Chapter XLIX. Glum Gunn’s revenge
They had opened the menagerie in a certain large town. It was the evening-exhibition, and Clare was going his round with his wand of office, pointing to the different animals, and telling of them what he thought would most interest his hearers, when another attendant, the most friendly of all, came behind him, and whispered that Glum Gunn had got hold of Abby, and must be going to do the dog a mischief. Clare instantly gave him his wand, and bolted through the crowd, reproaching himself that, because Abby seemed restless, he had shut him up: if he had not been shut up, Gunn would not have got hold of him!
When he reached the top of the steps, there was Gunn on the platform, addressing the crowd. It was plain to the boy, by this time not inexperienced, that he had been drinking, and, though not drunk, had taken enough to rouse the worst in him. He had the poor dog by the scruff of the neck, and was holding him out at arm’s-length. Abdiel was the very picture of wretchedness. Except in colour and size, he was more like a flea than like any sort of dog—with his hind legs drawn up, his tail tucked in tight between them, and his back-bone curved into a half circle. In this uncomfortable plight, the tyrant was making a burlesque speech about him.
“Here you see, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, resuming a little, for a few fresh spectators were in the act of joining the border of the crowd, “as I have already had the honour of informing you, one of the most extraordinary productions of the vegetable kingdom. It is not unnatural that you should be, as I see you are, inclined to dispute the assertion. I am, indeed, far from being surprised at your scepticism; the very strangeness of the phenomenon consists in his being to all appearance neither more nor less than a dog. But when I have the honour of leaving you to your astonishment, I shall have convinced you that he is in reality nothing but a vegetable. I would plainly call him what he is—a cucumber, did I not fear the statement would demand of you more than your powers of credence, evidently limited, could well afford. But when I have, before your eyes, cut the throat of this vegetable, so extremely like an ugly mongrel, and when those eyes see no single drop of blood follow the knife, then you will be satisfied of the truth of my assertion; and, having gazed on such a specimen of Nature’s jugglery, will, I hope, do me the honour to walk up and behold yet greater wonders within.”
He ceased, and set about getting his knife from his pocket.
Clare, watching Gunn’s every motion, had partially sheltered himself behind the side of the doorway. One who did not know Gunn, might well have taken the thing for a practical joke, as innocent as it was foolish, the pretended conclusion of which would be met by some comical frustration, probably the dog’s escape; but Clare saw that his friend was in mortal peril. With the eye of one used to wild animals and the unexpectedness of their sudden motions, he stood following every movement of Gunn’s hands, ready to anticipate whatever action might indicate its own approach: he watched like the razor-clawed lynx. While Gunn held Abdiel as he did, he could not seriously injure him; and although he was hurting him dreadfully, his hate-possessed fingers, like a live, writhing vice, worrying and squeezing the skin of his poor little neck, it yet was better to wait the right moment.
When he saw the arm that held the dog drawn in, and the other hand move to the man’s pocket, he knew that in a moment more, with a theatrical cry of dismay from the murderer, the body of his friend would be dashed on the ground, his head half off, and the blood streaming from his neck. They were mostly a rather vulgar people that stood about the platform, not a few of them capable of being delighted with such an end to a joke poor without some catastrophe.
The wretch had stooped a little, and slightly relaxed his hold on the dog to open his knife, when with a bound that doubled the force of the blow Clare struck him on the side of the head. He had no choice where to hit him, and his fist fell on the spot so lately torn by the claws of Pummy. The tyrant fell, and lay for a moment stunned. Abdiel flung himself on his master, exultant at finding the thing after all the joke he had been trying in vain to believe it. Clare caught him up and dashed down the steps, one instant before Glum Gunn rose, cursing furiously. Clare charged the crowd: it was not a time to be civil! Abdiel’s life was in imminent danger! That his own was in the same predicament did not occur to him.
His sudden rush took the crowd by surprise, or those next the caravans would, I fear, have stopped him. Some started to follow him, but the portion of the crowd he came to next, had more in it of a better sort, and closed up behind him. There all the women and most of the men took the part of the boy that loved his dog.
“What be you a-shovin’ at?” bawled a huge country-man, against whom Gunn made a cannon as he rushed in pursuit. “Aw’ll knock ‘ee flat—aw wull! Let little un an’s dawg aloan! Aw be for un! Hit me an’ye choose—aw doan’t objec’!”
