t moment she
gave a savage bark, deep, threatening, and sonorous, and sprang to
her feet. She was not quite sure what ailed her, but she was
conscious of an access of great anger, of passionate hostility.
After soothing her, the Master carefully locked the door of the
den, and then went round through the gateway leading to the front
of the house, and took delivery of a large hamper from the station
carrier. Then the Mistress of the Kennels came and sat in the
Master's den for perhaps half an hour, while he was busy down at
the coach-house with the hamper, and a lantern, and a dish of dog's
dinner of a milky, sloppy sort.

That was a strange, eventful night in the den. All the country
round was silent as the grave, and the air of the June night was
soft and sweet as the petals of wild roses. The Mistress of the
Kennels was persuaded into going early to bed, but the Master sat
behind his big table, writing beneath a carefully shaded lamp, and
rising quietly every now and again, to peer over the top of the
high table in the direction of the big bed in the shadow, where
Tara lay. Many things happened in the meantime, but it was just
after the clock in the tower of the village church had struck the
hour of one, that the Master was thrilled by a cry from his beloved
Tara; the fifth he had heard during the past three and a half
hours.

He leaned forward on his elbows, waiting and listening. Tara had
never heard of duty or self-control. She was a pure child of
Nature. But the moment of that cry of hers was the only moment she
allowed for self-consideration, or the play of her own
inclinations. In the next moment she was busying herself, with the
most exquisite delicacy and precision, over the care of her latest
offspring; the last late-comer in her new family of five. In that
next instant, too, a weak, bleating little cry, a voice that was
not at all like Tara's, smote pleasantly upon the ears of the
Master, where he waited, peering watchfully from beside the deeply
shaded lamp on his table.

It was then, just after the Master heard that little bleating cry
which told of new life in the world, that Tara, with infinite care
and precaution, lowered her great bulk upon the bed in a coil--she
had been standing--the centre of which was occupied by four glossy
Irish Wolfhound puppies, who had arrived respectively at ten,
eleven, twelve, and half-past twelve that night. The four, then
blindly grovelling over the carpeted bed, we