224 The Carnivora. 
thousand inhabitants, and Dash had attached himself solely 
to him, accompanying him on his parochial visits, and being 
a favourite everywhere with the villagers. He had no great 
disposition for going to church on Sundays, though one 
afternoon, he walked quietly down the aisle, ascended the 
pulpit stairs during the sermon, and sat smiling at the con- 
gregation, from the topmost step, my father being quite 
unconscious of his presence. Still no one felt disconcerted. 
He seemed quite in the proper place wherever his master 
might be. But no funeral was complete—so Dash thought 
—without his attendance, and the unsophisticated villagers 
appeared to consider the constant companion of their minister 
quite entitled to take his position at the head of the funeral 
procession. Nature, moreover, had endowed him with the 
means of appearing in suitable dress; for his “customary 
suit of solemn black” was appropriately set off by a white 
patch on his chest, which did duty very well for a shirt front. 
His first attendance at a funeral happened accidentally. He 
had escaped from control at home, and when my father came 
out of the church, reading the service, at the head of the 
procession, Dash walked from the vestry door, where he had 
been lying, and marched decorously down the churchyard to 
the grave a few paces in front of my father, who, seeing that 
nothing could then be done, left the dog to his own devices. 
When the coffin arrived at the grave, Dash lay down at the 
end opposite my father until the conclusion of the service, 
when he walked slowly back in front of his master to the 
vestry door. There had been nothing whatever to shock the 
sense of decorum in any one present. It had all taken 
place so naturally. The dog himself seemed to realize the 
solemnity of the occasion; and those who had been accus- 
tomed to him lying by their own cottage fires, during the. 
visits’ of their parson, had no thought of resentment at his 
presence beside the graves of their dead. Thenceforth, Dash 
attended every funeral, always going through precisely the 
same routine, except that he changed his first place from the 
