The Old Beggar's Dog

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Title:     The Old Beggar's Dog
Author: W.H.H. Murray [More Titles by Murray]

He was a tramp--that is all he was--at least when I knew him. What he had been before, I cannot say, as he never told me his history. Of course every tramp has a history, even as every leaf that the winds blow over the fields has its history, and my old tramp doubtless had his, and God knows it must have been sad enough, judging by his looks, for he had the saddest face I ever looked at, and I've seen a good many sad faces in my day.

No, he was nothing but a tramp, old and gray-headed, and nearly worn out with his tramping. How long he had been going the rounds I cannot say, but for nearly a dozen years, once each year, hi made his appearance in the city, tarried a month, perhaps, and then quietly disappeared, and we saw him no more for a twelvemonth. Inoffensive? Decidedly--as mild-mannered a man as ever asked grace at a poorhouse table.

Indeed, the children were his best patrons, for he had a most winning way with them, and he could scarcely be seen on the street without the accompaniment of a dozen, tagging at his heels and holding on to his hands and the skirts of his long coat. There's Dick there, six feet if he's an inch and gone twenty last month. Well, many and many a time have I seen the strapping fellow when he was a little chap sitting astride the old vagabond's neck, with his little feet crooked in under his armpits, laughing and screaming uproariously as his human horse underneath him pranced and curvetted along the pavement, and charged through the flock of childish admirers around him, as if they were a hostile soldiery and Dick was a very Henry of Navarre, whose white plume must always be found in the path to glory.

God bless the youngsters! Who of us with the burden of life's toil and care weighing us down, ever saw a frolicsome group of them, happy in their freedom from trouble and care, and did not wish he might slip his shoulders from under the load of his fifty years and be a boy again? What a pity it is that we must age and die in our wrinkles, leaving nothing better to gaze upon than a shrunken face, colorless of bloom and written all over with the scraggy record of our griefs, our errors, and our pains! Why cannot death charm back the boyish vigor and girlish grace to our faces, when, with the invisible and fatal gesture, he sweeps his hand swiftly across them?

The dog? Oh! certainly; but don't hurry me. I'm too old to tell a story in a straight line and at express speed. I will get to the dog all in good time, and, in order to feel as I do about the terrible thing that happened to him, you must know something about his master, for in an odd sort of way they supplemented each other. Indeed, they seemed to have entered into a kind of partnership to share each other's moods as they shared each other's fortune. And it was a strange, and, I may say, a very touching sight, to see two creatures, of different species, so intimately attached to each other; and often, as I have looked at the dog when he was gazing at his master, have I said to myself, "Surely, something or some one has blundered, and a human soul was put, by mistake, into that dog's body," for never--no, sir, I will not qualify it--never have I seen a greater love look from human into human eyes than I have seen gazing devotedly up into the old man's face from the eyes of that dog. How did he look? Queer enough, I assure you, for his cross, while an admirable one to yield wit and affection both, was the worst possible one for beauty, for his father was a full-blooded shepherd and his mother a Scotch terrier, without a taint in her blood.

How well I remember the dog and his peculiar looks! I remember him now as plainly as if he were lying on the rug there this very minute. He had the size of his father and the bristly coat of his mother. His ears were like a terrier's, and naturally pricked forward. His color was a dirty gray--a miserable color; his tail had been cropped and the remnant that remained--some four inches in length--stood stiffly up, with scarce a suggestion of a curve; he was homely, but not inferior looking, for his head was such an one as Landseer would have loved to have translated from time and death to the immortality of his canvas; what a matchless front, and room enough in the cranium to hold the brains of any two common dogs. But his eyes were the impressive and magnificent feature of his face--large, round and warmly hazel in color, and so liquid clear that, looking into them, you seemed to be gazing into transparent depths, not of water, but of intelligent being. What eyes they were! I remember what a young lady said once apropos to them. She was a belle herself, and nature spoke through her speech. She came into the office here one day when the dog was performing, for he was a great trick dog, and, after watching him a moment, she exclaimed, "Ah! if a woman only had those eyes, what might she not do!" More fun could look out of that dog's head than of any other I ever saw, whether of dog or man. And though you may not credit it, yet, as true as I sit here, I have seen those eyes weep as large and honest tears as ever fell in sorrow from human orbs. "Laugh, too?" You put that question incredulously, do you? Well, you needn't, for the dog could laugh. "With his tail?" No, any dog can do that, but he could laugh with his mouth. Why, sir, I have seen him sit bolt upright on his haunches there by that post, lean his back against it, and laugh so heartily that his mouth would open and shut like a man's when guffawing, and you could see every tooth in his head, and he did it intelligently, too, and laughed because he was tickled and couldn't help it.

