around the platter.  “Good neighbor dog,” each seemed to say, “you too sniff upon the rogue!  If he be honest, my old nose is much at fault.”  Meantime I padded lightly through the village, at first calling on the dogs by English names, but later using such wisps as I had of French.  “Aucassin, mon pauvre chien.  Voici, Tintagiles, alors donc mon cherie.  Je suis votre ami,” but with little effect.

But the dogs that one meets in the Canadian woods are of the fiercest breed.  They border on the wolf.  They are called huskies and they are so strong and so fleet of foot that they pull sleds for hours across the frozen lakes at almost the speed of a running horse.  It must be confessed that they are handsome and if it happens to be your potato peelings and discarded fish that they eat, they warm into friendliness.  Indeed, on these occasions, one can make quite a show of bravery by stroking and dealing lightly with them.  But once upon a time in an ignorant moment two other campers and myself followed a lonely railroad track and struck off on a path through the pines in search of a certain trapper on a fur farm.  The path went on a broken zigzag avoiding fallen trees and soft hollows, conducting itself on the whole with more patience than firmness.  We walked a quarter of a mile, but still we saw no cabin.  The line of the railroad had long since disappeared.  An eagle wheeled above us and quarrelled at our intrusion.  Presently to test our course and learn whether we were coming near the cabin, we gave a shout.  Immediately out of the deeper woods there came a clamor that froze us.  Such sounds, it seemed, could issue only from bloody and dripping jaws.  In a panic, as by a common impulse we turned and ran.  Yet we did not run frankly as when the circus lion is loose, but in a shamefaced manner—­an attempt at a retreat in good order—­something between a walk and a run.  At the end of a hundred yards we stopped.  No dogs had fallen on us.  Danger had not burst its kennel.  We hallooed again, to rouse the trapper.  At last, after a minute of suspense, came his answering voice, the sweetest sound to be imagined.  Whereupon I came down from my high stump which I had climbed for a longer view.

I am convinced that I am not alone in my—­shall I say diffidence?—­toward dogs.  Indeed, there is evidence from the oldest times that mankind, in its more honest moments, has confessed to a fear of dogs.  In recognition of this general fear, the unmuzzled Cerberus was put at the gate of Hades.  It was rightly felt that when the unhappy pilgrims got within, his fifty snapping heads were better than a bolt upon the door.  It was better for them to endure the ills they had, than be nipped in the upper passage.  He, also, who first spoke the ancient proverb, Let sleeping dogs lie, did no more than voice the caution of the street.  And he, also, who invented the saying that the world is going to the bow-wows, lodged his deplorable pessimism in fitting words.