day she will be found stretched stark and still on some spot, hallowed by association, where her master was wont to whistle her to his side to start for the day’s sport—where he cleaned his gun on their return, and she, after lapping the cold tea which his care provided for her refreshment, sat and looked on, not too tired to enter with interest and admiration into the operation. Or she will be discovered on the mat by the closed door—opening no more—of his room; dying without complaint, and seeking to cause no trouble in her death, as she had tried to give as little as possible in her life. Flora was brought up in a middle station of life to that of Prince or of Carlo. She was not the next thing to an outcast, neither was she a pampered dog of high degree. She was one of a litter of puppies that arrived at a country parsonage, when there was no great need of such an addition to the family. Neither was she, nor her mother before her, particularly precious for purity or excellence of breed, though they were members of a race of stout serviceable dogs which could be turned to account in various ways, and could be trained to prove of considerable use, both as setters and retrievers, among the turnips and clover, and in the young plantations. But the perpetual curate who was master of the parsonage was an elderly man, and no great sportsman, and one dog was quite enough for him and his friends. Flora was sentenced to death along with her brothers and sisters, and if it had not been for Master Harry her history would have been of the briefest. He was not the sole hope of the house, like De Vaux; neither had he any honours beyond an honest name to succeed to. But he was the youngest born of his family. He was growing up in a healthy, hardy, happy boyhood, after the elder members had gone out into the world, and were married and settled in households of their own. Master Harry was the last young bird that kept the parent nest tenanted by more than the old pair. He was the Benjamin of their mature years, and therefore it was difficult to deny him a small request—not that Harry’s father and mother did not strive to do their duty by him, in contradicting and correcting him, as they had dealt by their elder children, in order to bring him up in the way he should go. His mother, who was a tall gaunt woman, as gaunt as Flora became in later days, and yet as active and managing as if she had been one of your little boneless, tireless women, and the apple of whose eye Harry was, especially laboured conscientiously to mortify her own inclinations and hold her youngest son in check. Even in the matter of Flora, though she yielded to let the dog be reared, it was always under protest and with reservations—if the dog proved a thoroughly good dog, and was in every respect well conducted from her puppyhood; if Mrs. Bloomfield saw no reason to change her mind at any point of Flora’s career, and cause the dog to be