tremendously amused, and sometimes wonderful to 

 relate really admiring him. He was extraordinarily 

 silent ; while the others barked at nothing, howled 

 when lonely, and yelled when frightened or hurt, 

 the odd puppy did none of these things ; in fact, he 

 began to show many of Jess's peculiarities ; he hardly 

 ever barked, and when he did it was not a wild excited 

 string of barks but little suppressed muffled noises, 

 half bark and half growl, and just one or two at a 

 time ; and he did not appear to be afraid of anything, 

 so one could not tell what he would do if he was. 



One day we had an amusing instance of his nerve : 

 one of the oxen, sniffing about the outspan, caught 

 sight of him all alone, and filled with curiosity came 

 up to examine him, as a hulking silly old tame ox will 

 do. It moved towards him slowly and heavily with its 

 ears spread wide and its head down, giving great big 

 sniffs at this new object, trying to make out what it 

 was. " The Rat " stood quite still with his stumpy tail 

 cocked up and his head a little on one side, and when 

 the huge ox's nose was about a foot from him he 

 gave one of those funny abrupt little barks. It was 

 as if the object had suddenly * gone off ' like a cracker, 

 and the ox nearly tumbled over with fright ; but 

 even when the great mountain of a thing gave a clumsy 

 plunge round and trotted off, " The Rat " was not 

 the least frightened ; he was startled, and his tail and 

 ears flickered for a second, but stiffened up again 

 instantly, and with another of those little barks he 

 took a couple of steps forward and cocked his head 

 on the other side. That was his way. 



60 



