Where Sprig was born I do not know, nor had I any acquaintance with his parents. One morning several years ago I chanced to go down stairs early, and found the milk-boy at the hall door, delivering his daily supply to the cook. In the courtyard before my house was a bright-looking rough terrier of small size, frisking about very cheerfully, trying to catch the small stump of a tail which some cruel despoiler had left him. As he was engaged in this pastime, a large brown retriever entered the gate, to look on, I suppose, for he had an amused expression of face, and was wagging his tail amicably. Sprig, however, though but a mite in comparison, decidedly resented the intrusion, and flew at the retriever's throat, from which he had to be choked off by his owner, who brought him back in his arms. The little fellow was in the highest state of excitement and anger, his bright, intelligent eyes flashing, and his hair bristling. He was indeed most amusingly fierce, but was soon calmed when he was shown, and told, that his enemy had fled, whereupon the following colloquy ensued between myself and his owner: Myself: "And where did you get that dog, boy? You did not steal him, I hope?" Boy, in a rich Dublin brogue: "Ah, now! would I stale anythin', yer honner, an' me the poor milk-boy? Is it stale him? Bedad, it's my father's cuzin that's at the Curragh! Sure he's a corporal, so he is. He brought him, and he sez, 'Yez'll get me a pound for him, and no less.' So it's a pound I want for him, sur, and nothin' less. An' sure John Lambert knows me well--so he does!" When John, my servant, was sent for, he gave a good account of the lad, and as he entirely approved of Sprig, I gave the sovereign, showing it to the dog, whose wondering eyes were glancing from one to the other. Then I said to the boy, "Put him into my arms, and tell him he belongs to me;" and he did so. The little fellow looked curiously and wistfully at the lad, who, to do him justice, had tears in his eyes, and then nestled into my breast, licking my hands and face. When my daughter came down stairs, I took up Sprig and placed him in my youngest daughter's arms, a process he appeared to comprehend perfectly, and told him she was his mistress; nor to the day of his death did he ever falter in his devoted allegiance to her. He was very fond of me and of us all, but his deepest love was for his mistress, and on many occasions was most affecting to see. She was often delicate, and once had a sharp attack of typhus fever. In this illness Sprig never left her. He would lie at the foot of her bed watching her, and would sometimes creep gently up to her, put his paws round her neck, and lick her hands softly, while the pleading of his large eyes looking from his mistress, in her unconscious delirium, to her sister and me, was touching in the extreme. Indeed, there were then many sad illnesses, but Sprig was always the same. As my child grew