The dog was waiting for him below and at his reappearance leaped and bounded with delight, and then lay down on the floor of the cave with such an inviting wriggle of the tail that the man understood him at last. It was a lodging that the dog offered him, a lodging which had been occupied by a former master, and which the faithful creature still watched over and hungered in, as his appearance amply showed. The man, to whom a human being might have appealed in vain, was grimly touched by this benevolent action on the part of a dog, and stooping quickly, he gave him a short caress, after which he rose and stood hesitating for a moment, casting short glances behind him. But the temptation, if it was such, to remain, did not hold him long, for presently he motioned to the dog to follow him, and issuing from the cave, began his weary tramp toward the town. The dog, with fallen tail and drooping head, trotted slowly after him. And this was the first adventure which met this man in the little town of Hamilton. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ III. THE YOUNG HEIRESS. THAT night five men sat on the porch of the one tavern in Hamilton. Of these, one was the landlord, a spare, caustic New Englander who understood his business and left it to his wife to do the agreeable. Of the remaining four, two were the inevitable loungers to be found around all such places at nightfall, and the other two, wayfarers who had taken up lodgings for the night. The dog lying contentedly at the feet of one of these latter tells us who he was. The talk was on local subjects and included more or less gossip. Who had started it? No one knew; but the least interested person in the group was apparently the man with the dog. He sat and smoked, because it was the hour for sitting and smoking, but he neither talked nor listened,—that is, to all appearance—and when he laughed, as he occasionally did, it was more at some unexpected antic on the part of the dog than at anything which was said in his hearing. But he was old and nobody wondered. The last subject under discussion was the engagement of a certain young lady to a New York medical student. “Which means, I take it, that Dr. Izard will not continue to have full swing here,” observed one of the stragglers. “Folks say as how her people won’t hear of her leaving home. So he’ll have to come to Hamilton.” “I sha’n’t lend him my old body to experiment on, if he does,” spoke up the surly landlord. “Dr. Izard is good enough for me.” “And for me. But the women folks want a change, they say. The doctor is so everlasting queer; and then he’s away so much.” “That’s because he is so skilful that even the big bugs in Boston and New York too, I hear, want his opinion on their cases. He’s not to blame for that. Great honor, I say, not only to him but to all the town.”