Alas! poor dog, he came to a sad end at last, and died in so wretched a way that the recollection of his death puts a dark eclipse upon the unhappy memory of his life.

Comfort to his master? You may well say that; and no man ever loved his child more fondly than the old beggar loved his dog. And well he might, for he was his companion by day, his guard by night, and the means by which he eked out the sometime scant living that the fickle charity of the world flung to him. How often have I seen the old man take him in his arms and hug him to his breast, that had, I fancy, so many bitter memories in it; and how often have I seen the dog lap with gentle and caressing tongue the tears as they rolled down the furrowed cheeks, when the fountain of grief within was stirred by the angel of recollection. But it was from the sympathy of his faithful and loving companion, and not from the moving of the bitter waters, that his aching heart found consolation.

Tell you about the man? Why, certainly; but there isn't much to tell. You see, no one knew much of him, for he seldom if ever spoke of himself. I suppose I knew him better than anyone on his beat here, for I fell in love with his dog, and with himself, too, for that matter, for, in the first place, he was old, and whoever saw a white head and didn't love it, and whoever looked upon a wrinkled face and didn't wish to kiss it, if it was peaceful, and the old man's head was as white as snow is, and the peacefulness of a sleeping child hovered over the sadness of his face, albeit the shadow of a sorrowful past lay darkly resting upon it. But though I saw much of him as he swung around on his annual visit, and though he looked upon me as his friend--as, indeed, I was, and proved myself to be such more than once, thank God!--still he never offered to tell me his history, and I certainly never questioned him about it. For life is a secret thing, and each man holds the key to his own; and only once, if at all, may it be opened, and even then only the Father is gentle and forgiving enough to look upon the wheat and the chaff which we in our grief or joy keep closely locked from human eyes.

No, I knew little of him; but occasionally, sitting by the fire here when a storm was heavy outside, for the coming of storms was always the prelude of these moods in him, he would begin to mutter to himself, and to talk to his dog of days long gone; of men and women he had once hated or loved, or who loved or hated him--God knows which--and of deeds he had once done, but which were now deeply buried under the years.

Perhaps he did not know that he was talking. Perhaps his soul, busy with the past, forgot the motion of the lips and ceased to keep its watch over the movements of that member which, unless ceaselessly guarded, betrays us all so often. What did he mutter about? Well, the man is dead and gone, and what little there is to tell cannot pain him now. Death makes us indifferent to disclosure, and little do we care what the world says about us when we lie sleeping in the grave, I ween. Yes, the man is dead and gone this many a year; God rest his soul, and I heartily hope he has found riches and rest and his dog ere now, as I feel certain he has, and what little I know can do no harm, if told, to any.

Well, as I was saying, when storms were brewing in the air and the sea, the uneasiness of the elements themselves seemed to take possession of his soul and agitate it,--for his very body would rock to and fro and sway in the chair when the fit was on him, and he would talk to his dog, and to men and women, too, whom no one could see save himself, and if what he said might be taken as the words of a sane man, he certainly had been rich and powerful one day--and loved and hated, too, for that matter. For from his speech one could but learn that all that makes life worth the living was once his, and that he had lost it all--but whatever may have been his other losses, one there must have been in truth, for as to it his words were always the same: "_Gone, gone_," he would say, "_gone_--and the winds I hear coming blow over her grave--but winds cannot reach her, for she lies warm and well covered, deep down in her grave." And so he would sit muttering and swaying his body in the chair, as the winds blew stormily out of the east, and the boom of the waves rolled up from the bluff, as they pounded heavily against the rocks and the shore.

