“Of course I shall miss the dear fellow--but not more than he will miss me; and it will be good for us both.” “Then,” said I,--a little startled, I confess, “you really think--” and there I stopped. “Do _you_ think, Mr. Gowrie,” he rejoined, answering my unpropounded question, “that a God like Jesus Christ, would invent such a delight for his children as the society and love of animals, and then let death part them for ever? I don’t.” “I am heartily willing to be your disciple in the matter,” I replied. “I know well,” he resumed, “the vulgar laugh that serves the poor public for sufficient answer to anything, and the common-place retort: ‘You can’t give a shadow of proof for your theory!’--to which I answer, ‘I never was the fool to imagine I could; but as surely as you go to bed at night expecting to rise again in the morning, so surely do I expect to see my dear old Memnon again when I wake from what so many Christians call the sleep that knows no waking.’--Think, Mr. Gowrie, just think of all the children in heaven--what a superabounding joy the creatures would be to them!--There is one class, however,” he went on, “which I should like to see wait a while before they got their creatures back;--I mean those foolish women who, for their own pleasure, so spoil their dogs that they make other people hate them, doing their best to keep them from rising in the scale of God’s creation.” “They don’t know better!” I said. For every time he stopped, I wanted to hear what he would say next. “True,” he answered; “but how much do they want to know the right way of anything? They have good and lovely instincts--like their dogs, but do they care that there is a right way and a wrong way of following them?” We walked in silence, and were now coming near the other side of the small wood. “I hope I shall not interfere with your plans for the day!” I said. “I seldom have any plans for the day,” he answered. “Or if I have, they are made to break easily. In general I wait. The hour brings its plans with it--comes itself to tell me what is wanted of me. It has done so now. And see, there is Memnon again in attendance on us!” There, sure enough, was the horse, on the other side of the paling that here fenced the wood from a well-kept country-road. His long neck was stretched over it toward his master. “Memnon,” said Mr. Skymer as we issued by the gate, “I want you to carry this gentleman home.”