was a cruel world, a world in
which nothing but inevitable loss awaited one, in which one was
foredoomed to disappointment; a world in which one was leaf by leaf
stripped bare.

I could not bear to look at his closed rooms, but turned my head aside
as I passed them. Disconsolate Kerry barked at my passing step, and
pawed frantically at the window, but I made no effort to release him.
What comfort had I for the faithful creature, deserted by what he most
loved?

His dismal outcries rasped my nerves raw; it was exactly as if the dog
howled for the dead. And that John Flint was dead I had no reasonable
cause to doubt. _He was dead because Slippy McGee was alive_. That
thought drove me as with a whip out into the garden, for as black an
hour as I have ever lived through--the sort of hour that leaves a scar
upon the soul. The garden was very still, steeped and drowsing in the
bright clear sunlight; only the bees were busy there, calling from
flower-door to flower-door, and sometimes a vireo's sweet whistle
fluted through the leaves. Pitache lay on John Flint's porch, and
dozed with his head between his paws; Judge Mayne's Panch sat on the
garden fence, and washed his black face, and watched the little dog
out of his emerald eyes. All along the fences the scarlet salvia shot
up its vivid spikes, and when the wind stirred, the red petals fell
from it like drops of blood.

It seemed to me incongruous and cruel that one should suffer on such a
day; grief is for gray days; but the sunlight mocks sorrow, the soft
wind makes light of it. I was out of tune with this harmony, as I
walked up and down with my rosary in my hand. I knew that every flying
minute took him farther and farther away from me and from hope and
happiness and honor, and brought him nearer and nearer to the
whirlpool and the pit. I beat my hands together and the crucifix cut
into my palms. I walked more rapidly, as if I could get away from the
misery within. My heart ached intolerably, a mist dimmed my sight, and
a hideous choking lump rose in my throat; and it seemed to me that,
old and futile and alone, I was set down, not in my garden, but in the
midst of the abomination of desolation.

Through this aching desolation Kerry's cries stabbed like
knife-thrusts.... And then little Pitache lifted his head, cocked a
listening ear and an alert eye, perked up his black nose, thumped an
expressive tail, and barked. It was a welcoming bark; Kerry, hearing
it, stiff