It was evident to all, and to the old man himself, that above and around and closing in upon them was the mystery which men call death—­a mystery as inscrutable as it hovers over the kennel and stable as when it enters the habitations of men—­and that in a few moments the life still within the body of the poor animal, with all its powers of doing, of thinking, and of loving, would depart the structure in which it had found so pleasant an abode and so facile a medium of expression.

For a few moments nothing more was said; the old man continued to sob and the life of his companion continued to ebb away.  The brutal blow that caused his death had mercifully numbed the power of feeling, so that whatever the gloomy journey he was about to take might mean to him, whether the same life he was leaving, or a larger, or none at all, he would move on through the darkness toward the one or the other at least without pain.

“You and I have fared in company for many a year,” said the old man at last, “and bread, whether scant or plenty, and bed, whether hard or soft, we have shared together.  Thou hast made the days brighter, and the nights shorter, by thy presence as I suffered through them, and dark will the one be, and long the other, when I see thee no more; would to God I could die with thee, my dog, my dog!”

Did the dog indeed understand what he said or did he merely sense the sorrow in the tones and seek once more, as he had done so many times before, to comfort his disconsolate master?  I know not; I only know that the poor animal, with dying strength, lifted his muzzle to his master’s face, and twice he lapped it with his tongue.  Aye, lapped the salt tears tenderly from his master’s wrinkled and pallid cheeks with his tongue; only this, for no more could he do.  “My dog,” cried the old man once more, amid his tears.  “My dog, the God who made thee so loving and worthy to be loved, and filled thee with such sweet feeling and the wish to comfort human woe, will not surely let thee perish.  In his great universe there is, there must be, room for thee.  I will not mourn thee as wholly lost.  I cannot do it.  For amid the false thou hast been true, and surely falsehood shall hot live on and sweet truth die.  Tell me, my dog, give me some sign that we shall meet in the great hereafter?”

But in response to this appeal the dog gave no motion, for, indeed, his strength, like a tide ebbing in the night, was gliding silently and swiftly outward in the gloom, gliding outward and beyond all questioning and answering, but he opened wide his glorious eyes and fixed them steadily on his master’s face with such a great love in their depths that mortal might not doubt that in that love was hope and its sustaining evidence; and then the fatal dimness crept along their edges, the pure, sweet light faded away in their clear depths, and the impenetrable shadow settled forever over the lustrous orbs.  The lids at last gradually closed as in sleep, and the beggar’s dog, with his head on his master’s neck and his body resting on his bosom, lay dead.