Trulove (Paris quadrifolia) has its four leaves
set together in the form of a truelove or engaged
lovers' knot. These knots are seen on quarterings
of the wife's with the husband's arms.

PINCHER ASTRAY.

HE was not handsome: at least in the common
acceptation of the term. He had a speckly
muzzle and a hanging jowl, and rather watery
eyes, and short crop ears. His legs were horribly
bowed, and his tail curled over his back, like the
end of a figure of nine. He was a morose beast,
and of most uncertain temper. He would rush
out to a stranger at the gate with every
demonstration of welcome, would leap up and bark
round him, and then would run behind and bite
him in the calves. He was the terror of the
tradespeople: he loathed the butcher; he had a
deadly hatred for the fishmonger's boy; and,
when I complained to the post-office of the non-
receipt in due course of a letter from my aunt's
legal adviser advising me to repair at once to the
old lady's death-bed (owing to which non-receipt
I was cut out of my aunt's will), I was answered
that "the savage character of my dog—a
circumstance with which the department could not
interfere—prevented the letter-carrier from the
due performance of his functions after
nightfall." Still I loved Pincher—still I love him!
What though my trousers-ends were frayed into
hanging strips by his teeth; what though my
slippers are a mass of chewed pulp; what though
he has towzled all the corners of the manuscript
of my work on Logarithms—shall I reproach
him now that he is lost to me? Never!

I saw him last, three mornings ago, leisurely
straying round the garden with the strap of the
baby's shoe hanging out of his mouth, and with
a knowing wag of his tail, as much as to show
me how he was enjoying himself. I
remonstrated with him on the shoe question, and he
seemed somewhat touched for a moment; but
suddenly catching sight of a predatory cat on
the wall, he galloped off without further parley.
I watched the cat scuttle up a tree; I heard
Pincher growling angrily at its base; the noise
of the milkman's boots scrunching the gravel
attracted his attention. He darted off, and was
lost to me for ever. There was a fiendish grin
on the housemaid's face when she announced to
me that Pincher wasn't nowhere to be found.
Visions of henceforth unworried stocking-heels,
unsnapped-at ankles, rose before that damsel's
mind as she broke the news; and she smiled
as she said they'd looked everywheres they had,
and nothin' wasn't to be seen. I was not crushed
by the intelligence. I knew my dog's extensive
visiting-list, and thought that finding he had
overstayed his time, he had probably accepted
the friendly hospitality of half a kennel, and was
then engaged in baying the moon, and
conducing to the sleeplessness of a neighbourhood
unaccustomed to his vocal powers. But, as I
lay in bed in the morning, I missed the various
little dramas—the principal characters played
by Pincher and the tradespeople—of which I
had long been the silent audience. The butcher's
boy—a fierce and beefy youth, who openly defied
the dog, and waved him off with hurlings of his
basket and threatenings of his feet, accompanied
by growls of "Git out, yer beast!"—now entered
silently; the baker's apprentice, a mild and
farinaceous lad—who proffered to Pincher the
raspings of black loaves, and usually endeavoured
to propitiate his enemy by addressing him as
"Poor fellow!"—now entered silently; the
fishmonger—who generally made one wild scuttle
from the garden-gate to the kitchen-entrance,
and upon whose track Pincher usually hung
as the wolves hung upon Mazeppa's—now walked
slowly up the path, and whistled. Then I knew
that Pincher was gone indeed!

I engaged the services of an unintelligible
crier, and had a description of my dog
bellowed round the neighbourhood. I brought
the printing art into play, to portray Pincher's
various attributes, and all the palings and
posts within the circle of two miles burst out
with an eruption of placards, of which the
words "Lost" and "Dog" were, without the
aid of a powerful microscope, the only legible
portion. I concocted an advertisement for the
Times newspaper. I patiently waited the result
of these various schemes. They had results, I
allow. I received at least twenty letters from
sympathising persons, who stated that in the
event of not recovering my lost favourite, they
were in a position to provide another in his
place. I suppose that on the evening of the day
on which the Times issued the advertisement,
at least five-and-twenty pairs of boots had
printed themselves off on my dining-room drugget,
which, being red in colour and fluffy in
texture, is singularly capable of retaining a clear
impression. The boots, in every instance,
belonged to short-haired stably gentlemen in large
white overcoats, from the inner pockets of which
they produced specimens of dogs—ugly and
morose indeed, but none of them my Pincher.

I need not say that my intimate friends came
out nobly under these circumstances. Jephson,
who wore check trousers of a vivid pattern
which had always aroused Pincher's ire, thanked
fortune that "the infernal beast was got rid of
somehow." Pooley, who, labouring under a
belief that all dogs were intended for swimmers,
had once tried to throw Pincher into the
Hampstead ponds, and had his hand bitten to the
bone for his pains, hoped that "the brute had
been made into sausages." Blinkhorn, who was
of a facetious turn, was sure that Pincher had
been sewn up in the skin of some deceased dog
of fabulous beauty, and sold by a man in Regent-
street to some old dowager. Hallmarke was
the only one who gave me the least consolation.
"Perhaps he's been picked up by some benevolent
person," he said, "and sent to the Home.
Go to the Home and see." "The Home? what
Home?" I asked. "For lost dogs, at Holloway.
Go and see if he's there."

On further sifting this somewhat vague
information, I found that there was a place where