“Walk about,” Daughtry commanded.  “Walk about slow fella,” he cautioned, though there was little need.

Michael bristled, but permitted the first timid step.  At the second he glanced up at Daughtry to make certain.

“That’s right,” he was reassured.  “That fella boy belong me.  He all right, you bet.”

Michael smiled with his eyes that he understood, and turned casually aside to investigate an open box on the floor which contained plates of turtle-shell, hack-saws, and emery paper.

* * * * *

“And now,” Dag Daughtry muttered weightily aloud, as, bottle in hand, he leaned back in his arm-chair while Kwaque knelt at his feet to unlace his shoes, “now to consider a name for you, Mister Dog, that will be just to your breeding and fair to my powers of invention.”

CHAPTER IV

Irish terriers, when they have gained maturity, are notable, not alone for their courage, fidelity, and capacity for love, but for their cool-headedness and power of self-control and restraint.  They are less easily excited off their balance; they can recognize and obey their master’s voice in the scuffle and rage of battle; and they never fly into nervous hysterics such as are common, say, with fox-terriers.

Michael possessed no trace of hysteria, though he was more temperamentally excitable and explosive than his blood-brother Jerry, while his father and mother were a sedate old couple indeed compared with him.  Far more than mature Jerry, was mature Michael playful and rowdyish.  His ebullient spirits were always on tap to spill over on the slightest provocation, and, as he was afterwards to demonstrate, he could weary a puppy with play.  In short, Michael was a merry soul.

“Soul” is used advisedly.  Whatever the human soul may be—­informing spirit, identity, personality, consciousness—­that intangible thing Michael certainly possessed.  His soul, differing only in degree, partook of the same attributes as the human soul.  He knew love, sorrow, joy, wrath, pride, self-consciousness, humour.  Three cardinal attributes of the human soul are memory, will, and understanding; and memory, will, and understanding were Michael’s.

Just like a human, with his five senses he contacted with the world exterior to him.  Just like a human, the results to him of these contacts were sensations.  Just like a human, these sensations on occasion culminated in emotions.  Still further, like a human, he could and did perceive, and such perceptions did flower in his brain as concepts, certainly not so wide and deep and recondite as those of humans, but concepts nevertheless.