his work was, "Has any one come for Moufflou?" For ten days no one
came, and their first terrors lulled a little.

On the eleventh morning, a feast-day, on which Tasso was not going to
his labors in the Cascine, there came a person, with a foreign look, who
said the words they so much dreaded to hear: "Has the poodle that you
sold to an English gentleman come back to you?"

Yes: his English master claimed him!

The servant said that they had missed the dog in Rome a few days after
buying him and taking him there; that he had been searched for in vain,
and that his master had thought it possible the animal might have found
his way back to his old home: there had been stories of such wonderful
sagacity in dogs: anyhow, he had sent for him on the chance; he was
himself back on the Lung' Arno. The servant pulled from his pocket a
chain, and said his orders were to take the poodle away at once: the
little sick gentleman had fretted very much about his loss.

Tasso heard in a very agony of despair. To take Moufflou away now would
be to kill Lolo,--Lolo so feeble still, so unable to understand, so
passionately alive to every sight and sound of Moufflou, lying for hours
together motionless with his hand buried in the poodle's curls, saying
nothing, only smiling now and then, and murmuring a word or two in
Moufflou's ear.

"The dog did come home," said Tasso, at length, in a low voice; "angels
must have shown him the road, poor beast! From Rome! Only to think of
it, from Rome! And he a dumb thing! I tell you he is here, honestly: so
will you not trust me just so far as this? Will you let me go with you
and speak to the English lord before you take the dog away? I have a
little brother sorely ill--"

He could not speak more, for tears that choked his voice.

At last the messenger agreed so far as this: Tasso might go first and
see the master, but he would stay here and have a care they did not
spirit the dog away,--"for a thousand francs were paid for him," added
the man, "and a dog that can come all the way from Rome by itself must
be an uncanny creature."

Tasso thanked him, went up-stairs, was thankful that his mother was at
mass and could not dispute with him, took the ten hundred-franc notes
from the old oak _cassone_, and with them in his breast-pocket walked
out into the air. He was but a poor working lad, but he had made up his
mind to do an heroic act. He went straightway to the hotel where the
English _milord_