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. 
