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ILLUSTRATIONS

"HIS DOG" Frontispiece
"ALAS!" Facing p. 192

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"MURPHY"
A MESSAGE TO DOG-LOVERS

I

Yes. He was born in the first week of June, in the year 1906. Quite a
short while ago, as you see--that is, as we men count time--but long
enough, just as a child's life is occasionally long enough, to affect the
lives--ay, more, the characters--of some who claimed to be his betters on
this present earth, with certainties in some dim and distant heaven that
might or might not have a corner here or there for dogs.

His parentage was that of a royal house in purity of strain and length of
pedigree, and he first saw the light in the yard of a mill upon the
river, where the old wheel had groaned for generations or dripped in
silence, according as the water rose or fell, and corn came in to be
ground.

There were others like him in appearance in the yard; on the eyot on
which the mill-buildings stood, gorgeous in many-coloured tiles; round
the dwelling-house, or in a large wired enclosure close by. His master,
the Over-Lord, bred dogs of his kind for the nonce, not necessarily for
profit, but because, with a great heart for dogs, he chose to, claiming
indeed the proud boast that not a single dog of his class walked these
Islands that was not of his strain--and claiming that, moreover, truly.

At one period there might have been counted, in and around this
mill-yard, no less than thirty-eight dogs, young and middle-aged, and all
more or less closely related. But while this number was much above the
average, the congestion that arose thereby was chargeable with the single
unhappy episode in Murphy's life, concerning which he often spoke to me
in after days, and the effect of which he carried to the end. Of this,
however, more later.

Life in the midst of such a company--Irishmen all--necessarily meant a
more or less rough-and-tumble existence, where the strongest had the best
of it, and the weaker ones were knocked out, when the Master was not
there to interfere. Each one had to find his own level by such means as
he could, and thus this great company, or school, of dogs resembled in
many particulars those other schools t