Why did I not make him settle down? Because he wouldn't. I tried time and again to persuade him to it, but he never would consent. Perhaps he was right in his impulse to roam, and loved the careless freedom of it, and the solitude it gave him. For if a man would hide himself from man he must keep on the move. If he stops he becomes known. But in travel he loses his identity, and passes from place to place unknown and unnoted.

But it seemed pitiful to me that one so old and feeble should have no home, and so I persuaded him to settle down for one winter, at least, and hired him a little house in a pleasant street and started him in his housekeeping experiment. But alas! evil came of it, and I never did a deed I more profoundly regretted, for it led to the calamity I am about to tell you of, and brought upon the poor man the greatest grief that might befall him, even the death of his dog, and in a most cruel and painful fashion at that. Ah, me! could we but see the end of things from their beginning, how little of our doing would be done at times; for the benevolent blundering of our lives is as often fruitful of harm as the evil we do in our malice and passion.

It all happened in this way, and I will tell you as it was told me, partly by the old man himself, and partly by those who had knowledge of the dreadful event at the time, for I was out of the city the morning the occurrence took place, or it never would have happened. I don't think anything of the kind ever before made so much talk, or excited so much indignation.

The legislature at its last session, not having wit or honesty enough to exercise itself over one of a dozen crying evils that were then vexing the people, got greatly excited over--_dogs_!

Some miserable curs--many affirmed they were wolves, and no dogs at all--in a remote corner of the state, had killed a few sheep, and the farmers of that region got up a great scare, and raised a hue and cry against the whole canine family. It is incredible how much noise was made over the killing of a few half-starved sheep that were browsing on those northern mountains! You would have thought, judging by the clamor, that the fundamental interests of the commonwealth were attacked, and that the stately structure of government itself was on the point of falling to the ground.

Well, when the legislature met the excitement was at its height and the gust of popular foolishness converged all its forces at the capitol. In due time a bill was reported, and an outrageous bill it was, too, for it not only put a heavy tax upon dogs in every section of the state, city as well as country, but provided that certain officers should be appointed to enforce the law, whose duty it should be to kill every dog not duly registered on a certain date. Even this was not all; for it stimulated the enforcement of the law by enlisting the cupidity of men and boys alike, especially of the lower and hardened classes, by providing that whoever killed an unregistered dog should be paid three dollars from the state treasury.

It was a bad law, in truth, for it was the outgrowth of senseless excitement, and an attempt to tax the affections. Property, of course, can be taxed, but we all know that a dog is not property, any more than is a boy's pet rabbit, or a child, for that matter. A dog is a member of his master's family. He has connection with his heart, not with his pocket. He is a creature to love and be loved by, and not to be bought and sold like a bit of land or a yoke of oxen, and any law aimed at the affections is an offence to the holiest impulses of the bosom, and as such should be resented.

Yes, the law was a bad one. I did what I could to defeat it in its passage, and I broke it all I could after its passage, and that was some satisfaction to my feelings, which were in fact outraged by it; for I saw not only the injustice of it, as viewed in the light of correct principle, but that it would bear heavily upon the poor, and bring sorrow like the sorrow of death itself into families. I saw, moreover, that it was a cruel law in its relation to children, whose pretty and harmless pets and playmates could be murdered before their very eyes. Many a sad case did I hear of, the winter after the law was passed, but the saddest of all was that of my old friend, who was living peacefully and happily with his dog in the little house I had hired for him.

He was sitting one evening in the comfortable quarters I had provided for him, playing with his companion and teaching him some new tricks to practise against my return, happy as he might be, when a loud rap was delivered upon his door, and at the same instant it was pushed rudely open, and a man walked into the room and, without pausing to give or receive a greeting, pointed to the dog, and said:

"Is that your property, sir?"

"I never think of him in that way," answered the old man, mildly. "He has been my companion--I may say my only companion--these many years, and I love him as property is not loved. No, sir, _Trusty_ is not property--he is my companion and my friend."

"I didn't come here to listen to any of your crazy nonsense, but as an officer of the law, to see if you have registered your dog, and paid your tax as it commands, and, if you hadn't, to see that the penalty was put upon you as you deserve, you old begging loafer, you."

