y sleep was broken by frightful dreams. I was
perpetually trying to bury a great, gaunt poodle, which would persist
in rising up through the damp mould as fast as I covered him up. . . .
Lilian and I were engaged, and we were in church together on Sunday, and
the poodle, resisting all attempts to eject him, forbade our banns with
sepulchral barks. . . . It was our wedding-day, and at the critical
moment the poodle leaped between us and swallowed the ring. . . . Or we
were at the wedding-breakfast, and Bingo, a grisly black skeleton with
flaming eyes, sat on the cake and would not allow Lilian to cut it. Even
the rose-tree fancy was reproduced in a distorted form--the tree grew,
and every blossom contained a miniature Bingo, which barked; and as I
woke I was desperately trying to persuade the colonel that they were
ordinary dog-roses.

I went up to the office next day with my gloomy secret gnawing my bosom,
and, whatever I did, the spectre of the murdered poodle rose before me.
For two days after that I dared not go near the Curries, until at last
one evening after dinner I forced myself to call, feeling that it was
really not safe to keep away any longer.

My conscience smote me as I went in. I put on an unconscious, easy
manner, which was such a dismal failure that it was lucky for me that
they were too much engrossed to notice it.

I never before saw a family so stricken down by a domestic misfortune
as the group I found in the drawing-room, making a dejected pretence
of reading or working. We talked at first--and hollow talk it was--on
indifferent subjects, till I could bear it no longer, and plunged boldly
into danger.

"I don't see the dog," I began, "I suppose you--you found him all right
the other evening, colonel?" I wondered, as I spoke, whether they would
not notice the break in my voice, but they did not.

"Why, the fact is," said the colonel, heavily, gnawing his gray
moustache, "we've not heard anything of him since; he's--he's run off!"

"Gone, Mr. Weatherhead; gone without a word!" said Mrs. Currie,
plaintively, as if she thought the dog might at least have left an
address.

"I wouldn't have believed it of him," said the colonel; "it has
completely knocked me over. Haven't been so cut up for years--the
ungrateful rascal!"

"O uncle!" pleaded Lilian, "don't talk like that; perhaps Bingo couldn't
help it--perhaps some one has s-s-shot him!"

"Shot!" cried the colonel, angrily. "By heaven! if I th