What I do intend to convey is, that in Carlo, and, for that matter, in his master also, the instincts of self-preservation, self-resource, and independence were sensibly and unconsciously weakened. The two could not have earned a dinner for themselves to save their lives, and if they had earned it they would not have known what to do with it, unless some foreign aid had happily come to them. Even after they had been initiated into the necessary process, they would have been so revolted by all the plain details inevitable to preparing a dinner, that they would have left it to be devoured by hardier applicants, till hunger urged them on to the stifling of their over-trained and stimulated susceptibilities. Carlo first saw the light in a perfectly appointed kennel, built in the shape of a pagoda, one of the show-places in a noble ancestral park. His birth was attended with all the _éclat_ of the coming into the world of a great and important personage, and his pedigree was as proudly and hotly upheld as that of many a prince whose inheritance depends on his family tree. The young heir up at the castle had scarcely been welcomed with greater exultation, or had more unremitting care and attention bestowed on him than was lavished by the kennel staff on the puppy, the finest of the litter, the progeny of a valuable and favourite dog. Neither were the kennel men and boys the only or the principal persons who waited on the levees of Carlo. My lord and my lady visited him almost daily; the most cherished visitors at the castle were taken to inspect his points, and admire his promise; indeed it was regarded as a mark of favour, on the part of the earl and the countess, when some comparatively humble visitor—parson, lawyer, or doctor, with his wife or daughters—was invited to go to the kennel and have a look at the special puppy. The kennel was the first place the young lord ran to when he was home from Eton. Carlo was led through all the trying stages of puppyhood with the most tender anxiety for his welfare. His weaning and teething were carefully seen to. I am almost sure that he was inoculated for distemper, either in the ear or under a front leg, at a spot which could not be reached by tooth or claw; and that the operation was performed by a distinguished veterinary surgeon, who came from the next large town for the purpose. If I am right, by this means the dog was enabled to escape altogether the common scourge of the young of the dog race. And I believe the most distant suspicion of mange, imported by some extraordinary means to Carlo, would have been enough to have driven the head kennel-man into a fit, would have covered with gloom the countenance of the young lord, and would even have brought a cloud over the brow of his father the earl, who was a famous statesman, and was understood to have the destinies of nations at his beck.