his
primitive wild yearnings: He was like a man, naturally polygamous,
married to one loved woman.

It was surely not for nothing that Rover is dog's most common name, and
would be ours, but for our too tenacious fear of losing something, to
admit, even to ourselves, that we are hankering. There was a man who
said: Strange that two such queerly opposite qualities as courage and
hypocrisy are the leading characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon! But is not
hypocrisy just a product of tenacity, which is again the lower part of
courage? Is not hypocrisy but an active sense of property in one's good
name, the clutching close of respectability at any price, the feeling
that one must not part, even at the cost of truth, with what he has
sweated so to gain? And so we Anglo-Saxons will not answer to the name
of Rover, and treat our dogs so that they, too, hardly know their
natures.

The history of his one wandering, for which no respectable reason can be
assigned, will never, of course, be known. It was in London, of an
October evening, when we were told he had slipped out and was not
anywhere. Then began those four distressful hours of searching for that
black needle in that blacker bundle of hay. Hours of real dismay and
suffering for it is suffering, indeed, to feel a loved thing swallowed up
in that hopeless haze of London streets. Stolen or run over? Which was
worst? The neighbouring police stations visited, the Dog's Home
notified, an order of five hundred "Lost Dog" bills placed in the
printer's hands, the streets patrolled! And then, in a lull snatched for
food, and still endeavouring to preserve some aspect of assurance, we
heard the bark which meant: "Here is a door I cannot open!" We hurried
forth, and there he was on the top doorstep--busy, unashamed, giving no
explanations, asking for his supper; and very shortly after him came his
five hundred "Lost Dog" bills. Long I sat looking at him that night
after my companion had gone up, thinking of the evening, some years
before, when there followed as that shadow of a spaniel who had been lost
for eleven days. And my heart turned over within me. But he! He was
asleep, for he knew not remorse.

Ah! and there was that other time, when it was reported to me, returning
home at night, that he had gone out to find me; and I went forth again,
disturbed, and whistling his special call to the empty fields. Suddenly
out of the darkness I heard a rushing, and he came