A SETTER DOG
WHO, BLIND FROM AN EARLY AGE,
YET DID HIS WORK IN THE WORLD
FAITHFULLY AND CHEERFULLY
THE WORLD IS BETTER BECAUSE HE LIVED.

VI

COMET

No puppy ever came into the world under more favourable auspices than
Comet. He was descended from a famous line of pointers. Both his father
and mother were champions. Before he opened his eyes and while he was
crawling about over his brothers and sisters, blind as puppies are at
birth, Jim Thompson, Mr. Devant's kennel master, picked him out.

"I believe that's the best 'un in the bunch," he said.

On the day the puppies opened their eyes and first gazed with wonder at
this world into which they had been cast, Jim stooped down and snapped
his fingers. There was a general scampering back to the protection of
the mother by all but one. That was Comet. Even then he toddled toward
the smiling man, in a groggy way, wagging his miniature tail.

At the age of one month he pointed a butterfly that lit in the kennel
yard.

"Come here, Janie," yelled the delighted Thompson who saw it.
"Pointed--the damn little cuss!"

When Jim started taking the growing pups out of the yard and into the
fields to the side of Devant's great Southern winter home, Oak Hill, it
was Comet who strayed farthest from the man's protecting care. While at
sight of a tree stump or a cow or some other monstrous object his
brothers and sisters would scamper back to the man, Comet would venture
toward it, provided it were not too far, to see what it was. If a cow he
would bark, anxious little yelps, to show how brave he was. Then he
would turn and run back--but not until he had first barked.

Over and over Jim, speaking of him to his wife--they looked after Oak
Hill in the summer--would say with conviction:

"He's goin' to make a great dog!"

It looked as if Jim's prophecy would be fulfilled. Comet grew to be
handsomer than his brothers and sisters. When Jim taught them to follow
when he said "Heel!" to drop when he said "Drop!" and to stand stock
still when he said "Ho!" Comet learned more quickly than the others. In
everything he was favoured, even in temperament. Now and then he
quarrelled with his brothers, who grew jealous of him, and sometimes the
quarrel ended in a fight. But the fight over, he never sulked even if he
were beaten, but was a loving brother two minutes afterward.