Every attempt Gunn made to pass him, the man pushed his great body in his way, and he soon saw there was no chance of overtaking Clara The wings of Hate are swift, but not so swift as those of rescuing Love; and Help is far readier to run to Love than to Hate.
Chapter L. Clare seeks help
Clare got out of the crowd, and was soon beyond sight of anyone that knew what had taken place, his heart exulting that he had saved his friend who trusted in him. He hurried on, heedless whither, his only thought to get away from the man that would murder Abby; and the town was a long way behind ere the question of what they were to do for supper and shelter presented itself. This had grown a strange thought, so long had the caravan been to him a house of warmth and plenty. But comfort has its disadvantages; and Clare discovered, with some dismay, that he was not quite so free as ere the luxurious life of the last few weeks began: both Abby and he would be less able, he feared, to bear hunger and cold. It was but to start afresh, however, and grow abler! One consolation was, that, if they felt hunger more, it could not do them so much harm: they had more capital to go upon. He must not gather cowardice instead of courage from a season of prosperity! He was glad for Abdiel, though, that he grew his own clothes: he had left his warmest behind him.
It made him ashamed to find himself regretting his clothes when he had lost a mother! Then it pleased him to think that she had his sovereign, and the wages due since his clothes were paid for. They would help to give Glum Gunn his own, and set the beasts free from him! Then he would go back and spend his life with his mother and Pummy! Poor Pummy! But though Gunn hated him, he was now afraid of him too; and his fear would be the creature’s protection! He had imagined it his might that cowed the puma, when it was the animal’s human gentleness that made him submissive to man: he knew better now! Clare clasped Abdiel to his bosom, and trudged on. They had gone miles ere it occurred to him that it might be more comfortable for both if each carried his individual burden. He set Abdiel down, and the dog ran vibrating with pleasure. Clare felt himself set down, but with no tail to wag.
It was late in the autumn: they could do without supper, but they must if possible find shelter! A farm-house came in sight. It recalled so vividly Clare’s early experiences of houselessness, that beasts and caravans, his mother and Glum Gunn, grew hazy and distant, and the old time drew so near that he seemed to have waked into it out of a long dream. They were back in the old misery—a misery in which, however, his heart had not been pierced as now with the pangs of innocent creatures unable or unwilling to defend themselves from their natural guardian! It was long before he learned that for weeks Gunn was unable to hurt one of them; that his drinking, his late wound, and the blow Clare had given him, brought on him a severe attack of erysipelas.
When they reached the farm-yard, Clare knew by the aspect of things that the cattle were housed and the horses suppered. He crept unseen into one of the cow-houses: the bodies and breath of the animals would keep them warm! How sweet the smell seemed to him after that of the caravans! An empty stall was before him, like a chamber prepared for his need. He gathered a few straws from under each of the cows, taking care that not one of them should be the less comfortable, and spread with them for Abby and himself a thin couch.
But with the excitement of what had happened, his wonder as to what would come next, and the hunger that had begun to gnaw at him, Clare could not sleep. And as he lay awake, thoughts came to him.
Whence do the thoughts come to us? Of one thing I am sure—that I do not make or even send for my own thoughts. If some greater one did not think about us, we should not think about anything. Then what a wonder is the night! How it works compelling people to think! Surely somehow God comes nearer in the night! Clare began to think how helpless he was. He was not thinking of food and warmth, but of doing things for the beings he loved. It seemed to him hard that he could but love, and nothing more. There was his mother! he could do nothing to deliver her from that villainous brother-in-law! There was Pummy, exposed to the cruelty of the same evil man! and again he could do nothing for him! There was Maly! he could do nothing for her—nothing to make her father and mother glad for her up in the dome of the angels!
Was it possible that he really could do nothing?
Then came the thought that people used to say prayers in the days when he went with his mother to church. He had been taught to say prayers himself, but had begun to forget them when there was no bed to kneel beside. What did saying prayers mean? In the Bible-stories people prayed when they were in trouble and could not help themselves! Did it matter that he had no church and no bedside? Surely one place must be as good as another, if it was true that God was everywhere! Surely he could hear him wherever he spoke! Neither could there be any necessity for speaking loud! God would hear, however low he spoke! Then he remembered that God knew the thoughts of his creatures: if so, he might think a prayer to him; there was no need for any words!
