"Brail possessed a dog, which I must specially mention. It was one of those big yellow, shaggy-haired curs that are of the original Maori breed. This beast was trained into a very fair sheep-dog, and did its work along with the colleys belonging to the farm. It was the one thing upon earth that Brail seemed really to love, but even in this he showed his half-barbarous nature; for he would sometimes beat and kick the poor cur in the most brutal way, and again would caress and fondle it like a child. Whatever he did to it the dog never left him. It could scarcely be called obedient, but night or day, waking or sleeping, it never left its master. The animal was intelligent enough, and had that curious likeness to Brail that one may notice a dog often gets for its master. But he prided himself that the dog had some tincture of human nature in it. He had bought it, when a year old, from a Maori woman, at the price of two plugs of tobacco; and it seems that this woman had suckled the whelp herself, in its early infancy, having lost a new-born child of her own. You know that this peculiar custom of giving suck to young puppies is not an uncommon thing among Maori women. Brail's dog, as you will see by-and-by, had certainly acquired some super-canine qualities, but whether from its human foster-mother or from the teachings of its master, I cannot tell. "Karl was indifferent to the beast. He was a hard man, and a rough one with all animals. He had no love or tenderness for them; nor did they show attachment to him. His own dogs obeyed him as their master, but did not love him as their friend. He cherished his sheep, looking on them as valuable property, without any feeling for them as living things. It is a character common in the bush. And this made a frequent cause for squabbles between him and Brail. Not that Brail cared for animals a bit more than Karl did, in a general way; only for that yellow dog of his. Though he often ill-treated it himself, it made him savage to see any one else do so; and Karl rarely came near it without a kick or a blow, more to tease Brail, I think, than for any other reason.