“Oh, yes, I remember him,” said Miss Jule; “he was rather small for his breed, and lame in his left hind leg, but compact and alert. He always used to ride about with you, and when you went indoors would sit and wait with an expression of patience in his eyes that seemed to say that he knew just what you were about, and that of course he expected you to take your time, do your work thoroughly, and not hurry; but you’ve not brought him this season, have you?” The doctor shook his head, still keeping his eyes upon the miniature and continued: “I reared Jim from a pup, and it seems as if there never was a time that he was so young but what he understood what I said almost before I spoke the words; he travelled everywhere with me, and was a companion for work as well as play. If I went to a hotel, in a day he knew at which floor our room was, and where the elevator should stop. He knew my telephone call, and would bark at me when the bell rang it. If I was at the office, he at home, I could call him to come to me if some one lowered the receiver to his range. He could carry numbers in his head, too, that is, as far as four; above that he was uncertain. [Illustration: _Jim_ (_Seeley photo_).] “One day, three years or so ago, while I was waiting at a railway station not far from Boston, in some strange way a train struck Jim and hurled him upon a bank above. It may be that he refused the train right of way; however it was, the crowd that gathered said he was done for, and should be put out of misery. But bruised, his leg broken at the hip, and maimed though he was when I picked him up, Jim looked at me and I at him, and we agreed to make a fight for it. I took him into Boston to the hospital. We won; his leg was set, and for a time it did well, and we went about in company once more; but the fracture join was brittle, it soon broke again, and was united with silver wire. For a couple of years he went about, a cheerful cripple,--but at that, worth all the other dogs in Christendom to me, and seeming to grow keener witted as his body was more dependent. “Then the leg began to bother him, and I tried every known expedient short of amputation. If I had done that in time he might have lived longer, but I hesitated, and Jim died, conscious and knowing me. “That was more than a year ago, but I have not forgotten. There never was but one Jim, and no other dog can be the same to me. One thing, though, Jim has done for his fellows,--he has made me think of and treat all dogs differently for his sake, and remembering him and what he was, knocking about as I do, I’m fast getting to believe that dogs are almost the only friends one has that can be quite trusted. If a man is old or young, rich or poor, a dog sees no fault in his master.” A man seldom has the relief of tears that helps a woman, but instead, sorrow grasps his throat and chokes him, and there were tears in the doctor’s voice as he closed his watch on Jim’s portrait.