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“Here we are, looking from a distance at your peaches. Oh, Mr. Orchardson, how lovely they do seem!” Mrs. Marker lost her dignity by giving me a wink, believing as she did – and many others thought the same – that I was next to nobody in these gardens, and my Uncle a tiger over every fruit he grew.

“We have had as many peaches as we can eat, sir,” I said, without any wish to contradict her, but simply to show the position I held.

“Ladies will excuse my present plight;” he had no coat on, and his sleeves were tucked up, showing a pair of thick brown arms. “My peaches are very poor this year, and many have split their stones, and rot instead of ripening. We have not had such a season since 1852. I hope you will not judge us by the wretched things you see. But come on a little further, and try something else. All fruit is water, such a year as we have had. But possibly I may find a plum or two worth eating.”

“Allow me the pleasure, sir,” said Mrs. Marker, who always insisted on proper forms, “of introducing you to Miss Fairthorn, the only daughter of Captain, or as he now is considered, Professor Fairthorn – a gentleman of the highest scientific tendencies.”

“To be sure,” said Uncle Corny, as he took his hat off, and smiled with surprise at her beauty; “I knew Captain Fairthorn, years ago, and a very noble man he is. I have very good cause to remember him – but I will not trouble you with that now. Mrs. Marker, if you would just turn this corner – take care of your most becoming bonnet, young lady” – this pleased the good housekeeper more than twenty plums, – “our trees are not as sensitive as we are.”

His urbanity amazed me, for I never could have thought a good man could be so inconsistent; and I said to myself that after all there is something irresistible in women. So I ventured to sidle up to Miss Fairthorn, as he led the way with his convoy, and asked her what she thought of him.

“Oh, I think he is so nice,” she replied smiling at me, as if she was pleased with my question; “so upright, and manly, and such a fine countenance. No wonder, I’m sure, that his fruit is good.”

“Did you notice how much he was surprised at you, at your very pretty dress, and exceedingly sweet smile, and most ladylike appearance, and silvery voice, and lovely – lovely way of holding your parasol?”

“How can you talk such nonsense, Mr. Orchardson? And your Uncle appears such a sensible man! Dear me, we are losing all the wise things he can say. Let us hurry on – it was this way, I think.”

“No, no! Don’t you hear their voices down this path? Not twenty yards off, if it were not for these trees. Oh, do let me carry your parasol. You will want both hands to get along. Before you know where we are, we shall be in the broad road. Oh, I am so sorry – it was all my fault. You must let me undo the mischief I have done. May I show you how well I understand all roses?”

By good luck, combined with some little skill of mine, her simple yet wholly adorable frock was captured in three places by gooseberries whom I envied. I expected great delight from this. But she showed at once the sweetness of her temper, and her height above me. Instead of blushing stupidly, she smiled, and said – “Thank you, I will do it for myself. You can hardly be expected to understand such things.”

CHAPTER VIII.
BAD COUNSEL

There are very few things that have the power to please us both in heart and mind, even when they have the will to do it, which is very seldom. Great events in our lives flash by without a word, and scarcely seem to give us time to chuckle, or to sob, till afterwards. But the little turns of time are more indulgent, and pass us with a sauntering foot, more often dull than lightsome.

For the moment, I was glad to find that my Uncle Cornelius, in his plain way, had taken a liking to my love. But I gave him little credit for it, inasmuch as it seemed impossible to me that he could do otherwise. Such was my petty jealousy that I did not even want to hear him praise her, except in my own words. But he, in his solid way, would take his own view of her character – as if he knew anything about it!

“I don’t care a farthing about all that,” I cried, when he had spoken of some things, which tell the longest.

“I can see she is very quiet, and full of home affections,” he persisted, as if I were a boy at school, and he were holding the spelling book; “she is not extravagant, nor fond of waste; that I saw by the way she went through a ‘Huling’s Superb,’ with a hole in it. I could scarcely have done it any better myself. And she was really grieved, which the lady-housekeeper had not the sense to be, by the freedom – she called it recklessness – with which I picked those Jeffersons, to find one in tip-top condition. And then when I offered to make some tea, the housekeeper who had been stuffing for hours only asked if the water was boiling. But your sweetheart began to buckle up, and asked who could touch tea, after such delicious things.”

