The dogs used to display judiciousness in selecting the cover of night for their reappearance, and they sometimes brought home a mutilated hare or rabbit, as if it were intended for a propitiation. But Wallace at least reported himself, in full view of the result, with manly straightforwardness and resignation. He was accustomed to go beneath his master’s window, and by a deep prolonged “bow-f-f” announce that there he was ready to submit to whatever his master imposed on him. I regret to own that Dick, on the contrary, stole round the house on tiptoe, and, if he found an open window on the ground floor, crept in and hid himself beneath a convenient sofa or bed, in a short-sighted, childish notion that he might evade the righteous sentence he had provoked. On the last secret hunt in which the dog-friends engaged, Wallace was so enfeebled by age that the exertion exhausted the little strength left to him, and he was unable to return home. Dick had to face the wrath of his master alone, while he was unable to account for his missing comrade. Happily the mastiff reached a neighbouring farm-house, where he was recognised—for he was a well-known and valued dog—and where he was hospitably entertained, till word could be sent to his master, who despatched a cart for the disabled sportsman. But fancy the mortification of poor Wallace, once so invulnerable at every point, so renowned a warrior and hunter, to be brought home like a dead donkey, stretched at the bottom of a cart! Wallace survived his last hunt some time, but the evidence of the decay of his powers became always more unmistakeable. He was a mere bony wreck of what he had been. He subsisted principally on great “diets” of milk freely lavished on him to prolong his days. At last he fell into a habit of stealing away and secreting himself in some solitary spot of the garden or grounds, an ominous inclination which superstitious servants called “looking for his grave,” and that was in reality prompted by the curious pathetic instinct which causes every stricken animal to draw away from the herd, and hide itself from its kind. But Wallace was not to die apart from human hands and the friends he had loved. No one saw him die; but a servant, preparing to sweep out the dining-room early one morning, found the old dog stretched stark and cold on his master’s sofa—“like a Christian,” as she protested, half awed, half scandalised. And what gave the last touch to the situation was that little lively Dick—always fond of establishing himself by his friend—was discovered lying trembling, with that consciousness of death of which a dog is supposed to be unconscious, behind Wallace, that he had not dared to disturb—the first time Wallace had frightened Dick.