Let me be free from the delusion that it is possible to raise them above this level, or in other words to add an inch to their mental stature.  I have nothing to forgive Jack after all.  And so in spite of everything Jack was suffered at home and accompanied me again and again in my walks abroad; and there were more blank days, or if not altogether blank, seeing that there was Jack himself to be observed and thought about, they were not the kind of days I had counted on having.  My only consolation was that Jack failed to capture more than one out of every hundred, or perhaps five hundred, of the creatures he hunted, and that I was even able to save a few of these.  But I could not help admiring his tremendous energy and courage, especially in cliff-climbing when we visited the headlands—­those stupendous masses and lofty piles of granite which rise like castles built by giants of old.  He would almost make me tremble for his life when, after climbing on to some projecting rock, he would go to the extreme end and look down over it as if it pleased him to watch the big waves break in foam on the black rocks a couple of hundred feet below.  But it was not the big green waves or any sight in nature that drew him—­he sniffed and sniffed and wriggled and twisted his black nose, and raised and depressed his ears as he sniffed, and was excited solely because the upward currents of air brought him tidings of living creatures that lurked in the rocks below—­badger and fox and rabbit.  One day when quitting one of these places, on looking up I spied Jack standing on the summit of a precipice about seventy-five feet high.  Jack saw me and waved his tail, and then started to come straight down to me!  From the top a faint rabbit track was, visible winding downwards to within twenty-four feet of the ground; the rest was a sheer wall of rock.  Down he dashed, faster and faster as he got to where the track ended, and then losing his footing he fell swiftly to the earth, but luckily dropped on a deep spongy turf and was not hurt.  After witnessing this reckless act I knew how he had come by those frightful bruises on a former occasion.  He had doubtless fallen a long way down a cliff and had been almost crushed on the stones.  But the lesson was lost on Jack; he would have it that where rabbits and foxes went he could go!

After all, the chief pleasure those blank bad days had for me was the thought that Jack was as happy as he could well be.  But it was not enough to satisfy me, and by and by it came into my mind that I had been long enough at that place.  It was hard to leave Jack, who had put himself so entirely in my hands, and trusted me so implicitly.  But—­the weather was keeping very bad:  was there ever known such a June as this of 1907?  So wet and windy and cold!  Then, too, the bloom had gone from the furze.  It was, I remembered, to witness this chief loveliness that I came.  Looking on the wide moor and far-off boulder-strewn hills and seeing how rusty the bushes were, I quoted—­