As a playmate Watch was too serious, though he learned more than any stranger would judge him capable of, was a bold, faithful watch-dog, and in his prime a grand fighter, able to whip all the other dogs in the neighborhood.  Comparing him with ourselves, we soon learned that although he could not read books he could read faces, was a good judge of character, always knew what was going on and what we were about to do, and liked to help us.  We could run nearly as fast as he could, see about as far, and perhaps hear as well, but in sense of smell his nose was incomparably better than ours.  One sharp winter morning when the ground was covered with snow, I noticed that when he was yawning and stretching himself after leaving his bed he suddenly caught the scent of something that excited him, went round the corner of the house, and looked intently to the westward across a tongue of land that we called West Bank, eagerly questioning the air with quivering nostrils, and bristling up as though he felt sure that there was something dangerous in that direction and had actually caught sight of it.  Then he ran toward the Bank, and I followed him, curious to see what his nose had discovered.  The top of the Bank commanded a view of the north end of our lake and meadow, and when we got there we saw an Indian hunter with a long spear, going from one muskrat cabin to another, approaching cautiously, careful to make no noise, and then suddenly thrusting his spear down through the house.  If well aimed, the spear went through the poor beaver rat as it lay cuddled up in the snug nest it had made for itself in the fall with so much far-seeing care, and when the hunter felt the spear quivering, he dug down the mossy hut with his tomahawk and secured his prey,—­the flesh for food, and the skin to sell for a dime or so.  This was a clear object lesson on dogs’ keenness of scent.  That Indian was more than half a mile away across a wooded ridge.  Had the hunter been a white man, I suppose Watch would not have noticed him.

When he was about six or seven years old, he not only became cross, so that he would do only what he liked, but he fell on evil ways, and was accused by the neighbors who had settled around us of catching and devouring whole broods of chickens, some of them only a day or two out of the shell.  We never imagined he would do anything so grossly undoglike.  He never did at home.  But several of the neighbors declared over and over again that they had caught him in the act, and insisted that he must be shot.  At last, in spite of tearful protests, he was condemned and executed.  Father examined the poor fellow’s stomach in search of sure evidence, and discovered the heads of eight chickens that he had devoured at his last meal.  So poor Watch was killed simply because his taste for chickens was too much like our own.  Think of the millions of squabs that preaching, praying men and women kill and eat, with all sorts of other animals great and small, young and old, while