“Buckle up, indeed! Uncle Corny, you are outrageous. She had got no such thing as a buckle near her. Her waist is done round with a narrow blue ribbon, the colour of the sky, as her eyes are. And I will thank you not to call her my sweetheart, if you please. I shall never have such luck. And it sounds so common. There ought to be a better expression for it. And such things are not made to be talked of.”

“Very well! You won’t hear me say another word. It will all come to nothing; that’s one comfort. She goes back to London on Friday; and you will very soon console yourself with Rasp’s young woman. I am told that she has fine black eyes; and I am not sure that black don’t beat blue ones, after all.”

This was so disgusting that I went away, and worked till dusk at a heavy piece of trenching; and when it was dusk I lay in wait for three felonious boys who came from Hampton, almost every evening, prowling for our apples. I caught all three, and trounced them well – which is the only proper plan – and the sound of their wailings, as they went home, restored my faith in justice. For I had given them their choice – “a licking or a summons” – and they said very justly, “Oh, a licking, if you please, sir.” The world has now come to such a pass, that a father would summon me for assault, if I so discharged his duty for him; but thirty years ago a bit of common sense survived.

But in spite of that little satisfaction, I could not get much sleep that night, for rolling, and pondering, and twisting in and out, the tangle and the burden of a troubled mind. Turn it as I might, there was no opening through it for another view of that perfect creature, with whom my whole life seemed to flow. Terrible, terrible was the truth that she would leave us all on Friday, and be swallowed up and no more seen, in that great earthquake, London. A thousand wild ideas, and schemes, for stealing yet one more interview, and countless crazy hopes that she herself might try to compass it, all came thrilling through my restless brain, but not one would stop there. None had any shape or substance, such as could be worked upon, and brought to likelihood of success. This was Tuesday night; last Saturday night how different everything had been! Then I had only cared to know, that things in the ground were doing well, that all the fruit which required gathering got its due, and looked its best on its way to be devoured, that every man pocketed his wages in good time to spend them, and that there was a little hope of the weather taking up at last. Now there had been three days without rain, and with touch of autumnal sunshine; heaven began to look bright again, and the earth (which, like the dwellers therein, lives only aright in view of it) was beginning to lift her sodden crust, and fetch once more her storm-trampled breath and issue anew the genial green in the midrib of mouldy foliage. In a word, the summer which had failed the year, for want of a smile to lead it, was breaking out at this last moment, better late than never.

Possessed as I was with my own troubles, and only a flickering sunshine, I could not resist the contagious lightness of cheerful faces all around. The workmen, who do (in spite of all British reserve, and manly selfishness) take a deep interest in their employer’s welfare, and stand up for him bravely, when any one abuses him, except themselves – every man of them laid heel to spade, or hoisted ladder on shoulder, with new briskness; because they could say to one another – “The old buffer, who carries on this place, has fought against long odds like a man; and now things look as if they was taking a little turn in his favour.”

On the Wednesday morning glum however was my mind, and grim my face, and Uncle Corny made some jokes, which may have seemed very good to him. Our breakfast things were set as usual, and our breakfast cooked and served by Mrs. Tabby Tapscott, that sage widow from the village, whom we were often pleased to laugh at for her Devonshire dialect. Also for her firm conviction, that nothing in these outlandish parts, and none of our biggest men, were fit to compare with the products of the West. There was one point however on which we gladly confessed the truth that was in her – she could fry potatoes, not leathery chips, nor the cake of pulpy fatness, but the crisp yet melting patin of brown gold, so as none of the East may fry them. She turned them out of the frying-pan upon a willow-pattern plate, and the man deserved to wear the willow, who could think of weeping near them.

Now this good woman, who was a “cure,” as the slang boys of our village said, took (though I knew it not as yet) a tender interest in my affairs. For the last day or two, I had observed that she glanced at me rather strangely, and once or twice behind my Uncle’s back, she had put her finger on her lips, and then jerked her thumb over her shoulder, as if to say – “Come and have a quiet word with me.”

But my frame of mind had appeared to me too noble and exalted to be shared with her, until it was come to such a pitch that any aid would be welcome.

This morning, as half of her fine work remained on my plate neglected, she could no longer contain herself, but pinched my sleeve and whispered, while my Uncle was going to the window, “Come out in gearden, I want to spake to ’e.”

“Speak away,” I answered, “there is nothing to stop you, Mrs. Tapscott;” but she looked at me and muttered that I was just a fool, and she had a mind to have nought to do with me.

