oking old grey-beard, with an intellectual face, high
forehead and all that.

'I'm not used to it,' he said, looking at his blisters.

'Been burying a dog? Horrid job that!--favourite, I'm afraid.'

He seemed in two minds whether to shut me up and move off, but he
didn't.

'Yes,' he said; 'it's cut me up horribly. I never condemned a creature
to death before. And dogs seem to know.'

'Ah! They're pretty uncanny,' I said, for I wasn't going to let on, of
course, that I had seen him.

'I wouldn't have done it but for the War,' he muttered; 'but she stole
eggs, poor thing; you couldn't break her of it. She ate three times as
much as any other dog, too, and in spite of it was always a perfect
skeleton--something wrong inside. The sort of dog, you know, no one
would take, or treat decently if they did. Bad habits of every kind,
poor dear. I bought her because she was being starved. But she trusted
me, that's why I feel so like a murderer. When the Vet and I were in the
yard discussing her, she knew there was something wrong--she kept
looking at my face. I very nearly went back on it; only, having got him
out on purpose, I was ashamed to. We brought her down here, and on the
way she found the remains of a rabbit about a week old--that was one of
her accomplishments--bringing me the most fearful offal. She brought it
up wagging her tail--as much as to say: 'See--I _am_ some use!' The Vet
tied her up here and took his gun; she wagged her tail at that, too; and
I ran away. When the shot came, my own little spaniel fawned on
me--they _are_ uncanny--licked me all over, never was so gushing,
seemed saying: 'What awful power you have! I do love you! You wouldn't
do that to me, would you? We've got rid of that other one, though!' When
I came back here to bury the poor thing, and saw her lying on her side
so still, I made a real fool of myself. I was patting her an hour ago,
talking to her as if she were a human being. Judas!'"

Mallinson put his pipe back into his mouth. "Just think of it!" he said:
"The same creatures who are blowing each other to little bits all the
time, bombing babies, roasting fellow creatures in the air and cheering
while they roast, working day and night to inflict every imaginable kind
of horror on other men exactly like themselves--these same chaps are
capable of feeling like that about shooting a wretched ill cur of a dog,
no good to anybody. There are more things in Heaven and Earth--!" And he
reli