calls, and low mysterious notes, as of insects and corncrakes, and frogs chirping and of grasshopper warblers—­sounds like wind in the dry sedges.  And there are also sweet and beautiful songs; but it is very quiet world where creatures move about subtly, on wings, on polished scales, on softly padded feet—­rabbits, foxes, stoats, weasels, and voles and birds and lizards and adders and slow-worms, also beetles and dragon-flies.  Many are at enmity with each other, but on account of their quietude there is no disturbance, no outcry and rushing into hiding.  And having acquired this habit from them I am able to see and be with them.  The sitting bird, the frolicking rabbit, the basking adder—­they are as little disturbed at my presence as the butterfly that drops down close to my feet to sun his wings on a leaf or frond and makes me hold my breath at the sight of his divine colour, as if he had just fluttered down from some brighter realm in the sky.  Think of a dog in this world, intoxicated with the odours of so many wild creatures, dashing and splashing through bogs and bushes!  It is ten times worse than a bull in a china-shop.  The bull can but smash a lot of objects made of baked clay; the dog introduces a mad panic in a world of living intelligent beings, a fairy realm of exquisite beauty.  They scuttle away and vanish into hiding as if a deadly wind had blown over the earth and swept them out of existence.  Only the birds remain—­they can fly and do not fear for their own lives, but are in a state of intense anxiety about their eggs and young among the bushes which he is dashing through or exploring.

I had good reason, then, to congratulate myself on Jack’s surly behaviour on our first meeting.  Then, a few days later, a curious thing happened.  Jack was discovered one morning in his kennel, and when spoken to came or rather dragged himself out, a most pitiable object.  He was horribly bruised and sore all over; his bones appeared to be all broken; he was limp and could hardly get on his feet, and in that miserable condition he continued for some three days.

At first we thought he had been in a big fight—­he was inclined that way, his master said—­but we could discover no tooth marks or lacerations, nothing but bruises.  Perhaps, we said, he had fallen into the hands of some cruel person in one of the distant moorland farms, who had tied him up, then thrashed him with a big stick, and finally turned him loose to die on the moor or crawl home if he could.  His master looked so black at this that we said no more about it.  But Jack was a wonderfully tough dog, all gristle I think, and after three days of lying there like a dead dog he quickly recovered, though I’m quite sure that if his injuries had been distributed among any half-dozen pampered or pet dogs it would have killed them all.  A morning came when the kennel was empty:  Jack was not dead—­he was well again, and, as usual, out.