By the common law of nature, this made me long to hear what on earth she could have to say, and I gave her the chance, while she washed up the things, to see where I was, and to come out if she pleased. She might do exactly as she pleased, for I did not intend to encourage her. She came out, and began without asking me.

“I can’t abide to zee ’e look so crule weist and peaky. The toorn of your nose bain’t the zame as her was, and you don’t zim at home with your vittels, Measter Kit. Lor’ bless ’e, I been droo the zame my zen, and I knaws arl about ’en.”

At first I was inclined to walk away; but it would have been shabby to be rude to her, and a look of good-will and kindly pity was in her hard-worn eyes and face. “What can you have to say to me?” I asked.

“You be young, and I be old,” she took my coat to stop me; “you be peart and nimble, and I be a’most crippled with rheumatics and rumbago. But the Lord hath made us arl alike, though He have given us different. I knows as wull what ails ’e now, as if it arl coom droo my own heart. And what you be zaying to yourzelf is – ‘How be I to goo on with it’?”

This was a wonderfully accurate description of my present state of mind. I looked at Mrs. Tapscott, with the admiration she deserved, and said – “Well then, how be I to goo on with it?”

“I’ve athought ’un out,” she made answer bravely; “what you be bound to do, Measter Kit, is never to let she goo back to Lunnon, wi’out zettling zummat.”

Here was the whole of it in a nutshell. But how was I to settle anything?

“Oh, Tabby, dear Tabby!” I cried, with some loss of dignity, but much gain of truth; “how can I even get the chance of saying a word to her again? This is Wednesday, and she goes back on Friday, and perhaps she never comes again, and there are millions of people between us. Everybody knows what Miss Coldpepper is, as proud as Punch, and as stiff as starch. If I even dared to go near the house, she’d just tell the gamekeeper to shoot me.”

“Wull, a young man as have vallen in love must take his chance of shot-guns. But if so be you latts her goo awai wi’out so much as anoother ward, you desarves to have no tongue in the head of ’e.”

“How easy it is to talk!” I replied, making ready to leave her, and think by myself. “But how hard and impossible, Tabby, to find any chance of doing anything. I must make up my mind not to see her any more; but to think of her always, as long as I live.”

“Boddledicks!” cried Mrs. Tapscott, her favourite interjection of contempt – what it meant we knew not, and probably not she. “Boddledicks, where be the brains of they men? I could tull ’e what to do in half a zecond, lad, to vetch old Coldpepper, and the young leddy too, and every mortial ’ooman in thic there ouze, to hum eartr’e, the zame as if they zighted ’e a burning to the muckpit, with all their Zunday vainery under thee arm.”

I looked at Tabby Tapscott with some surprise; for she was giving greater force to her description by using leg and arm as if she bore a share in all of it. And the vigour of her countenance made me smile. But the old woman laughed with a superior air. “Tak’th a bit o’ time, for volks with slow brains to vollew my maind up – don’t her now? Goo up to ’ouze, young man, and stale old Ragless.”

“Steal old Regulus!” I cried in great amazement, “why, what good on earth would that do me? And if it would do any good, how am I to manage it? I have not been brought up to that profession.”

“I zeed a man to Barrinarbor, vaive and vorty year agone, the most wonnerful cliver chap, I ever zee. He coom a-coortin’ of me, the taime as I wor ruckoned the purtiest maid in arl the parish of Westdown. But I wadn’t have none of ’un, because a’ wor so tricksy. Howsomever I didn’t zay ‘noo’ to wance, for a’ wor the most wonnerful chap I ever zee. The Lord had been and given he every zort o’ counsel. A’ could churm a harse out of any vield or linhay, a’ could mak’ the coos hurn to ’un, when the calves was zuckin’, a’ could vetch any dog a’ took a vancy to from atwane his owner’s legs or from’s own zupper. And a’ zhowed me a trick or two I han’t vorgotten yet. I could tull ’e purty smart how to vetch old Ragless, and kape ’un so long as you was mainded.”

Now I might have paid little attention to this, and indeed had begun to reject the suggestion of a stratagem far below the dignity of love, till suddenly a queer dream came to my remembrance, a dream of last Sunday night, the very night after that little adventure at the timber bridge. In that enchanting vision, I had seen Miss Fairthorn smiling as she came to me, through a lovely meadow enamelled with primrose, and cowslip, and bluebell, herself of course the fairest of all the flowers. And when I approached her, behold, she was led by this same dog, old Regulus, who conducted her gracefully to my longing arms, by means of the long gold chain which had reposed on the stately bosom of Mrs. Jenny Marker. I am not superstitious – as everybody vows when recounting his dreams – but still it did seem strange.

