ld manners, pointing cattle and quail impartially,
shamefully gun-shy, inconsequent, volatile, ignorant, forever paganly
joyous without due cause. For him I should do what no one had been able
to do for me--detain him in that "world of fine fabling" where
everything is true that ought to be; where the earth is a running
course, fascinating in its surprises of open road and tangled hedgerow;
where mere indiscriminate smelling is keenest ecstasy; and where the
fact that robins have eluded one's fleetest rush to-day, by an amazing
and unfair trick of levitation, is not the slightest promise that they
can escape our interested mouthing on the morrow.

Doubtless he would be a remarkably foolish dog in his old age; but I,
growing old beside him, would learn wisely foolish things from his
excellent folly. I knew we should both be happier for it; knew it was
best for us both to prove that my thin white friend had been born
chiefly to display the acute elegance of his bones and the beauty of
hopeful effort.

It was this last that kept him thin. When I took to the road, he
travelled five miles to my every one, circling me widely, ranging far
over the hills in mad dashes, or running straight and swiftly on the
road, vanishing in a white fog of dust. Walking slowly to avoid this, I
would only meet him emerging from a fresh cloud of it with a glad tongue
thrown out to the breeze. Again, there were desperate plunges into
wayside underbrush or down steep ravines, whence I would hear rapid
splashing through a hidden stream and short, plaintive cries to tell
that that wonderful, unseen wood-presence of a thousand provoking scents
had once more cunningly evaded him.

Also did he love to swim stoutly across a field of growing wheat, his
head alone showing above the green waves. And if the wheat were tall, he
still braved it--lost to sight at the bottom. Then one might observe the
mystery of a furrow ploughing itself swiftly across the billows without
visible agency.

When I do not walk, to give countenance to his running, he has a game of
his own. He plays it with an ancient fur cap that he keeps conveniently
stored. The cap represents a prey of considerable dignity which must be
sprung upon and shaken again and again until it is finally disabled.
Then it is to be seized by implacable jaws and swiftly run with about
the yard in a feverish pretence that enemies wish to ravish it from its
captor. Any chance observer is implored to humor