ading
Tara, and smiling and nodding to him. Just then the lady leaned
forward and unsnapped Tara's chain. In an instant, the great hound
bounded forward to greet her well-loved friend, the Master,
furiously nuzzling his hands, and finally standing erect to reach
his face, a paw on either shoulder, her soft eyes glistening,
brimming over with canine love and delight. The man's eyes were not
altogether dry, either, as he muttered and growled affectionate
nonsense in Tara's silky ears. His heart swelled as he felt the
tremulous excitement in the great hound's limbs.

"You see, dear old Tara cannot be deceived; she knows her real
friends," said the lady from Yorkshire, as she shook hands with the
Master. "Please take her chain, and never give any one else the
right to handle it. You will allow me this pleasure, I am sure, if
only because of the love I bear Tara's son." (One of the whelps
this lady had bought from him was a son of Tara.) "I know Mrs.
Forsyth quite well--a whimsical, fanciful little person, who takes
up a new fad every month, and is apt to change her pets as often as
her gloves. I could not possibly let a stranger buy the beautiful
mother of my Dhulert, and it gives me so much real pleasure to be
the means of bringing her to your hands again."

This good woman bowed her silvery head when the Master took her
hand in his, because she had caught a glimpse of what glistened in
his eyes, as he tried to give words to the gratitude that filled a
heart already swelled by another emotion inspired by Tara.

They walked all the way home, the Master and Tara; and twice they
made considerable detours (despite the distance still before them),
for the sake of spending a few minutes in open spaces, where there
was grass--smutty and soiled it is true, but grass--and comparative
solitude. In these places they exchanged remarks, and Tara placed a
little London mud on each of the Master's shoulders, and he made
curious noises in his throat, such as Tara had been wont to
associate with early morning scampers in an upland orchard, after
rabbits.

At last they came to the "mansions," and made great show of
creeping along close to the railing, and dodging quickly in at the
entrance to avoid being overlooked from the windows above. As a
matter of fact tenants of the flats in these buildings were not
supposed to keep dogs at all, while the idea of an Irish Wolfhound,
thirty-two inches high the shoulder!---- But it was little the