I had good reason, then, to congratulate myself on Jack's surly behaviour on our first meeting. Then, a few days later, a curious thing happened. Jack was discovered one morning in his kennel, and when spoken to came or rather dragged himself out, a most pitiable object. He was horribly bruised and sore all over; his bones appeared to be all broken; he was limp and could hardly get on his feet, and in that miserable condition he continued for some three days. At first we thought he had been in a big fight--he was inclined that way, his master said--but we could discover no tooth marks or lacerations, nothing but bruises. Perhaps, we said, he had fallen into the hands of some cruel person in one of the distant moorland farms, who had tied him up, then thrashed him with a big stick, and finally turned him loose to die on the moor or crawl home if he could. His master looked so black at this that we said no more about it. But Jack was a wonderfully tough dog, all gristle I think, and after three days of lying there like a dead dog he quickly recovered, though I'm quite sure that if his injuries had been distributed among any half-dozen pampered or pet dogs it would have killed them all. A morning came when the kennel was empty: Jack was not dead--he was well again, and, as usual, out. Just then I was absent for a week or ten days then, back again, I went out one fine morning for a long day's ramble along the coast. A mile or so from home, happening to glance back I caught sight of a black dog's face among the bushes thirty or forty yards away gazing earnestly at me. It was Jack, of course, nothing but his head visible in an opening among the bushes--a black head which looked as if carved in ebony, in a wonderful setting of shining yellow furze blossoms. The beauty and singularity of the sight made it impossible for me to be angry with him, though there's nothing a man more resents than being shadowed, or secretly followed and spied upon, even by a dog, so, without considering what I was letting myself in for, I cried out "Jack" and instantly he bounded out and came to my side, then flew on ahead, well pleased to lead the way.