A Dog in Exile. 61 
upland, and that this was the result. For three 
or four days they remained inactive, sleeping the 
whole time, except when they limped to the kitchen 
to be fed. But day by day they improved in con- 
dition; their scratches healed, their ribbed sides 
grew smooth and sleek, and they recovered from 
their lameness ; but scarcely had they got well be- 
fore it was discovered one morning that they had 
vanished. They had gone off during the night to 
hunt again on the uplands. They were absent two 
nights and a day, then returned, looking even more 
reduced and miserable than when I first saw them, 
to recover slowly from their hurts and fatigue ; and 
when well again they were off once more; and so it 
continued during the whole time of my visit. These 
hounds, if left to themselves, would have soon 
perished, 
Another member of this somewhat heterogeneous 
canine community was a retriever, one of the hand- 
somest I have ever seen, rather small, and with a 
most perfect head. The extreme curliness of his 
coat made him look at a little distance like a dog 
cut out of a block of ebony, with the surface carved 
to almost symmetrical knobbiness. Major—that 
was his name—would have lent himself well to 
sculpture. He was old, but not too fat, nor in- 
active ; sometimes he would go out with the other 
dogs, but apparently he could not keep up the pace, 
as after a few hours he would return always alone, 
looking rather disconsolate. 
I have always been partial to dogs of this breed; 
