During Honor Gordon’s period of enforced retirement, she went early every morning for a solitary walk along a pretty sandy road, that wound among the dark aromatic pine woods--a road with sharp angles, and deep leafy ravines, green with ferns and ivy. It was early in May, and the ground was strewn with pine-needles, which deadened the footfall; the firs were thin and bare, and through their dark branches she caught glimpses of the snows, that like a great white rampart hung in mid-air, between a brilliant blue sky and an opal-tinted mist. Honor enjoyed these rambles immensely, though she rarely met a soul, save a syce exercising a horse, or an ayah wheeling a perambulator. Her sole companion was “Ben,” who luckily had “taken to her,” and with whom she had established relations of such a friendly character, that she had actually been installed in the unexpected position of his “aunt.” Occasionally they made joint excursions down the khud, he in search of the private larders of other dogs, she in quest of ferns and moss for table decoration. Ben was a personage of such importance at Rookwood that he demands half a chapter to himself. He was a dog with fixed opinions, and hated Mrs. Langrishe--and one or two other people--in the same degree that he hated cold boiled meat. Sport was his passion, the chewing up of Suède gloves his weakness. He was a fox-terrier with a history. As a pup, he had been presented by a man to a girl, on the principle of “love me love my dog,” but alas, the false maiden had loved neither the one nor the other; she heartlessly jilted the man, and abandoned the dog to his fate. However, her ayah (prudent soul) ere she went down the hill, sold the pup to a bheestie for the sum of two annas (an ancient debt), he happened to be Mrs. Brande’s servant, and was excessively vain of his purchase, but left him most of the day tied by a strip of pink calico to a conspicuous tree in her compound, where he suffered him to “eat the air,” and but little else. Mrs. Brande, _en route_ to feed her well-to-do fowls, noticed the famishing animal; and as she often threw him a crust, he naturally hailed her advent with extravagant demonstrations of delight and feeble yelps of joy. Her easily softened heart was touched by the raptures of the starving puppy, and after some parley she bought him from the bheestie for the sum he swore he had paid--to wit, ten rupees--in order to feed him up and get him a good master. But Ben was thoroughly satisfied with his present quarters, and soon made himself completely at home. He displayed an easy intimacy with armchairs and cushions, he had undoubtedly been accustomed to sweet biscuits and to good society, and his mistress pointed out with just pride that he understood English perfectly! Of course she eventually adopted “Ben,” he made himself indispensable, he refused to be separated from his patroness, and became her shadow, and soon ceased to be a shadow himself. He grew from