ow taught me to
handle a falcon, and I could help my uncle to teach my friend the art.

I went out shooting but seldom, by reason that Ann loved it not ever
after she had hit one of the best hounds in the pack with her arrow;
and my uncle must have been well affected to her to forgive such a shot,
inasmuch as the dogs were only less near his heart than his closest kin.
They had to make up to him for much that he lacked, and when he stood
in their midst he saw round him, yelping and barking on four legs, well
nigh all that he had thought most noteworthy from his childhood up. They
bore names, indeed, of no more than one or two syllables, but each had
its sense. They were for the most part the beginning of some word which
reminded him of a thing he cared to remember. First he had, in sport,
named some of them after the metrical feet of Latin verse, which had
been but ill friends of his in his school days, and in his kennel
there was a Troch, Iamb, Spond and Dact, whose full names were Trochee,
Iambus, Spondee and Dactyl. Now Spond was the greatest and heaviest
of the wolfhounds; Anap, rightly Anapaest, was a slender and swift
greyhound; and whereas he found this pastime of names good sport he
carried it further. Thus it came to pass that the witless creatures who
shared his loneliness were reminders of many pleasant things. One of
a pair of fleet bloodhounds which were ever leashed together was named
Nich, and the other Syn, in memory that he had been betrothed on the
festival of Saint Nicodemus and wedded on Saint Synesius' day. A noble
hound called Salve, or as we should say Welcome, spoke to him of the
birth of his first born, and every dog in like manner had a name of some
signification; thus Ann took it not at all amiss that he should call a
fine young setter after her name. There had long been a Gred, short for
Margaret.

Nevertheless we spent much more time in seeing the sick to whom my aunt
sent us on her errands, than we did in shooting or heron-hawking. She
ever packed the little basket we were to carry with her own hands, and
there was never a physic which she did not mingle, nor a garment she had
not made choice of, nor a victual she had not judged fit for each one it
was sent to.

Thus many a time our souls ached to see want and pain lying in darksome
chambers on wretched straw, though we earned thanks and true joy when we
saw that healing and ease followed in our steps. And whatever seemed to
me the most