An Etcher's Voyage of Discovery. 333 



choly building, enough to make one miserable to look at 

 it, and think that any one could be condemned to live 

 in it. 



When I came near this chateau, the twilight was 

 already very far advanced, and I landed to eat a little 

 supper. The land was bare of trees, a desolate expanse 

 of uncultivated soil, where a herd grazed in the distance. 

 Suddenly I wondered not to see Tom galloping towards 

 me, as he generally had done at these improvised meal- 

 times on the shore. I called and whistled for him long 

 and loudly, but in vain, and during all that remained of 

 the voyage I saw his affectionate face no more. This 

 caused me some anxiety, and rather spoiled my pleasure, 

 but I trusted that he would find his way home again. 

 On my return I made inquiries, and found that he had 

 first returned to the inn at Gueugnon, after losing me 

 in the tortuous channels of the river, and stayed at the 

 inn till dejeuner the next morning. After his meal he 

 suddenly disappeared, and the innkeeper could give no 

 further account of him. The same evening, however, 

 he arrived at my house, a distance of fifty kilometres, 

 where he rushed to his kennel at once, and fell down in 

 it like lead, exhausted. The next day he was all right 

 again. But it was a severe run, for no doubt he had 

 made the fifty kilometres a hundred, and followed the 

 river's brink in the thick underwood ; often, I dare say, 

 swimming against the stream. I never knew such a 

 persistent swimmer. He never had the sense to follow 

 the canoe on the bank, but would always swim behind 

 it, however cold the water or long the distance. It was 



