be swaying in her stride. The dog’s tongue was out at any length, and his pant was clearly audible. Once again the hare doubled, and the dogs with the Over-Lord gave tongue, as though they cheered their comrade. Then with a fling and a dash Murphy was into it: there was a scuffle in the snow, and the next instant the young dog was seen to be holding the hare down.

Making his way to the two, taking the dogs upon leash and thong short by the head, and keeping them back by the free use of his feet, the Over-Lord seized the hare and rescued it; Murphy being too beat now to do more than lie stretched out, panting.

“Well, I’m...!”—The Over-Lord was passing a hand as well as he could over the frightened hare, holding it high to his chest.—“Run to a standstill, and not so much as harmed. Well, I’m...!”

He had let go the other dogs now. They were barking and jumping round him, and to avoid risk he was covering up the hare beneath his coat. His face was a study as he looked at Murphy lying in the snow. No fault was to be found with the dog; that was very certain. He had been given an opportunity of showing what he could do. The snow had equalised the race. And this was the end—the hare not hurt at all. He would look again at her presently. It had been a pretty sight: Nature’s working; no real cruelty in any of it. Such were the thoughts that were passing in the tall man’s mind.

All turned homeward after that, the Over-Lord’s feet scrunching the snow as he took great strides, a smile lighting up his face. Four of his dogs were close to his heels, as though they expected something; a yard or two behind followed a younger one, with his tongue out level with his chest.

Later on in the day, when all the dogs were kennelled up, the Over-Lord might have been seen leaving the mill-yard, with something he carried in a bag, taking long draws at his pipe, and still with a smile upon his face. He was making his way alone to the open fields, and across these to where there was shelter under a hedge. Having reached his point, he stooped to the ground; and then there sped from him, as he rose, a hare, unharmed in wind and limb.

He looked long after it, to make sure. Then he rubbed his chin with his pipe in his hand, and remarked aloud, “Run to a standstill, and never harmed. Well, I’m...!” And once again that day he checked himself from using a bad, if sometimes almost pardonable, word.

The general company naturally viewed Murphy’s performance from many standpoints. Among his contemporaries his reputation went up with a bound, though there was not wanting a leaven of jealous ones even amidst those who crowded most closely round him. Among those a little older than himself, the best-natured commended him outspokenly and in honest generosity of heart. Others, with more mundane outlook, judged his achievement reflected lustre on the kennel, and therefore—this with a sniff and the chuck of the chin—also on themselves. A few more vowed, in true sporting spirit, that they would do their level best to go one better if such a chance as that should come their way. To these last, the puzzle was why, with such results, the whole of those present had not tasted blood; and among themselves they voted the action of the Over-Lord incomprehensible, certainly womanly, very certainly misjudged. If the young dog had gone up therefore in their estimation, the Man had correspondingly gone down.

As for the older generation, some spoke patronisingly, as if they wished to convey that the deed was nothing more than they could easily have achieved, and in fact ended by talking so much that they persuaded themselves, to their own satisfaction, that they were in the habit in their younger days of doing things of the kind not less infrequently than once a week. The moralists wagged their heads as the fountain of all truths, and asserted that such success was a very bad thing for the young. The swaggerers, who held somewhat aloof, but who had never done anything in their lives, put on more side than usual and endeavoured to carry matters off that way, oblivious, as ever, of the laughter round the corner. Lastly, there was that other class, the crabbed and the crusty, who would, had they belonged to Us, have retired behind their papers in the Club windows, but as it was, and being dogs, merely made off out of earshot, with their ruffs up, grumbling to themselves and crabbing all things.

There were some of all classes here as elsewhere. It is indeed surprising how closely the dog family approximates to the human. The same counterparts are to be found in both. We mostly hunt in packs. And if dogs are wont to bark and bite and rend, We, on our part, are often not behind in practising the same strange arts, though not always with the same sportsmanship and generosity.

As for Murphy, he took the whole matter with a skip and a laugh, as if it was all part of the jolly fun of life, and as not in any way reflecting credit on himself. By nature he was modest and shy, and if he did things occasionally that were out of the common, he never seemed to grasp the fact, invariably looking puzzled and impatient at all praise. “Never mind all that; let’s come on and look for something else,” was what he said, exhibiting in this way, perhaps, one of those traits of character that made him so lovable, and that grew to such fair proportions as he advanced in years. His disposition was happy and generous, and though essentially manly—if such a term, without offence, is applicable to dogs—there was also about him a peculiar gentleness that was exemplified in all his actions, right down to his inability to use his teeth. He was never known to fight; and, what was still more strange, bones were to him altogether negligible things.

For a character such as this to meet with harsh treatment, much less cruelty, was, if not to ruin it completely, at least to undermine all confidence. Yet this, sad to relate, was now precisely what befell. Up to this, life had been without a cloud. Of course, as in every other society, there had been the necessity of fending for oneself—of picking up a scrap, for instance, quickly, if you wanted it at all. Such things are good, and make for progress and development. But harshness and unkindness, like injustice, had been altogether foreign to the mill and all who lived or worked there. Life sped on in that favoured spot with as even a surface as that of the river, whose waters flowed sluggishly up to the mill, barring the dam, and then went bubbling down the race, revivified and having done its spell, for the time.

How it came about is not now exactly discoverable; but just at this period of Murphy’s life a decree was issued that several of the family were to be boarded out; and the next day the young dog found himself moved to the home of one of the mill-hands, half a mile and more away.

The cottage stood alone, and the family inhabiting it consisted of a man and his wife, and a daughter just finishing her schooling. Once there had been a son; but he, like many another in our villages, had gone out—all honour to them!—to strike a blow for his country some five or six years before, and had in quite a short while found a soldier’s death. His photograph hung crookedly just above the mantelpiece, with another of a group of his regiment by which he had once set much store, and yet