"I've broken no law that I know of," replied the beggar, "I love my dog, that is all. I hope it breaks no law for a man to love his dog in this city, does it, friend?"

"If you don't know what the law is, you'd better find out," answered the fellow, roughly. "What right have you to own a dog, anyway? It strikes me that it is about enough for you to sponge your own living out of the community, without sponging another for a miserable whelp of a dog like that."

"Trusty eats very little," replied the old man, respectfully, "and he amuses people a great deal, especially the children; and, besides, he is a great comfort to me, and God knows that I have nothing else to comfort me in all the world--wealth, home, friends, and one dearer than all,--all lost, and thou'rt all I have left, Trusty, to comfort me," and he looked affectionately at his companion, whose head was resting lovingly on his knee.

"Oh, I've heard the whining of your class before to-night," replied the fellow, "and am not to be taken in by any of your sniffling, so you needn't try that trick on me. Law is law, and I shall see it enforced, and on you, too, in spite of your shuffling, you miserable old sneak of a beggar, you."

"Friend," answered the old man with dignity, as he rose from the chair and looked the fellow calmly in the face, "better men than you or I have begged their daily bread before now, and eaten it, too, with an honest conscience and a grateful heart, and more than once when night has overtaken me, weary of journeying along inhospitable roads, and I have been compelled to make my bed on the leaves under some hedge, I've remembered that the Son of God when on the earth to teach us the sweet lesson of charity, 'had not where to lay his head.' The lesson he came to teach, you certainly have not learned, or you would never have made my poverty and my misfortunes the butt of your scoffings."

The old man spoke with dignity, but the coarseness of the fellow's nature and the hardening influence of the business he was engaged in prevented him from feeling either shame or sympathy, for he turned toward the door with an oath, saying: "You'll hear from me in the morning, old chap, but I'll tell you this to chew on over night; that if your tax money isn't ready when I come again, I'll teach you what it is to break the laws in this city, and insult the officers whose duty it is to see them enforced against just such white-headed old dead-beats as you!" and with another oath, he passed out of the door and shut it with a slam.

I don't know how the old man passed the night. But little sleep, I warrant, came to his old eyes, for he was as timid as a child, and easily frightened, and a threat against his own life would have disturbed him less than one against the life of his dog. But whether he slept or not, the hours of the night wheeled along their dark courses without stopping, and speedily brought the dreaded morning. I know not when he died, or where, but well I know that the memory of that dreadful morning and the woe that came to him on it haunted him to the close of his life, and embittered the last hours of it.

The morning came as all mornings, whether they bring joy or grief to us, do come. The threat the fellow had uttered against his dog the evening before had naturally disturbed him and the old man was nervous and excited, but he managed to cook his frugal breakfast and eat it with his companion. I can well imagine his thoughts and his worriment. "Law! what law?" I can hear him say. "I've broken no law. I've only loved and been loved by my dog. That's not wicked, surely. He said he'd come again, and if I didn't have the money ready. Money! what money? He knows I've no money. Tax! what tax? Do they tax a man's heart in this city? Can't a man love anything here unless he's rich? Kill my dog! I don't believe it. There isn't a man on the earth wicked enough to kill an old man's dog, an old man's harmless dog; no, he didn't, he couldn't mean that! he just said it to scare me. Yes, yes, I see now; he'd been drinking and he said it just to scare me." Thus, as I fancy, the poor old man sat muttering to himself, listening with dread to every passing step, listening and muttering to himself, while his old heart, quaked in his bosom, and his soul, which had so little to cheer it, as it journeyed along its lonely path, was sorely tried and disquieted within him.

The clock in a neighboring steeple was striking the ninth hour, and the old man paused in his muttering and sat counting the strokes as the iron tongue pealed them forth; counting them in his fear as if each stroke was a knell, and so indeed to him it was, and many of the chimes we listen carelessly to, would be knells to us, if we knew what would happen twixt them and their next chiming.

The vibration of the last stroke was swelling and sinking in the air, when a heavy step sounded on the stair, and without even the ceremony of knocking, the door was pushed suddenly open, and the fellow, who had intruded upon him the evening before, entered the room. In one hand he held a rope and in the other a club.