From the moment of that conclusion, Clare began to pray to God. And now he prayed the right kind of prayer; that is, his prayers were real prayers; he asked for what he wanted. To say prayers asking God for things we do not care about, is to mock him. When we ask for something we want, it may be a thing God does not care to give us; but he likes us to speak to him about it. If it is good for us, he will give it us; if it is not good, he will not give it to us, for it would hurt us. But Clare only asked God to do what he is always doing: his prayer was that God would be good to all his mothers, and to his two fathers, and Mr. Halliwell, and Maly, and Sarah, and his own baby, and Tommy—and poor Pummy, and would, if Glum Gunn beat him, help him to bear the blows, and not mind them very much. He ended with something like this:
“God, I can’t do anything for anybody! I wish I could! You can get near them, God: please do something good to every one of them because I can’t. I think I could go to sleep now, if I were sure you had listened!”
Having thus cast all his cares on God, he did go to sleep; and woke in the morning ready for the new day that arrived with his waking.
Chapter LI. Clare a true master
It would take a big book to tell all the things of interest that happened to Clare in the next few weeks. They would be mainly how and where he found refuge, and how he and Abdiel got things to eat. Verily they did not live on the fat of the land. Now and then some benevolent person, seeing him in such evident want, would contrive a job in order to pay him for it: in one place, although they had no need of him, certain good people gave him ten days’ work under a gardener, and dismissed him with twenty shillings in his pocket.
One way and another, Clare and Abdiel did not die of hunger or of cold. That is the summary of their history for a good many weeks.
One night they slept on a common, in the lee of a gypsy tent, and contrived to get away in the morning without being seen. For Clare feared they might offer him something stolen, and hunger might persuade him to ask no questions. Many respectable people will laugh at the idea of a boy being so particular. Such are immeasurably more to be pitied than Clare. No one could be hard on a boy who in such circumstances took what was offered him, but he would not be so honest as Clare—though he might well be more honest than such as would laugh at him.
Another time he went up to a large house, to see if he might not there get a job. He found the place, for the time at least, abandoned: I suppose the persons in charge had deserted their post to make holiday. He lingered about until the evening fell, and then got with Abdiel under a glass frame in the kitchen-garden. But the glass was so close to them that Clare feared breaking it; so they got out again, and lay down on a bench in a shed for potting plants.
Clare was waked in the morning by a sound cuff on the side of the head. He got off the bench, took up Abdiel, and coming to himself, said to the gardener who stood before him in righteous indignation,
“I’m much obliged to you for my bedroom, sir. It was very cold last night.”
His words and respectful manner mollified the gardener a little.
“You have no business here!” he returned.
“I know that, sir; but what is a boy to do?” answered Clare. “I wasn’t hurting anything, and it was so cold we might have died if we had slept out of doors.”
“That’s no business of mine!”
“But it is of mine,” rejoined Clare; “—except you think a boy that can’t get work ought to commit suicide. If he mustn’t do that, he can’t always help doing what people with houses don’t like!”
The gardener was not a bad sort of fellow, and perceived the truth in what the boy said.
“That’s always the story!” he replied, however. “Can’t get work! No idle boy ever could get work! I know the sort of you—well!”
“Would you mind giving me a chance?” returned Clare eagerly. “I wouldn’t ask much wages.”
“You wouldn’t, if you asked what you was worth!”
“We’d be worth our victuals anyhow!” answered Clare, who always counted the dog.
“Who’s we?” asked the man. “Be there a hundred of you?”
“No; only two. Only me and Abdiel here!”
“Oh, that beast of a mongrel?”
The gardener made a stride as if to seize the dog. Clare bounded from him. The man burst into a mocking laugh.
“He’s a good dog, indeed, sir!” said Clare.
“You’ll give him the sack before I give you a job.”
“We’re old friends, sir; we can’t be parted!”
“I thought as much!” cried the gardener. “They’re always ready to work, an’ so hungry! But will they part with the mangy dog? Not they! Hard work and good wages ain’t nowhere beside a mongrel pup! Get out! Don’t I know the whole ugly bilin’ of ye!”
Clare turned away with a gentle good-morning, which the man did not get out of his heart for a matter of two days, and departed, hugging Abdiel.
