This was too much, and Betty burst into passionate tears and lamentations. "Oh, my dear dog! Oh, what shall I do!" "Hush, hush!" said I. "The dog is not dead! See, he moves now!" I set her on her donkey, and put into her arms poor Gill, who was beginning to make a feeble whining, and so we went away, leaving my Lord looking foolish enough. I thought all day the poor beast would die, but he is better to-night. Betty never said one word all the way home, and she has moped all day. I have not told my Lady, and shall not. My Lord met me in the hall to-night, and said something about a game of backgammon, but I would not understand, and passed him with only a reverence. Maybe I am wrong, but I dared not trust myself with him. Since we are to order ourselves reverently to our betters, 'tis to be wished that our betters were a little better! _August 23._ The poor little dog is dead! We nursed it up as well as we could, and I hoped it would get well, but it died last night, after two or three hours of great suffering. It was pitiful to see the poor little wretch, how in its greatest agonies it would look up in answer to Betty's voice, and make a feeble effort to wag its tail. The poor child was broken-hearted, and no wonder. I thought to have a sad time with her; and so indeed I did, but not as I expected. There was no screaming, none of the violence she has shown heretofore, but deep, distressful sobbing, which seemed to shake her poor thin frame all to pieces. It was not only the loss of the dog, her only playfellow, though that was enough, but that "papa" should have done it. I had at last to come to my final argument, which I keep in reserve when all else fails to quiet her. "My love, you will make yourself sick!" I said. "And that will distress my Lady, and perhaps make her sick as well." "I 'am' sick!" said the poor thing, sobbing. "I am sick of 'being' at all. Everything is so hard for me. I wish I had never been made! Oh, Margaret, why do you suppose that I was made?" "To be happy in heaven forever!" I said. "That is what we were all made for." "Then I wish I had gone there when I was born!" said she. "I think it is a very hard road to get there!" "It is a hard road to many beside you, my dear one," I answered. "Think how hard it was made to the poor men Mr. Corbet told us of, who were shut up for years and years in the dungeons of the Inquisition, only to be burned at last, because they would not deny the truth." "But why should it be so?" asked Betty.