hinder part of the poor wretch's barrel a mere hand-grasp. His very tail, which had used to look like an irregular much-worn bottle-brush, was thin and sleek like a rat's, and he tucked it away as if he were ashamed of it. His feet were clotted with red earth, and he walked as if his head were a burden to him, he hung it so mournfully and carried it so low.

My young English acquaintance, who, like myself, had been watching the procession, had posted himself a little farther down the road, with Scraper near at hand. Near to him, employing all the ingratiatory insinuating arts she knew, and so absorbed in Scraper that she forgot even to direct the procession, was Lil. To her, fawning and whining in such an excess of feeble joy as can be rarely known to dogs or man, came the half-starved, half-drowned creature. I was already halfway to Schwartz's rescue, with immediate milk, to be followed by soap and water, in my mind, but I stopped to see how Lil would receive the returned companion of old days. It is scarcely probable that dogs believe in ghosts, and yet it would have been easy to fancy that she saw in him at first some purely supernatural apparition, she recoiled with so obvious a surprise and terror when she first beheld him. The wretched, propitiatory, humbly-ecstatic Schwartz advanced, but she showed her gleaming teeth, and growled aversion. He stopped stock-still, and whined a little, and Lil responded furiously. I took the returned wanderer up in both hands, and carried him into the hotel scullery, and got milk for him. He lapped it with tears running down his muddy nose; and when I had had him washed and tucked away into an old railway rug, beside a stove in the little room, he lay there winking and blinking, and licked at his own tears with an expression altogether broken-hearted. I should have liked to have known something of the history of his subterranean wanderings, but that was only to be left to conjecture. I bade him be of better cheer, and went outside to wait for the return of the procession, and to smoke a cigar in the open air, and an hour later found that Schwartz had again disappeared. This time, however, he had merely gone home, and though for a day or two he was quite an invalid, he was soon about the streets again, completely rehabilitated.

And now I come to the relation of the one tragic fact which seemed to me to make this simple history worth writing. I hope that nobody will regard it as an invention, or will suppose that I am trading upon their sympathies on false pretences.

On the day of the young Englishman's departure I accompanied him to the railway station. Lil came down in attendance upon Scraper, and barked fiercely at the departing train which bore him away. Schwartz followed in humble pursuit of Lil, who, so far as I could understand affairs, had never forgiven him for intruding himself in so unpresentable a guise, and claiming acquaintance whilst she was engaged in conversation with a swell like Scraper. From that hour she had refused to hold the slightest communion with him, showing her teeth and growling in the cruellest way whenever he approached her. In spite of this, Schwartz seemed to be persuaded that, in the absence of his rival, he still stood a chance, and day after day he followed her with the old fawning humbleness, and day after day she received him with the same anger and disdain.

On a certain Wednesday afternoon the air was wonderfully mild and dry. It was early in January, but the weather was so fine that I had not even need of an overcoat, as I sat in the sunshine smoking and reading. I had seen Monsieur Dorn enter the opposite house, taking Lil with him, and Schwartz had settled himself on the doorstep, as usual, to await her exit. I called him to me, and he crossed over, but soon returned and resumed his place, and sat there waiting still. After a considerable time the door opened, and Monsieur Dorn and Lil emerged together. I looked up at that moment, and saw Lil make a savage dart at her too-persistent worshipper. Monsieur Dorn beat them apart, but Schwartz had attempted no resistance. He was rather badly bitten, and when I picked him up the tears were running fast down his nose, and he was feebly licking at them, and whining to himself in a way which indicated the extremest weakness of spirit. I sat down with him, and comforted the poor-hearted creature, and he seemed grateful, for he licked my hand repeatedly, but he did not cease to whine and weep.

By and by I heard, though I did not notice it at the time, the warning whistle of the approaching train. The station is little more than a stone's throw from the hotel. Schwartz made a leap, licked my face, jumped from the bench, and ambled away. I never saw him alive again, for, on the testimony of the signalman, he ran down to the railway line, stretched himself upon one of the rails, and, in spite of a stone the man threw at him when the train had advanced dangerously near to him, he held his place until the wheels passed over his body.

His remains were buried in his master's back garden. I know that he knew full well what he was doing when he stretched himself upon the rail, and I know that his feeble and affectionate heart was broken before he did it.