Other dogs there were, but where is the space to chronicle them or their deeds? A few lines must be kept for Hinsefeldt, the large black family cat that usually lay on the top stair of the book-ladder in Sir Walter’s study, coming down if Maida left the room, to guard the footstool until he should return. Irving saw Pussy at Abbotsford, and describes her clapper-clawing the dogs--an act of sovereignty which they took in good part. Scott was by nature not very fond of cats, but Hinse reconciled him to the race, so that even in a dull London hotel, he could enjoy the society of a “tolerably conversible cat, that ate a mess of cream with him each morning.” In 1825 a great business crash involved Sir Walter in a debt, to pay which he wore out the remnant of his life. Just before, he had been planning a return to Abbotsford. “But now,” he writes, “my dogs will wait for me in vain.... I feel their feet on my knees, I hear them whining and seeking me everywhere. This is nonsense, but it is what they would do could they know how things may be.” Two or three years later, being asked to write something for a Manual of Coursing, he refused sadly:--“I could only send you the laments of an old man, and the enumeration of the number of horses and dogs which have been long laid under the sod.” Indeed, for master as for petted friends, the end was now approaching. He grew each day more sad and feeble, until at last even his staghound’s rough caress was more than his spent frame could bear. As a last hope he was taken on a voyage; but the remedy was powerless, and he hurried home to die. Half-wild with joy at seeing the old familiar scenes once more, he finally reached Abbotsford, and sank exhausted in his chair. There the dogs gathered around him; “they began to fawn upon him and lick his hands; and he alternately sobbed and smiled over them until sleep oppressed him.” This sleep ere long deepened into a slumber more profound, and death came between Sir Walter and his friends on earth. Contemporary with Scott was Prof. John Wilson, so well-known to all as Christopher North. He, too, was passionately fond of animals, and his daughter, Mrs. Gordon, has left a delightful account of his pets. Of Grog, chestnut-brown in color, meek and tiny, “more like a bird than a dog,” with “little comical, turned-out feet, a cosey, coaxing, mysterious, half-mouse, half-birdlike dog,” who crept noiselessly out of life one morning, and was found dead on his master’s bed. Of Brontë, the beautiful Newfoundland, all purple-black, save the white star on his breast, who daily walked to and from the college with his master, but at last was cruelly poisoned, and died, leaving “no bark like his in the world of sound.” [Illustration: RAB. (_By permission of David Douglass, publisher of “Rab and His Friends.”_)]