THE BARKING DOG. 73 



stars, he barked at the clouds ; and when the darkness was 

 so deep and black as to obscure even the clouds, he barked 

 at the darkness. Through all the long night he barked, 

 barked, barked ! It was not a bark of defiance, nor of alarm, 

 nor of astonishment, nor of warning. It was not a note of 

 danger, breaking the hush of midnight, saying that thieves 

 were abroad, that murder was on its stealthy mission, 

 or that the wolf was on the walk. It was a senseless, 

 monotonous, idiotic bow, wow I Nothing more, nothing 

 less. 



- " All Monday night, as I lay tossing upon a bed of pain, 

 when fever was coursing through my veins, and every pulse 

 went plunging like a steam engine from the gorged heart 

 to every extremity, and my brain was like molten lead, I 

 heard that terrible bark ! It was my evil genius, my des- 

 tiny. It mingled in every feverish dream, became the 

 embodiment of every vision. I measured the periods of its 

 recurrence by the clock that stands in the corner of our 

 room. I counted the tickings of its silence, and I counted 

 the tickings of its continuance. Every swing of the pendu- 

 lum became a distinct period of existence. Minutes, hours, 

 were nothing. Forty-four tickings, I said, and that bow, 

 wow ! will be heard again 1 Fifteen tickings, I said, and 

 it will cease ; and so I went on until the hours seemed to 

 spread out into a boundless ocean of time. That dog some- 

 how became mixed up with that old family clock that stood 

 in the corner. I heard him scratching and climbing up 

 among the weights, writhing and twisting his way among 



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