"Well, old chap," he said, "you see I am here as I told you I would be. I've given you a whole night to study up the law."

"Law! what law?" exclaimed the old man, interrupting him, "I don't know that I broken"--

"Come, come, old shuffler, none of your blarney, if you please," broke in the fellow; "you know well enough what law I mean. I mean the dog-law."

"Dog-law! dog-law!" answered the old man, "what law is that?"

"Oh, you don't pull the wool over my eyes," sneered the other; "you know what law I mean well enough, but, to jog your memory, I'll say that the law I mean makes the owner of a dog pay a tax of three dollars, and if the tax isn't paid"--

"Three dollars!" ejaculated the poor man. "Three dollars! when have I had so much money as that? Three dollars! you might as well have asked me to pay three thousand as three."

"Very well, very well," exclaimed the other; "the law covers just such cases as yours--covers them perfectly," and he laughed a coarse, cruel laugh. "Out with the money, or I take the dog."

"Take my dog!" screamed the old man, "take Trusty! What should you take him for? You can't want him."

"Oh, yes, I do, old fellow," retorted the other; "I want him very much indeed, I know just what to do with him, I'll see to that."

"Do with him?" cried the other, whose mind, perhaps because paralyzed by fear, perhaps because of the enormity of the deed, would not receive the horrible suggestion, "what would you do with Trusty?"

"Kill him, damn you!" shouted the other; "kill him as I have a hundred other curs this fall and pocket the money the law gives me for doing it. Do you understand that, you old dead-beat?"

For a moment the wretched man never spoke, his lips paled to the color of ashes, and shrivelled as if suddenly parched against the teeth, and he clutched the back of a chair for support. Twice he essayed to speak, his lips moved, but his tongue in its dryness clove to the roof of his mouth. At last he gasped forth in the hoarse whisper of mortal terror:

"Kill my dog! kill Trusty!"

It was a sorry sight, truly, and might well touch the hardest heart. But the officer of the law--God save the mark!--remained unmoved. What was one dog more or less to him? had he not already killed hundreds, as he said? The sportsman's favorite hunter, astray without his collar, the lady's pet, crying pitifully in the street, unable to find its mistress's door, the children's playmate, waiting in front of the school house for school to close, the poor man's help and comfort, his household's joy, guardian and friend, caught in the street on his return from his humble master, to whom he carried his homely dinner. What was one dog more or less to him, hardened by the murderous habit of his office and eager to earn his wretched fee,--what was one dog more or less to _him_?

"Come, come," he cried, as he uncoiled the rope he held in his hand, "out with the money or I take the dog."

"How much is it? how much is it?" cried the old man, fumbling in his pockets and bringing forth a few small pieces of silver and some pennies. "Here take it, take it, it's all I have--there's a ten-cent piece, isn't it? and there's two fives, and here, yes, God be praised, here's a quarter of a dollar; Trusty earned that yesterday. Let's see, twenty-five, that's the quarter, and ten is thirty-five, and two fives, that makes forty-five, and eight pennies, that makes fifty-three cents; won't that do? It's every cent I have, as God is my witness--it will do, won't it?" And the old man seized one of the hands of the fellow, and strove to put his little hoarding into it.

But the hard-hearted wretch drew his hand back with a jerk, and, seizing the dog by the neck, slipped the rope over his head and saying, "The law allows me four times that for killing him," opened the door and pulled the poor dog out after him into the street.

"God of heaven!" screamed the poor old man, as he rushed, bareheaded as he was, out of the door, and hurried in pursuit of the man, who was pulling the dog along and walking as fast as he could, while Trusty struggled and cried and did all he could to get rid of the rope. "Where is thy justice or thy mercy? Oh, sir; oh, sir;" he shouted, running after the man, "give me back my dog; oh, give him back to me, good people;" he cried, for his own cries and those of the dog, too, had already drawn a crowd to the scene, "good people, tell him not to kill my dog."