“Lave it arl to me,” Mrs. Tapscott went on, as she saw my hesitation. “Nort for ’e to do, but to gie me a zhillin’, vor to buy the stuff, and nobody no wiser. Then goo avore zunrise, and vetch old Ragless. Putt ’un in a barg, and keep ’un znug in thic there old root-ouze. My stars and garters, what a bit o’ vun ’twill be!”

CHAPTER IX.
A DOG VIOLATE

A great observer of these latter days has advised us to abstain from deep research into the origin of our own names. Otherwise we might become convinced of a lamentable want of lofty tone among those, without whom we could not have been here, to show our superiority. A vein of fine thought is at once set flowing; but for “Ragless” it would have flowed in vain, as dogs have no surname to dwell upon.

His case was a strange one, and not without interest. Nobody in our parish had any knowledge of his ancestry, although he had won very high repute by biting many people who got over it. Any other dog would have become the victim of an injudicious outcry; but “Ragless,” by making some other good bites, established his legal right to do it, and was now considered a very wholesome dog, though he might have a temper of his own. But even if he had, who was to blame?

Some seven, or it may have been eight years since, Miss Coldpepper was “rolling in her carriage” down Feltham hill, when the coachman pulled up very sharply, and just in time to save mishap. All the boys in the village were let loose from school, and with one accord had found a genial pastime, which they were pursuing with the vigour of our race. They had got a poor dog, with no father, or mother, or even policeman to defend him, and they had put him in a barrel near a garden-gate, and tacked in the head so that no escape was left. This being done to their entire satisfaction, what remained except to roll him down the hill? And this they were doing with a lofty sense of pleasure, and shouts that almost drowned the smothered howls from within, when the carriage came upon them, and very nearly served them right. “Let them have the whip,” cried the lady with due feeling, when the footman had jumped down and reported all the facts; but the ring-leaders had vanished, and the boys who tasted lash were some innocent little ones who had only helped in shouting. “Hand him in to me,” was her next order; and the poor trembling animal saw pity in her eyes, and gave her face a timid lick, which made his fortune. No claimant being found for him, the lady took him home, and aptly called him “Regulus,” which the servants very promptly converted into “Ragless,” reasoning well that the Italian greyhound wore a coat, but this dog had none, save the bristles wherewith Nature had endowed him. In the course of time he superseded every other dog, and probably every human being, in the affection of Miss Coldpepper.

If the early portion of his life had been unhappy, fortune had now made him ample amends, and he should have been in amity with all mankind. But whether from remembrance of his youthful woes, or cynical perception of our frailties and our frauds, Regulus never acquired that sweetness, which we look for in dogs, so much more than in ourselves. His standard of action was strict duty beyond doubt, but a duty too strictly limited, and confined to two persons – himself, and his mistress. With the rest of creation he was cheerfully at war, though tolerably neutral towards the cook, when she could bid high enough for his consideration. These things made him deeply respected.

In person however, he was not quite a dog to arouse any vast enthusiasm. He belonged to the order of the wiry-coated terriers, if he was a terrier at all; for in him all the elements were so duly mingled, that Nature could only proclaim him a dog. The colour of ginger and that of cinnamon were blended together in his outward dog; and he went on three legs, quite as often as on four, as much from contempt of the earth perhaps as from feelings of physical economy. There was nothing base about him; he had fine teeth, and he showed them, but never made insidious assault on anybody. When he meant to bite, he did it quickly, and expressed his satisfaction afterwards.

To seduce such a sentry, was an enterprise worthy of him, who in sweet love’s service, and dispensing its mournful melodies, enchanted the son of Echidna. And it may have been this sense of difficulty, and a sporting desire to conquer it, which led me to follow up the joke, and try my hand at a job, which had beaten the deepest dog-stealers of Seven Dials.

