a dog could grasp, Shep knew, and he was busier than a
cranberry-merchant the year around, and the happiest thing on the farm.
Then our folks moved to Mayville, and took him along. He wasn't fitted
for town life at all. He'd lie on the front piazza, and search the
street for cows and sheep, and when one came along he'd stick his sharp
nose through the fence, and whine as if some one was whipping him. In
less than six weeks he bit a baby; in two months he was the most
depraved dog in Mayville, and in three ... he died."

I had no answer for the apologue--not even for the self-condemnatory
tone in which he told it. Presently he rose to go, and said that he
would not be back.

"Don't forget our date at the club this evening," said he, as he passed
out. "Your style of diplomacy always seems to win with these down-East
bankers. Your experience as rob-ee gives you the right handshake and the
subscribed-and-sworn-to look that does their business for 'em every
time. Good-by until then."

Our club was the terminal bud of our growth, and was housed in a
building of which we were enormously proud. It was managed by a steward
imported from New York, whose salary was made large to harmonize with
his manners--that being the only way in which the majority of our
members felt equal to living up to them. So far as money could make a
club, ours was of high rank. There were meat-cooks and pastry-cooks in
incredible numbers, under the command of a French chef, who ruled the
house committee with a rod of iron. We were all members as a matter of
public duty. I have often wondered what the servants, brought from
Eastern cities, thought of it all. To see Bill Trescott and Aleck
Macdonald going in through the great door, noiselessly swung open for
them by an attendant in livery, was a sight to be remembered. The chief
ornament of the club was Cornish, who lived there.

"I want to see Mr. Cornish," said I to the servant who took my overcoat,
that evening.

"Right this way, sir," said he. "Mr. Giddings is with him. He gave
orders for you to be shown up."

Cornish sat at a little round table on which there were some bottles and
glasses. The tipple was evidently ale, and Mr. Giddings was standing
opposite, lifting a glass in one hand and pointing at it with the other,
in evident imitation of the attitude in which the late Mr. Gough loved
to have himself pictured; but the sentiments of the two speakers were
quite different.

"'Turn out