It was to the honor of the crowd that they hooted the officer roundly, and called on him and shouted, "Give the old man back his dog," and greater honor yet to them that some of the boys pelted him with snowballs and junks of ice as he hurried on, and one brawny chap, sitting on the seat of his cart, struck him a stinging blow with his black whip as he scuttled past, with, "Damn you, take that, for killing _my_ dog." The officer shook his club at the honest fellow and said, "I'll pay you for that, see if I don't," but he dared not stop to make the arrest, for the crowd was thickening and the air getting fuller of missiles, and every door and window was hooting him as he passed them, with the poor dog crying and moaning pitifully at his heels. Even the women, God bless them (for the feeling against the law ran high in the city), opened the doors and lifted the windows of their houses, the ladies crying, "Shame on you, shame on you!" and the cooks and chamber maids from the nadir and zenith of their household worlds, with homelier and more piquant phrase and saucier tongues, scoffed him for the miserable work he was doing; but in spite of the popular uprising, now almost swelled to the dimensions of a mob, and the verbal uproar, through the hoarse murmur of which the boy's gibe, the woman's taunt and the strong man's curse, came and smote upon him in volleys, still he clutched the rope and rushed along, threatening the crowd that was closing in ahead of him with his club, and so making headway on his dreadful errand, while the poor old man, unable to keep up with him, was filling the air with his cries, and, without knowing what he was saying, perhaps, kept calling on the people, saying, "Oh, good people, good people, don't let him kill my dog."

Indeed, his grief was piteous to see, for he was half distraught with fear, and like as a mother whose child had been snatched from her and was being hurried to death, so he, with tears, sobs and screams, kept entreating one moment the crowd and the next beseeching heaven, saying, "Don't let him kill my dog," and being an old man and white-headed, and as his countenance and gestures were eloquent with the eloquence of true grief, the people were filled with pity for him and their hearts melted with sympathy at the piteous spectacle they beheld.

Then up spake the honest carter, saying, "Friends, let's give the old man a lift, for it's a shame that one so old should lose his dog. How much is it you lack of the tax?" he asked of the poor old gentleman as he came panting up. But he was so confused and tremulous with terror that he could not answer, and so being unable to do more he stretched his old shaken hands in which the money was still, tightly clutched, up to him, but the old hands shook so that the carter could not count it, until he had taken it into his own steady palm.

"Here's fifty cents and a few odd pennies," he shouted, "and the law demands three dollars; two dollars and a half is wanted; who'll help make up the three dollars and save the old man's dog? Here's fifty cents," he added as he took a silver half-dollar from his pocket and dropped it into the hat, "it's half I earnt yesterday, and more than I'll earn to-day, perhaps, for times be dull, but the old man shall have it, if Mary and I go without sugar and tea for a week."

'Twas a good speech and bravely said, and the crowd responded to it as bravely, for it fairly rained dimes and quarters and pennies, not only into the carter's hat until it sagged, but into his cart, too, until the bottom of it was speckled all over with copper and silver coin, and the honest fellow held up his hands for the crowd to give no more, crying:

"Hold, hold! Here's enough, and more than enough."

But he could scarcely make himself heard, because of the cheering and the laughing and the rattling of the pieces as the crowd continued to rain them all the faster into his cart. Ah, me, what is that sweet something in human hearts, which, in its response to human want, translates us like a flash from low to highest mood; aye, which breaketh through all barriers of selfish habit, and even the adamantine of foreign tongues and poureth out its rich largess in a common tide to meet a brother's need, where'er that brother is or whatever he may be?

But the old man did not wait to gather up the offerings of the generous and sympathetic crowd, but snatching a handful of silver from the carter's hat pushed his way out of the jam, and, holding the hand in which he clutched the silver high above his head, hurried on after the officer, crying at the top of his voice: "Here's the money, here's the money; oh, good people," for the street was nearly blocked with those that swarmed thickly in the wake of the officer and he could make but slow progress through it, "tell him I have the money and am coming; don't let him go any farther; I shall never catch him; stop him, stop him, for the love of heaven, stop him; here's the money." And thus crying aloud and calling, with his thin, tremulous voice, upon the officer to stop, he ran frantically along the street, as fast as he could, in pursuit.

