MY DOGS AND OTHERS 253 



excitement, always would wait till rabbit or rat 

 bolted, and then freeze on to it in a twinkling. 

 One of them grabbed a strong old buck rabbit by a 

 hind foot as he moved from under some bushes, 

 and hung on till, after a long tour of the wood, the 

 rabbit was worked back to me. From burrows 

 with fair-sized holes these little dogs would bolt 

 rabbits or drag them out ; and they were demons 

 on rats, which they would follow unerringly through 

 a maze of holes. One of them put in nine and a 

 half hours at a badger. It was the prettiest sight 

 imaginable to see one of these little terriers trotting 

 proudly along by the side of an old retriever, and 

 helping to bring me a rabbit. The little thing 

 always had a look which seemed to say, * We've got 

 it, you see.' Both little terriers met with accidental, 

 but, I am glad to say, instantaneous death, during 

 the work at which they were such gems tragedies 

 of a grub-axe and a spade. The men responsible 

 loved them, but not as I did. Never should I have 

 thought it possible for dogs so to creep into one's 

 heart ; and maybe because I so loved them I lost 

 them. Often in the sweet quiet of night I have 

 lingered by those little grassy graves (over which 

 now as I write daffodils will be making ready their 

 golden trumpets), thinking of those two little dogs, 

 once so full of the suppleness of life so sharp, so 

 shapely, and so sweet now gone irrevocably to the 

 dust and nothingness of death. 



