intelligence; but then every one had come to testify to that and to
remark upon it. He was of course nervous and shy, and no doubt would
always be so. Perhaps it was these characteristics that gave him the
further one of extraordinary gentleness, that won all hearts. Many had
already said, with a laugh, that he was "born good"; but latterly some
had come to add that he was incapable of harm or ill.

And yet with these characteristics, amounting as they did to a certain
softness, there was never any question of his pluck and spirit. Nor was
there any limit to it. He had the spirit and "go" of any dozen of his
countrymen: what more could possibly be said? At the same time he had the
gentleness of a child. He recalled to mind one of those characters that
some of us have met, and in strange situations--situations and hours when
men's spirits were on fire, and when the air was filled with sounds that
once to hear is never to forget. One such is recalled by memory now--a
vision of a lithe and active figure that had come its longest marches,
and borne the many hardships of the many nights and days, though looking
frail as a girl in her teens, and with manner always gentle as a child.
For one like that to be amidst such doings as these seemed incongruous.
Yet had the estimate proved in the end quite false. Breeding and
pluck--nervous energy--had carried through, when others had gone down.
And the pluck and the breeding showed itself still, when the blood
dripped, and ebbed away, and the face was white as a stone.

Nor is such a parallel as far fetched as might at first appear. Given the
two, the dog and the man, this dog was to show before the end
characteristics equally striking and of scarcely less charm. To bear pain
is not easy. There is no longer doubt that men feel pain in varying
degre