But it is certain that the old man would not have caught up with the officer had the latter been uninterrupted in his progress, for the street was filled with people and he could not push his way with much speed because of his feebleness, but fortune, or perhaps I should say misfortune, favored him, so that he shortly overtook the object of his pursuit and came up with the officer and the dog. But, alas! his old heart got little gain thereby, but a grievous loss, rather, for when he came to the spot both lay stretched senseless on the ground, the man knocked flat to the earth by the fist of an indignant citizen, and the dog lying with his skull broken in by a brutal blow from the fellow's club.

When the old man came to the spot where the dog and the officer lay, he stopped, and when he saw what had happened, the money he had brought with which to deliver his dog, fell rattling, unheeded to the ground, and then he raised his palms toward heaven, as if entreating the vengeance or the benignity of the skies, and with tears streaming down his cheeks, he lifted up his voice and wept, saying: "Oh, God, he's killed my dog!" And then he sank down all in a heap, as if he would die beside his dying dog, for the dog was not yet dead, but dying.

This his master soon perceived, and heedless of the multitude who thronged the street from side to side, he lifted the dying dog into his lap and laid his poor crushed head against his breast and mourned over him as a mother, deserted by husband and friends, might mourn for an only babe when, alone in a foreign land, it lay on her bosom dying; and the multitude, who, by this, had knowledge of the dreadful deed, stood in silence while he mourned.

"Trusty, Trusty," he said, "do you know me, Trusty?" and his tears fell fast into the dog's bristly coat. The poor creature, now far gone in that unconsciousness which deafens the ear to the voice of love itself, still faintly heard the familiar tones, for he lifted his eyes to his master's face and nestled closer into his bosom. It was a touching sight, in truth, and those who stood close enough to see the moving spectacle, wiped their own eyes, divinely moist with the mist of sympathy.

It was evident to all, and to the old man himself, that above and around and closing in upon them was the mystery which men call death--a mystery as inscrutable as it hovers over the kennel and stable as when it enters the habitations of men--and that in a few moments the life still within the body of the poor animal, with all its powers of doing, of thinking, and of loving, would depart the structure in which it had found so pleasant an abode and so facile a medium of expression.

For a few moments nothing more was said; the old man continued to sob and the life of his companion continued to ebb away. The brutal blow that caused his death had mercifully numbed the power of feeling, so that whatever the gloomy journey he was about to take might mean to him, whether the same life he was leaving, or a larger, or none at all, he would move on through the darkness toward the one or the other at least without pain.

"You and I have fared in company for many a year," said the old man at last, "and bread, whether scant or plenty, and bed, whether hard or soft, we have shared together. Thou hast made the days brighter, and the nights shorter, by thy presence as I suffered through them, and dark will the one be, and long the other, when I see thee no more; would to God I could die with thee, my dog, my dog!"

Did the dog indeed understand what he said or did he merely sense the sorrow in the tones and seek once more, as he had done so many times before, to comfort his disconsolate master? I know not; I only know that the poor animal, with dying strength, lifted his muzzle to his master's face, and twice he lapped it with his tongue. Aye, lapped the salt tears tenderly from his master's wrinkled and pallid cheeks with his tongue; only this, for no more could he do. "My dog," cried the old man once more, amid his tears. "My dog, the God who made thee so loving and worthy to be loved, and filled thee with such sweet feeling and the wish to comfort human woe, will not surely let thee perish. In his great universe there is, there must be, room for thee. I will not mourn thee as wholly lost. I cannot do it. For amid the false thou hast been true, and surely falsehood shall hot live on and sweet truth die. Tell me, my dog, give me some sign that we shall meet in the great hereafter?"

But in response to this appeal the dog gave no motion, for, indeed, his strength, like a tide ebbing in the night, was gliding silently and swiftly outward in the gloom, gliding outward and beyond all questioning and answering, but he opened wide his glorious eyes and fixed them steadily on his master's face with such a great love in their depths that mortal might not doubt that in that love was hope and its sustaining evidence; and then the fatal dimness crept along their edges, the pure, sweet light faded away in their clear depths, and the impenetrable shadow settled forever over the lustrous orbs. The lids at last gradually closed as in sleep, and the beggar's dog, with his head on his master's neck and his body resting on his bosom, lay dead.

[The end]
W. H. H. Murray's short story: The Old Beggar's Dog

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