190 FIELD AND FERN. 



once got under the kitchen- floor_, and gave the Doc- 

 tor two hours of hard digging), he is always ready, 

 as resident professor, to instruct them in the art. A 

 little white bull-terrier, which thinks nothing of a 

 badger three times its weight, is equally troubled 

 with the bump of combativeness, so it stops at home. 

 Eilly was of course ripe for duty ; and even old 

 Shammy was to have a treat. There must have been 

 four more Dandies, Teddy, Tom, and Piper — which 

 latter was Walter's peculiar charge — and a most re- 

 markable fossil called The Dwarf, which never tired 

 in its life. Add to these a black-and-tan English 

 terrier — Nettle — which was there on a visit after its 

 rabbit coursing labours, and followed the Doctor in 

 the most implicit faith over stone and scaur, won- 

 dering what it could all be about. Billy never goes 

 with the hounds, but conducts them with a patronizing 

 " confide in me" air about a mile out of the town_, 

 and then trots back to accompany his master. No 

 dog has a higher sense of his position in the Cabinet, 

 and it is a " moraF to see him come home with the 

 pack, swelling with self-importance if the otter is at 

 the doctor's saddle-bow, or if he is generally satisfied 

 with the sport. In the town he is most popular, and 

 considering the number of houses where he is on 

 visiting and luncheon terms, it is well he can hold 

 his condition as he does. 



^^Only two houy^s and a-half, mind F' said the Doc- 

 tor, before we went to bed ; and at two o'clock pre- 

 cisely he appeared, '^ stern as Ajax' spectre," in his 



