192 DOGS 



one '^ shamefaced little terrier " who would sneak 

 away and hide himself at the slightest reproof, and 

 could only be drawn out of his retreat by the 

 sound of a meat-chopper when the dinner hour was 

 past and hunger had got the better of him. And 

 he passed a broken night of great anxiety when 

 another little fellow had dropped behind a riding 

 party and gone astray on the moors. When I get 

 on Scott and his dogs I have mounted a hobby, 

 and I could go on scribbling for ever. They crop 

 up in all his novels and poems, and the scenes and 

 the characters are all taken from the life. Lufra, 

 of ^'The Lady of the Lake," is one of his fleetest 

 greyhounds ; Maida is the Bevis of Sir Henry Lee 

 in '^Woodstock," and he thrusts his muzzle, in 

 " Ivanhoe," into the hand of Cedric the Saxon in 

 his hall of Rotherwood. Wasp, who followed the 

 fortunes of Bertram in ^^ Guy Mannering/' we know 

 well ; and Mustards and Peppers were as plentiful 

 about the doors of Abbotsford as at Dandie 

 Dinmont's homestead at Charlieshope. Then the 

 comical situations are as true to realities as any 

 of the Scotch pictures of Sir David Wilkie ; and 

 if you have not laughed at ^'The Blind Fiddler," 

 or '^The Penny Wedding," the sooner you do so 

 the better. But my hobby is bolting with me again, 

 and I must pull up. 



Scott would have been the man to consult about 

 the best kind of dog to make a companion of, but 

 Scott is gone. I have kept a good many sorts 

 myself, from deerhounds stately as Maida, down to 



