A Little Dog-Comedy 



till the play was over. Through the hay-field they 

 led me, across the pasture lot, and over a wall at 

 the foot of a half-cultivated hillside. Peering 

 through a chink of the wall, I saw Nip dancing 

 and barking at a rock-pile, and between two of 

 the rocks was a woodchuck cornered. 



For weeks Nip had been laying siege to that 

 same woodchuck, which had a den on the hillside 

 in a patch of red clover, most convenient to some 

 garden truck. A dozen times, to my knowledge, 

 the little dog had rushed the rascal; but as Nip 

 was fat and the chuck cunning, the chase always 

 ended the same way, one comedian diving into the 

 earth with a defiant whistle, leaving the other to 

 scratch or bark impotently outside. 



Any reasonable dog would soon have tired of 

 such an uneven game; but a terrier is not a rea- 

 sonable dog. At first Nip tried his best to drag 

 Don into the affair; but the old setter had long 

 since passed the heyday of youth, when any kind 

 of an adventure could interest him. In the pres- 

 ence of grouse or woodcock he would still become 

 splendidly animate, and then the years would slip 

 from him as a garment; but to stupid ground- 

 hogs and all such "small deer" he was loftily in- 

 different. He was an aristocrat, of true-blue blood, 

 and I had trained him to let all creatures save his 

 proper game severely alone. So, after following 



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