All day long, I hoped to get at least a glimpse, or if bad luck would not allow that, to hear at any rate something of that young lady, without whom my life must grow old and barren. For this was no school-boy affair of the fancy, nor even a light skit of early manhood, such as fifty young fellows have out of fifty-one, and go their way quickly after some other girl. I had never been given to such fugitive sport; I was now in the prime of my years almost, and though I might have looked at maidens, and thought what pretty things they were, none had ever touched my heart till now. And “touched” is by no means the proper word to use; it should be said plainly, that all my heart was occupied, and possessed to its deepest fibre by a being far better, and sweeter, and nobler than its outer and bodily owner; and that this must abide so to its very latest pulse; as you will truly find, if you care to hear about it.

Not a word came to me about those things which destroyed all my attention to any other; and the dusk had stopped work – which was my only comfort – and I sat all alone that Wednesday evening trying to get through a little bread and cheese, but glancing more often from our old window at the gloomy rush of the river, which was still in high flood though some little abated. Uncle Corny was gone, to try to get some money from people who had thriven on his hard-won fruit, and Mrs. Tabby Tapscott had left the house early, upon some business of her own. The house-door was open, for we had not many rogues, till the railway came some years afterwards; and the evening was of those that smell of beehives, and cornstacks, and horses upon their way home. At last, when I had made up my mind to be forgotten by every one, in came Tabby, as bright as a bun.

“Oh fai, oh fai!” she cried; “whatever be ’e doing of? Atin’ no zupper, and zittin’ as if ’e was mazed a’most. Look ’e zee what the Lord hath zent ’e! I was vorced to go arl the way to Hampton for ’un, for year of they long tongues to Zunbury. If this wun’t vetch Measter Ragless, arl I can zay is her bain’t a dog. Putt ’un down in zellar, when I’ve larned ’e how to use ’un.”

From beneath her shawl she produced a little box, which she opened in triumph, and the room was filled at once with a very peculiar odour quite unknown to me. It was pungent rather than pleasant, and it made me sneeze as well as laugh.

“You be up there by vaive o’clock, when the daisies’ eyes be openin’, and goo to the zide door I tould ’e of” – Mrs. Tapscott knew all the household ways at Coldpepper Hall, through a niece of hers who was kitchen-maid, “and vang this by the coord out o’ heelin’, wi’out titchin’ of ’un with thy vingers, and drag ’un athort the grass and the pilm to backzide o’ the zhrubbery, and then you step out o’ zight in a lew cornder. Ould dog be put out at zix o’clock riglar, and ’tis liable he’ll hurn straight to ’e. Then let ’un ate a hummick, and kitch ’un up vittily, and pop ’un into barg, and carr ’un home here, and I’ll zhow ’e what to do with ’un. But mind as her don’t scammel ’e. Her be turble itemy.”

She gave me many other minute directions, and made me laugh so that my spirits rose, with the hope of an interesting little farce, to relieve the more tragic surroundings. I undertook briskly to play my part, looking on the matter as a harmless joke; though I came to think in course of time that the cruel theft I suffered from might partly be a just requital for this wicked robbery. And yet it was absurd and senseless, to make such comparison.

Without disturbing Uncle Corny, who slept very heavily, I was up before daylight on the Thursday morning, and set out with the box and bag on my felonious enterprise. Coldpepper Hall, or Manor, as it was called indifferently, stood back upon some rising ground at a distance from the river, and was sheltered well by growth of trees. There was nothing very grand about it, and it leaned on stucco more than stone; but there was plenty of room both within and without, and any one getting inside the doors might say to himself, with some comfort flowing into him – “I am sure that I need never be in any hurry here.”

The sun meant to get up a little later on, when I jumped the palings of this old demesne, at a place where of right there should have been a footpath, but the owner of the Manor had stopped it long ago, perceiving the superior claims of quietude. Nobody had cared to make a fuss about it, but enough of ancestral right remained to justify me in getting over. Every window of the house was still asleep, and I gazed at it with humble reverence, not as the citadel of the Coldpeppers, but as the shrine of my sacred love. Then I chose a place of ambush in a nest of hollies, and approaching the sallyport of Regulus, drew a slow trail from it across the dewy grass to my lurking-place, and there waited calmly.

Sweet visions of love from the ivory gate now favoured me with their attendance, partly perhaps because love had not allowed me to sleep out my sleep. Far as I am from any claim to the merits of a classical education, I had been for some years, off and on, as a day boy at Hampton Grammar-school, and could do a bit of Virgil pretty well, and an ode or two of Horace. Whenever Uncle Corny came across a Latin name he would call for me; and take it altogether, I had long been considered the most learned young man in Sunbury. Even now I remembered, though most of it was gone, the story of the Nymph who placed her son in ambuscade for Proteus, and the noble description of Regulus on parole, waving off the last kiss of his wife and babes. Grimly he set his manly visage on the ground; and my Regulus was doing the very same thing now.

