The dog?  Oh! certainly; but don’t hurry me.  I’m too old to tell a story in a straight line and at express speed.  I will get to the dog all in good time, and, in order to feel as I do about the terrible thing that happened to him, you must know something about his master, for in an odd sort of way they supplemented each other.  Indeed, they seemed to have entered into a kind of partnership to share each other’s moods as they shared each other’s fortune.  And it was a strange, and, I may say, a very touching sight, to see two creatures, of different species, so intimately attached to each other; and often, as I have looked at the dog when he was gazing at his master, have I said to myself, “Surely, something or some one has blundered, and a human soul was put, by mistake, into that dog’s body,” for never—­no, sir, I will not qualify it—­never have I seen a greater love look from human into human eyes than I have seen gazing devotedly up into the old man’s face from the eyes of that dog.  How did he look?  Queer enough, I assure you, for his cross, while an admirable one to yield wit and affection both, was the worst possible one for beauty, for his father was a full-blooded shepherd and his mother a Scotch terrier, without a taint in her blood.

How well I remember the dog and his peculiar looks!  I remember him now as plainly as if he were lying on the rug there this very minute.  He had the size of his father and the bristly coat of his mother.  His ears were like a terrier’s, and naturally pricked forward.  His color was a dirty gray—­a miserable color; his tail had been cropped and the remnant that remained—­some four inches in length—­stood stiffly up, with scarce a suggestion of a curve; he was homely, but not inferior looking, for his head was such an one as Landseer would have loved to have translated from time and death to the immortality of his canvas; what a matchless front, and room enough in the cranium to hold the brains of any two common dogs.  But his eyes were the impressive and magnificent feature of his face—­large, round and warmly hazel in color, and so liquid clear that, looking into them, you seemed to be gazing into transparent depths, not of water, but of intelligent being.  What eyes they were!  I remember what a young lady said once apropos to them.  She was a belle herself, and nature spoke through her speech.  She came into the office here one day when the dog was performing, for he was a great trick dog, and, after watching him a moment, she exclaimed, “Ah! if a woman only had those eyes, what might she not do!” More fun could look out of that dog’s head than of any other I ever saw, whether of dog or man.  And though you may not credit it, yet, as true as I sit here, I have seen those eyes weep as large and honest tears as ever fell in sorrow from human orbs.  “Laugh, too?” You put that question incredulously, do you?  Well, you needn’t, for the dog could laugh.  “With his tail?” No, any dog can do that, but he could laugh with his mouth.  Why, sir, I have seen him sit bolt upright on his haunches there by that post, lean his back against it, and laugh so heartily that his mouth would open and shut like a man’s when guffawing, and you could see every tooth in his head, and he did it intelligently, too, and laughed because he was tickled and couldn’t help it.