he eastward.

"So it be," returns the other--"Him and his ... Oh ah! but I was a-most
forgettin'. I allus liked that dog"; and Job Nutt waved his hand.

[Illustration: "Alas!" by Him.]

All knew it. Contrary to what is generally supposed, certain items of
news circulate rapidly among farm-folk.

XIII

It was only a dog.

Perhaps so.

The fact does not forbid the familiar question that rises always at
certain hours to the mind of man, and will continue to do so till time
shall cease, whether his friend take human or only canine form in life:

"But his spirit--where does his spirit rest?
It was God that made him--God knows best."

In truth, there is no answer to this question--"Whither?" And thus it is
that we are compelled to leave it according to our habit when we are at
fault, and much as the poet leaves it here. In the case of the man, we
think we understand. In that of the dog, our difficulty appears to defy
solution: it is no question of argument, assertions are idle, dogma has
no place. On the one hand we have those principles that come to man's
aid, but of which it would be unbecoming now to speak. The vast majority
of Christian men are enabled to ride out the storms of life without
confidence wholly giving way, and with the first of sheet-anchors fixed
in what is felt to be the best of holding ground. When, however, we turn
to the possible future status of the dog, there is no sheet-anchor, and
the holding ground is indifferent. Yet, in considering the case of the
man and the dog, we are not left without a certain measure of support
equally applicable to both. The spirit definable as the immediate
apprehension of the mind without reasoning--the spirit of intuition--aids
us on either hand. "We are endued," as Bishop Butler tells us, "with
capacities of perception"; and these enable us to accept much that lies
outside the actual region of proof, because our inner consciousness tells
us that we are not altogether on a false track, and that truths, if half
hidden, yet, of a certainty, exist in the direction in which we are
making earnest search.

We necessarily suffer here, as always, from the tendency that makes the
wish the father to the thought; or, in other words, we not infrequently
shovel the unpalatable overboard, that we may lighten the ship, and ride
out this or that squall without quite so much strain upon t