ry first night at the cottage. I had fallen asleep
in the kitchen, tired out after all the excitement of the day and the
long walks I had had, when something woke me with a start. It was
somebody scratching at the window, trying to get in.

Well, I ask you, I ask any dog, what would you have done in my place?
Ever since I was old enough to listen, mother had told me over and over
again what I must do in a case like this. It is the A B C of a dog's
education. 'If you are in a room and you hear anyone trying to get in,'
mother used to say, 'bark. It may be someone who has business there, or
it may not. Bark first, and inquire afterwards. Dogs were made to be
heard and not seen.'

I lifted my head and yelled, I have a good, deep voice, due to a hound
strain in my pedigree, and at the public-house, when there was a full
moon, I have often had people leaning out of the windows and saying
things all down the street. I took a deep breath and let it go.

'Man!' I shouted. 'Bill! Man! Come quick! Here's a burglar getting in!'

Then somebody struck a light, and it was the man himself. He had come
in through the window.

He picked up a stick, and he walloped me. I couldn't understand it. I
couldn't see where I had done the wrong thing. But he was the boss, so
there was nothing to be said.

If you'll believe me, that same thing happened every night. Every
single night! And sometimes twice or three times before morning. And
every time I would bark my loudest and the man would strike a light and
wallop me. The thing was baffling. I couldn't possibly have mistaken
what mother had said to me. She said it too often for that. Bark! Bark!
Bark! It was the main plank of her whole system of education. And yet,
here I was, getting walloped every night for doing it.

I thought it out till my head ached, and finally I got it right. I
began to see that mother's outlook was narrow. No doubt, living with a
man like master at the public-house, a man without a trace of shyness
in his composition, barking was all right. But circumstances alter
cases. I belonged to a man who was a mass of nerves, who got the jumps
if you spoke to him. What I had to do was to forget the training I had
had from mother, sound as it no doubt was as a general thing, and to
adapt myself to the needs of the particular man who had happened to buy
me. I had tried mother's way, and all it had brought me was walloping,
so now I would think for myself.

So next night, w