Fat Charles had opened the door with a yawn, and sent forth that animal of Roman type, to snuff the morning air, and perform his toilet, and pay his orisons in general. Luxurious days had told their tale; it was too plain that Capua had corrupted Sabine simplicity. Regulus moved with a listless air, his desire to find whom he might bite lay dormant, and no sense of iniquity pricked his ears, or lifted the balance of his tail. “Let the world wag,” was the expression of his eyes, “I get whatever I want in it, and would wag to it also, if I were not too fat.” It appeared too certain that if I meant to catch him, I should have to go and bag him where he stood.

But suddenly down went his nose, and his bristles flew up, and every line of his system grew stiff as wire. He had lit on my trail near a narrow flower-border, and it presented itself with a double aspect. Was it the ever-fresh memory of a cat – not a cat of every-day life of course, but a civet-cat, a musk-cat, a cat of poetic, or even fabulous perfume? Or was it the long-drawn sweetness of a new ambrosial food, heaven-sent to tempt his once lively, but now vainly wept-for appetite? Whatever it might be, the line of duty was marked, and beyond evasion.

Those of our race who have made a study of dogs, for the sake of example, declare that the best and most noble of them follow quest with their noses well up in the air. Regulus failed in this test of merit; he spread his nostrils affably within an inch of where the worms lay, pricked his hairy ears, which were of divers colours, and with the stump of his tail as the loftiest point of his person, ran a bee-line towards me. In accordance with his fame, I made ready for a bite; but to my surprise he paused, when he came point-blank upon me, and seemed taken aback, as with some wholly new emotion. Regardful of the teaching of my Nymph, I offered him a portion of the magic sop, and while he was intent upon it slipped a stout potato-sack over his head, tumbled him in with a push in the rear, and shouldered him.

Taking the path across the fields, I got home without meeting any one, and found Tabby waiting for me near the root-house, which was simply the trunk of a grand old oak, with a slab of elm fitted as a door to it. No one was likely to visit this old storehouse at the present time of year, and the loudest wailing of the largest dog might be carried on in the strictest privacy. But I meant him to be happy there, and so he was – to some extent.

For he seemed to resign himself, as if recalling his early adventure in the barrel, and regarded his later prosperity as a dream; and probably the charm of the drug he had swallowed acted benignly upon his nerves. At any rate he allowed himself to be secured by a chain and a fold-pitcher, and even licked my hand instead of snarling and showing his teeth. Every arrangement was made for his comfort, and he lay down as happy as a lotus-eater.

After breakfast, I took a little turn in the village, and there had the pleasure of seeing fat Charles, the Coldpepper footman, nearly trying to run, and looking sadly out of breath. He carried a leading strap, with no dog to it, and under his arm was a bundle of papers. As I approached him with kind inquiries, he drew forth his roll and requested me to read, while he was recovering his breath a little. My face must have turned as red as his – for this was the first theft I ever committed, except of some apples from a rival grower, a curmudgeon who would not tell us what they were – and I felt very queer as I read the following, written in round hand and with many capitals.

“Reward of one guinea! – Lost, stolen, or strayed, a large brindled terrier, known as ‘Regulus,’ the property of Miss Coldpepper of Coldpepper Manor. He is very hard of hearing, and a little fond of snapping. Any person bringing him home will receive the above reward, and no questions asked. Any one detaining him will be prosecuted, with the utmost rigour of the law.”

Charles had a score perhaps of these placards, written in sundry hands, and spelt in divers manners, as if all the household had been set to work.

“Oh, Mr. Kit,” he cried, for every one called me that; “there is the devil to pay, up to the ’All, and no mistake! And all of it blamed on me, as innocent as the babe unborn, and more so, for only obeying of my horders. What did I do, but just turn the brute out – for a brute he is and no mistake, though wholesome in his bite, because it is his nature to; and no one round these parts would be tough enough in the legs to come forrard with a view of making off with him – then I shut the door to, for his quarter hour airing, as laid down in written horders issued every night. And my hair stood on end when he never come back, the same as his does, when he flies at you.”