It was after the wrench of Harry’s departure, for many months, that Flora was first seen to assume that attitude of supreme watching and expectation in which she has been painted. She had been shut up to keep her from running off to the railway station—just as I have known another faithful dog go regularly and take up his position at a particular hour, in order to be present on the arrival of a coach by which his master had been wont to return home. The dog was under the impression that the man would make his appearance in the old accustomed fashion, and, although he was doomed to disappointment night after night, he kept up the bootless practice for weeks. The attitude expressive of suspense became frequent, almost habitual, with Flora. In the early days of Harry’s service, he happened to have tolerably frequent opportunities of coming home, so that his dog grew familiar with arrivals and departures. And Harry’s father and mother, now cherishing Flora as a relic of their absent son, were fain to allege that she showed marvellous, certainly superhuman, if not supernatural, discrimination in detecting the most distant signs of her master’s approach; and that they were often made aware of Harry’s unexpected nearness, before they could otherwise have known it, simply by the actions of the dog. In addition, Flora had her susceptibilities keenly alive to any trace of Harry, or any association with him, so that on the sight of some article which had belonged to him, such as his cap or his old overcoat, or even on her catching the distant sound of the sportsmen’s dropping shots on the first of September, Flora would fall into an expectant position, and sit motionless and listening for hours. The last expression of her remembrance unquestionably detracted from the correctness of her premonitions of Harry’s reappearance; but his father and mother argued that there was a perceptible difference between Flora’s air when she sat thus waiting for her master, without any hope of seeing him, and her whole gait and manner when she flung up her bent head triumphantly before she made a bolt at the door or the open window, crying as plainly as if she had made the remark in so many words—“Ah! don’t you know Master Harry is at the gate?” Either expression was clear to Harry’s father and mother, who had a sympathy with the dog, and whose own dim eyes showed a reflection of the aimless wistfulness which was creeping into Flora’s brighter orbs. A sore test was in store for all Harry’s friends, human and canine. In the course of honourable promotion he became a person of importance, and his absences were much longer, his returns briefer and less unfailing. At last there came a day when he had the pride of showing a lieutenant’s uniform; but as a qualification to the satisfaction, where his friends were concerned, he sailed for a distant station, from which he could not return for a period of years.