And I knelt at the coffin’s side and prayed for this good and faithful servant and friend. A little later I stood on the porch, and through blinding tears saw my husband a second time walk with bared head by “Old John’s” side--a second time escorting him to a home. So he passed out of my life, but never will he pass from my memory. Though he left us without “warning,” and asked for no “recommendation,” we cannot complain, since he “bettered” himself in following the summons of the Great Master. Black Watch Black Watch That old, black “Watch” believed himself the general superintendent of John Tyler’s “back-wood” farm, as well as the guardian of his family, no one could doubt who noticed his busy self-importance, from the candle-light breakfast till the eight o’clock retirement of the family. Then, only, he felt free to visit the secret repository of the few bones he had acquired, or to take a run down the road, and through the woods, to pick a fight with the only dog of his weight to be found within a ten-mile radius. I should not like to say, off-hand, just what breed “Watch” represented, but he was black all over--was short-haired, heavy-built, and mastiff-like in head and chest. One ear had been injured in a fight with city dogs, and it lopped helplessly ever after, while the good ear seemed doubly quick and perky by comparison. Now, it was this faithful creature’s clear, brown eyes that were first to discover something wrong about young Mrs. Tyler. I don’t suppose he knew she had worked to the breaking point--that five babies, with barely a year separating one birth-day from another, were enough to break the high ambition with which she had begun her life, here in the woods, helping in rough, out-door work, as well as trying to make a comfortable home for her husband. And now, that another little one was expected, her songs had ceased, and often, she would, in the midst of her work, stop and stand, with eyes fixed on vacancy, a heavy frown on her face that had always before been so bright and kindly in expression. “Watch,” alone, noticed this. The children were too little, and John Tyler too busy, and the brown eyes would study the clouded face until he could bear his trouble in silence no longer, and he would whimper, and push his cold, damp nose into her hand, but instead of the pat he expected, he several times received a sharp rebuke that made him lower head and tail and retire fully five feet from her, where he sat and rapped out a faint, deprecating “tattoo” on the bare floor with his tail. Sometimes he would rush out and find his master, and climb up and put his paws on his breast and whine, and look back at the house, and John would say: “What the deuce is the matter, ‘Watch’? I don’t know what you want!” and the man that “helped” would say: “Oh, he’s got something tree’d, I s’pose, and wants you to go help him!”