He was often cold and always hungry, but his life was anything but dull. The man who does not know where his next meal is to come from, is seldom afflicted with ennui. That is the monopoly of the enviable with nothing to do, and everything money can get them. A foolish west-end life has immeasurably more discomfort in it than that of a street Arab. The ordinary beggar, while in tolerable health, finds far more enjoyment than most fashionable ladies.
Thus Clare went wandering long, seeking work, and finding next to none—all the time upheld by the feeling that something was waiting for him somewhere, that he was every day drawing nearer to it. Not once yet had he lost heart. In very virtue of unselfishness and lack of resentment, he was strong. Not once had he shed a tear for himself, not once had he pitied his own condition.
Chapter LII. Miss Tempest
Without knowing it, he was approaching the sea. Walking along a chain of downs, he saw suddenly from the top of one of them, for the first time in his memory though not in his life, the sea—a pale blue cloud, as it appeared, far on the horizon, between two low hills. The sight of it, although he did not at first know what it was, brought with it a strange inexplicable feeling of dolorous pleasure. For this he could not account. It was the faintest revival of an all but obliterated impression of something familiar to his childhood, lying somewhere deeper than the memory, which was a blank in regard to it. But that feeling was not all that the sight awoke in him. The pale blue cloud bore to him such a look of the eternal, that it seemed the very place for God to live in—the solemn, stirless region of calm in which the being to whom now of late he had first begun in reality to pray, kept his abode. The hungry, worn, tattered boy, with nothing to call his own but a great hope and a little dog, fell down on his bare knees on the hard road, and stretched out his hands in an ecstasy toward the low cloud.
The far-off ringing tramp of a horse’s feet aroused him. He rose light as an athlete, the great hope grown twice its former size, and hunger forgotten.
The blue cloud kept in sight, and by and by he knew it was the sea he saw, though how or at what moment the knowledge came to him he could not have told. The track was leading him toward one of the principal southern ports.
By this time he was again very thin; but he had brown cheeks and clear eyes, and, save when suffering immediately from hunger, felt perfectly well. Hunger is a sad thing notwithstanding its deep wholesomeness; but there is immeasurably more suffering in the world from eating too much than from eating too little.
Well able by this time to read the signs of the road, he perceived at length he must be drawing near a town. He had already passed a house or two with a little lawn in front, and indications of a garden behind; and he hoped yet again that here, after all, he might get work. To door after door he carried his modest request: some doors were shut in his face almost before he could speak; at others he had a civil word from maid, or a rough word from man; from none came sound of assent. It had become harder too to find shelter. Ever as he went, space was more and more appropriated and enclosed; less and less room was left for the man for whom had been made no special cubic provision of earth and air, and who had no money—the most disreputable of conditions in the eyes of such as would be helpless if they had none. A rare philosopher for eyes capable of understanding him, he was a despicable being in the eyes of the common man. To know a human being one must be human—that is, the divine must be strong in him.
For some days now, neither Clare nor Abdiel had come even within sight of food enough to make a meal. The dog was rather thinner than his master.
“Abdiel,” said Clare to him one day, “I fear you will soon be a serpent! Your body gets longer and longer, and your legs get shorter and shorter: you’ll be crawling presently, rubbing the hair off your useless little belly on the dusty road! Never mind, Abdiel; you’ll be a good serpent. Satan was turned into a bad serpent because he was a bad angel; you will be a good serpent, because you are a good dog! I hope, however, we shall yet put a stop to the serpent-business!”
Abdiel wagged his tail, as much as to say, “All right, master!”
The nights were now very cold; winter was coming fast. Had Clare been long enough in one place for people to know him, he would never have been allowed to go so cold and hungry; but he had always to move on, and nobody had time to learn to care about him. So the terrible sunless season threatened to wrap him in its winding-sheet, and lay him down.
One evening, just before sunset, grown sleepy in spite of the gathering cold, he sat down on one of the two steep grassy slopes that bordered the road. His feet were bare now, bare and brown, for his shoes had come to such plight that it was a relief to throw them away; but his soles had grown like leather. They rested in the dry shallow rain-channel, and his body leaned back against the slope. Abdiel, instead of jumping on the bank and lying in the soft grass, lay down on the leathery feet, and covered them from the night with his long faithful body and its coat of tangled hair.
