In summer mornings Jonathan made an alarm clock of this plank, flopping it about with the end of a fishing-rod poked up from below, never stopping until he saw my sleepy face peering down into his own.  There was no bureau, only a nail or so in the scantling, and no washstand, of course; the tin basin at the well outside was better.

Then there was an old wife that lived in the cabin,—­an old wife made of sole leather, with yellow-white hair and a thin, pinched face and a body all angles,—­chest, arms, everywhere,—­outlined through her straight up and down calico dress.  When she spoke, however, you stopped to listen,—­it was like a wood sound, low and far away,—­soft as a bird call.  People living alone in the forests often have these voices.

Last there was a dog,—­a mean, sniveling, stump-tailed dog, of no particular breed or kidney.  One of those dogs whose ancestry went to the bad many generations before he was born.  A dog part fox,—­he got all his slyness here; and part wolf, this made him ravenous; and part bull-terrier, this made him ill-tempered; and all the rest poodle, that made him too lazy to move.

The wife knew this dog, and hung the bacon on a high nail out of his reach, and covered with a big dish the pies cooling on the bench; and the neighbors down the road knew him and chased him out of their dairy-cellars when he nosed into the milk-pans and cheese-pots; and even the little children found out what a coward he was, and sent him howling home to his hole under the porch, where he grumbled and pouted all day like a spoiled child that had been half whipped.  Everybody knew him, and everybody despised him for a low-down, thieving, lazy cur,—­everybody except Jonathan.  Jonathan loved him,—­loved his weepy, smeary eyes, and his rough, black hair, and his fat round body, short stumpy legs, and shorter stumpy tail,—­especially the tail.  Everything else that the dog lacked could be traced back to the peccadillos of his ancestors,—­Jonathan was responsible for the tail.

“Ketched in a b’ar-trap I hed sot up back in thet green timber on Loon Pond Maountin’ six year ago last fall, when he wuz a pup,” he would say, holding the dog in his lap,—­his favorite seat.  “I swan, ef it warn’t too bad!  Thinks I, when I sot it, I’ll tell the leetle cuss whar it wuz; then—­I must hev forgot it.  It warn’t a week afore he wuz runnin’ a rabbet and run right into it.  Wall, sir, them iron jaws took thet tail er his’n off julluk a knife.  He’s allus been kinder sore ag’in me sence, and I dunno but he’s right, fur it wuz mighty keerless in me.  Wall, sir, he come yowlin’ hum, and when he see me he did look saour,—­no use talkin’,—­jest ez ef he wuz a-sayin’, ‘Yer think you’re paowerful cunnin’ with yer b’ar-traps, don’t ye?  Jest see what it’s done to my tail.  It’s kinder sp’ilt me for a dog.’  All my fault, warn’t it, George?” patting his head.  (Only Jonathan would call a dog George.)

Here the dog would look up out of one eye as he spoke,—­he hadn’t forgotten the bear-trap, and never intended to let Jonathan forget it either.  Then Jonathan would admire ruefully the end of the stump, stroking the dog all the while with his big, hairy, paddle-like hands, George rooting his head under the flap of the party-colored waistcoat.