He gave us a look out of those eyes of his, so like the eyes of a mild
eagle, and said abruptly:  “What do you say to this, then?.....  I was out
in the dog-days last year with this fellow of mine, looking for Osmunda,
and stayed some days in a village—­never mind the name.  Coming back one
evening from my tramp, I saw some boys stoning a mealy-coloured dog.   I
went up and told the young devils to stop it.   They only looked at me in
the injured way boys do, and one of them called out, ‘It’s mad, guv’nor!’
I told them to clear off, and they took to their heels.   The dog followed
me.   It was a young, leggy, mild looking mongrel, cross—­I should
say—­between a brown retriever and an Irish terrier.   There was froth
about its lips, and its eyes were watery; it looked indeed as if it might
be in distemper.   I was afraid of infection for this fellow of mine, and
whenever it came too close shooed it away, till at last it slunk off
altogether.   Well, about nine o’clock, when I was settling down to write
by the open window of my sitting-room—­still daylight, and very quiet and
warm—­there began that most maddening sound, the barking of an unhappy
dog.   I could do nothing with that continual ‘Yap yap!’ going on, and it
was too hot to shut the window; so I went out to see if I could stop it. 
The men were all at the pub, and the women just finished with their
gossip; there was no sound at all but the continual barking of this dog,
somewhere away out in the fields.   I travelled by ear across three
meadows, till I came on a hay-stack by a pool of water.   There was the
dog sure enough—­the same mealy-coloured mongrel, tied to a stake,
yapping, and making frantic little runs on a bit of rusty chain; whirling
round and round the stake, then standing quite still, and shivering.   I
went up and spoke to it, but it backed into the hay-stack, and there it
stayed shrinking away from me, with its tongue hanging out.   It had been
heavily struck by something on the head; the cheek was cut, one eye
half-closed, and an ear badly swollen.   I tried to get hold of it, but
the poor thing was beside itself with fear.   It snapped and flew round so
that I had to give it up, and sit down with this fellow here beside me,
to try and quiet it—­a strange dog, you know, will generally form his
estimate of you from the way it sees you treat another dog.   I had to sit
there quite half an hour before it would let me go up to it, pull the
stake out, and lead it away.   The poor beast, though it was so feeble
from the blows it had received, was still half-frantic, and I didn’t dare
to touch it; and all the time I took good care that this fellow here
didn’t come too near.   Then came the question what was to be done.   There
was no vet, of course, and I’d no place to put it except my sitting-room,
which didn’t belong to me.   But, looking at its battered head, and its
half-mad eyes, I thought:  ’No trusting you with these bumpkins; you’ll
have to come in here for the night!’ Well, I got it in, and heaped two or