The sun was shooting his last radiance along the road, and its redness caressed the sleeping companions, when an elderly lady came to her gate at the top of the opposite slope, and looked along the road with the sun. Her reverting glance fell upon the sleepers—the Knight of Hope lying in rags, not marble, his feet not upon his dog, but his dog upon his feet. It was a touching picture, and the old lady’s heart was one easily touched. She looked and saw that the face of the boy, whose hunger was as plain as his rags, was calm as the wintry sky. She wondered, but she needed not have wondered; for storm of anger, drought of greed, nor rotting mist of selfishness, had passed or rested there, to billow, or score, or waste.
Her mere glance seemed to wake Abdiel, who took advantage of his waking to have a lick at the brown, dusty, brave, uncomplaining feet, so well used to the world’s via dolorosa. She saw, and was touched yet more by this ministration of the guardian of the feet. Gently opening the gate she descended the slope, crossed the road, and stood silent, regarding the outcasts. No cloudy blanket covered the sky: ere morning the dew would lie frozen on the grass!
“You shouldn’t be sleeping there!” she said.
Abdiel started to his four feet and would have snarled, but with one look at the lady changed his mind. Clare half awoke, half sat up, made an inarticulate murmur, and fell back again.
“Get up, my boy,” said the old lady. “You must indeed!”
“Oh, please, ma’am, must I?” answered Clare, slowly rising to his feet. “I had but just lain down, and I’m so tired!—If I mayn’t sleep there,” he continued, “where am I to sleep?—Please, ma’am, why is everybody so set against letting a boy sleep? It don’t cost them anything! I can understand not giving him work, if he looks too much in want of it; but why should they count it bad of him to lie down and sleep?”
The lady wisely let him talk; not until he stopped did she answer him.
“It’s because of the frost, my boy!” she said. “It would be the death of you to sleep out of doors to-night!”
“It’s a nice place for it, ma’am!”
“To sleep in? Certainly not!”
“I didn’t mean that, ma’am. I meant a nice place to go away from—to die in, ma’am!”
“That is not ours to choose,” answered the old lady severely, but the tone of her severity trembled.
“I sha’n’t find anywhere so nice as this bank,” said Clare, turning and looking at it sorrowfully.
“There are plenty of places in the town. It’s but a mile farther on!”
“But this is so much nicer, ma’am! And I’ve no money—none at all, ma’am. When I came out of prison,—”
“Came out of where?”
“Out of prison, ma’am.”
He had never been in prison in a legal sense, never having been convicted of anything; but he did not know the difference between detention and imprisonment.
“Prison!” she exclaimed, holding up her hands in horror. “How dare you mention prison!”
“Because I was in it, ma’am.”
“And to say it so coolly too! Are you not ashamed of yourself?”
“No, ma’am.”
“It’s a shame to have been in prison.”
“Not if I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Nobody will believe that, I’m afraid!”
“I suppose not, ma’am! I used to feel very angry when people wouldn’t believe me, but now I see they are not to blame. And now I’ve got used to it, and it don’t hurt so much.—But,” he added with a sigh, “the worst of it is, they won’t give me any work!”
“Do you always tell people you’ve come out of prison?”
“Yes, ma’am, when I think of it.”
“Then you can’t wonder they won’t give you work!”
“I don’t, ma’am—not now. It seems a law of the universe!”
“Not of the universe, I think—but of this world—perhaps!” said the old lady thoughtfully.
“But there’s one thing I do wonder at,” said Clare. “When I say I’ve been in prison, they believe me; but when I say I haven’t done anything wrong, then they mock me, and seem quite amused at being expected to believe that. I can’t get at it!”
“I daresay! But people will always believe you against yourself.—What are you going to do, then, if nobody will give you work? You can’t starve!”
“Indeed I can, ma’am! It’s just the one thing I’ve got to do. We’ve been pretty near the last of it sometimes—me and Abdiel! Haven’t we, Abby?”
The dog wagged his tail, and the old lady turned aside to control her feelings.
“Don’t cry, ma’am,” said Clare; “I don’t mind it—not much. I’m too glad I didn’t do anything, to mind it much! Why should I! Ought I to mind it much, ma’am? Jesus Christ hadn’t done anything, and they killed him! I don’t fancy it’s so very bad to die of only hunger! But we’ll soon see!—Sha’n’t we, Abby?”
Again the dog wagged his tail.
