I mounted her, she always chose the moment of
my setting one foot in the stirrup, for bolting
off with all her speed. I had to acquire the art
of flying after her into the saddle, and, for want
of an education at Astley's, was continually being
laid prostrate at patients' doors. Once when
my foot had caught in the stirrup, I was dragged
before a row of patients' windows after the
manner of Hector. But the heart of that Pegasus
was sounder than her feet. We often exchanged
little endearments, and I am confident that it
was her intention to oblige me by that over
promptitude of service. We were each of us
professionally eager to get on.

The dog Squeak was my last friend on all
fours. Upon his being shot, I married. He
grew to be the handsomest, and busiest, and
merriest dog in the world. The quickness of
his sympathy met every shade upon the face he
watched. In-doors, his mind was his master's;
out of doors, he was his own master, and it was
for him always to appoint, and for nobody to
dictate, whether he should be out of doors or
in. As a puppy, he was a devourer of literature,
and ate most of the corners from my books
and journals. So he became wise. As to his
other meals, he was not to dine with me,
forsooth! A tyrannical housekeeper, if he were
heard to be near me at dinner-time, dragged him
away by the neck. Very well. He had only to
take care that he was not heard. He announced
his arrival by a sly scratch at the door, audible
by no ears beyond mine, and ate his meat, as still
as a stuffed dog—which he always was when he
had finished. He was not to sleep of nights
at the foot of my bed, forsooth! A tyrannical
housekeeper resolved to lock him out. Very
well. He had only to scramble up to the
kitchen roof, whence it was an easy leap into
my bedroom through a window-pane. He was a
bold dog, who did not regard shut windows as
any obstacles to his advancement. Before I
understood him well, I shut him up once or twice
in a room, when I did not wish him to go out
with me; but as he always came after me with a
flying leap through a clatter of glass, and broke
the window-frame itself sometimes, he had his
way left open for him. He was a right fellow
to make his way in the world. The bedroom
window I allowed to be mended seven times.
Money was spent on glaziers' bills, and walking-
stick on admonition. Soon tired of beating my
dog, I allowed him to beat me. He was still
remorselessly to be locked out; I had therefore
the prudence to leave him the seventh smash
in my window as an entrance hole. The only
difference made by the housekeeper's discipline
was that the dog had a run in the mud every
night to give him a new relish for his corner of
the counterpane. As for tying him up, nobody
thought of that. He was such an incarnation
of determined freedom, that nobody short of a
King of Naples could have thought of putting
him in chains.

Once, indeed, he was in bondage; caught in
a poacher's wire during his independent rambles
through adjoining game preserves, where
trespassers were rigorously to be prosecuted and all
dogs were to be shot. We lost our comrade for two
days, and then he came home, dirty, starved, and
haggard, with the wire about his neck; he had
broken it after some thirty hours of struggling.
But there was a twinkle of roguery in his eye
even then, and he was off to the preserves
again, certainly none the later for his lesson.

We had a farm-yard near us, from which my
friend upon all fours, when he stayed at home,
would hunt me up a fowl, or the old cock himself
sometimes, fetching in the indignant bird
unhurt between his teeth, and depositing him in
triumph at my feet upon the study floor. What
man could quarrel with his generous and fearless
nature? He never feared and never hurt any
one in his life—except some other dog who
challenged him to fight. He simply disregarded
pain. If a dog, not smaller and weaker than
himself, insulted him, he fought and would fight.
Beat him who might, he meant to have his fight
out, and he always finished it to his own
satisfaction.  For the weak, he had heroic tenderness.
A little kitten used to nestle on his
clean warm coat when he lay sleeping, and
regarded him as a feather bed. If he awoke,
and found the kitten asleep on his back, he
would lie still, like a kind-hearted gentleman.
The sight of a bone itself would not induce him
to leap suddenly up and throw her off.

Yet he liked bones. He has disgraced me by
following me out of a patient's home with a
large piece of bacon in his mouth. He was bold
enough, when tempted by the savour of a
knuckle of veal boiling in the pot, to put his
fore-feet on the side of a patient's kitchen fire
and jerk the meat out of the pot upon the
kitchen floor. And he made friends with those
whom he thus persecuted. To some he boldly
gave his confidence, visiting at their houses on
his own account, not as a mean haunter of back
doors, but as a friend of the family. If he
liked people, he visited them fairly, walked into
their drawing-rooms, and sat down with them
for half an hour or so, by their fireside. He was the
cleanest of true gentlemen, for he swam twice a
day across a broad and rapid river; he was not
the dog to let himself be conveyed with me
ignominiously in the ferry-boat over the water
that ran through the middle of my rounds. Of
course there could be only one end to the life of
such a dog. He was shot by a gamekeeper.

Now ready, price 5s. 6d., bound in cloth,
THE SECOND VOLUME,
Including Nos. 27 to 50, and the Christmas Double
Number, of ALL THE YEAR ROUND.