“If you didn’t do anything wrong, what did you do?” said the old lady, almost at her wits’ end.
“I don’t like telling things that are not going to be believed. It’s like washing your face with ink!”
“I will try to believe you.”
“Then I will tell you; for you speak the truth, ma’am, and so, perhaps, will be able to believe the truth!”
“How do you know I speak the truth?”
“Because you didn’t say, ‘I will believe you.’ Nobody can be sure of doing that. But you can be sure of trying; and you said, ‘I will try to believe you.’”
“Tell me all about it then.”
“I will, ma’am.—The policeman came in the middle of the night when we were asleep, and took us all away, because we were in a house that was not ours.”
“Whose was it then?”
“Nobody knew. It was what they call in chancery. There was nobody in it but moths and flies and spiders and rats;—though I think the rats only came to eat baby.”
“Baby! Then the whole family of you, father, mother, and all, were taken to prison!”
“No, ma’am; my fathers and my mothers were taken up into the dome of the angels.”—What with hunger and sleepiness, Clare was talking like a child.—“I haven’t any father and mother in this world. I have two fathers and two mothers up there, and one mother in this world. She’s the mother of the wild beasts.”
The old lady began to doubt the boy’s sanity, but she went on questioning him.
“How did you have a baby with you, then?”
“The baby was my own, ma’am. I took her out of the water-butt.”
Once more Clare had to tell his story—from the time, that is, when his adoptive father and mother died. He told it in such a simple matter-of-fact way, yet with such quaint remarks, from their very simplicity difficult to understand, that, if the old lady, for all her trying, was not able quite to believe his tale, it was because she doubted whether the boy was not one of God’s innocents, with an angel-haunted brain.
“And what’s become of Tommy?” she asked.
“He’s in the same workhouse with baby. I’m very glad; for what I should have done with Tommy, and nothing to give him to eat, I can’t think. He would have been sure to steal! I couldn’t have kept him from it!”
“You must be more careful of your company.”
“Please, ma’am, I was very careful of Tommy. He had the best company I could give him: I did try to be better for Tommy’s sake. But my trying wasn’t much use to Tommy, so long as he wouldn’t try! He was a little better, though, I think; and if I had him now, and could give him plenty to eat, and had baby as well as Abdiel to help me, we might make something of Tommy, I think.—You think so—don’t you, Abdiel?”
The dog, who had stood looking in his master’s face all the time he spoke, wagged his tail faster.
“What a name to give a dog! Where did you find it?”
“In Paradise Lost, ma’am. Abdiel was the one angel, you remember, ma’am, who, when he saw what Satan was up to, left him, and went back to his duty.”
“And what was his duty?”
“Why of course to do what God told him. I love Abdiel, and because I love the little dog and he took care of baby, I call him Abdiel too. Heaven is so far off that it makes no confusion to have the same name.”
“But how dare you give the name of an angel to a dog?”
“To a good dog, ma’am! A good dog is good enough to go with any angel—at his heels of course! If he had been a bad dog, it would have been wicked to name him after a good angel. If the dog had been Tommy—I mean if Tommy had been the dog, I should have had to call him Moloch, or Belzebub! God made the angels and the dogs; and if the dogs are good, God loves them.—Don’t he, Abdiel?”
Abdiel assented after his usual fashion. The lady said nothing. Clare went on.
“Abdiel won’t mind—the angel Abdiel, I mean, ma’am—he won’t mind lending his name to my friend. The dog will have a name of his own, perhaps, some day—like the rest of us!”
“What is your name?”
“The name I have now is, like the dog’s, a borrowed one. I shall get my own one day—not here—but there—when—when—I’m hungry enough to go and find it.”
Clare had grown very white. He sat down, and lay back on the grass. He had talked more in those few minutes than for weeks, and want had made him weak. He felt very faint. The dog jumped up, and fell to licking his face.
“What a wicked old woman I am!” said the lady to herself, and ran across the road like some little long-legged bird, and climbed the bank swiftly.
She disappeared within the gate, but to return presently with a tumbler of milk and a huge piece of bread.
“Here, boy!” she cried; “here is medicine for you! Make haste and take it.”
Clare sat up feebly, and stared at the tumbler for a moment. Either he could hardly believe his eyes, or was too sick to take it at once. When he had it in his hand, he held it out to the dog.