The two—the dog and the young reprobate she was expected to reform—took to each other with all their hearts, and soon became inseparable. But at first Ronald’s pessimistic prophecy seemed likely to be realised. True to his natural instinct, her master took Judy at once to the nearest public-house, and, as the biscuits due to an intelligent dog were always forthcoming, Judy fell in entirely with her master’s view as to the direction their daily walk should take. Ronald triumphed maliciously but prematurely. For Judy was to be recalled to her duty by a stern dispensation. It happened one day, that, as she and her master were starting, a troop of bicyclists came scorching down the hill, and Judy, caught off her guard and losing her head, was run over, and taken up for dead. After long days of anxious nursing she was called slowly back to life, at least to a measure of life. But the little dog’s nerve was gone. From that day forward no persuasion could tempt her to follow her master along the public road. Warned by experience, she dreaded bicyclists at every turning. Just so far as the garden gate, and no further, she would follow him, and, with a thin little feeble whine, plead almost in words for a change of route. But the master’s heart was steeled. It was to be a conflict of will between them. And which was to conquer? the dog or the man? For days and weeks the result trembled in the scale. But the walk grew dreary apart from his companion, and, going and returning, he was haunted by the piteous whine. Then at last he succumbed. The day’s walk along the high road was exchanged for a run in the nearest field or common, and Judy’s heart rejoiced, and her spirit came again to her, and she became—almost, but never quite—her natural self again. Thenceforth the sympathy between these two was complete. When Judy was ill again, almost to death, she was restful nowhere but in her master’s presence. When he left the room, her eyes would languidly follow him; when he came back, they kindled to life again, breathed into by a new spirit; and when he took her in his arms, all pain and disquiet ceased, and she lay neither shivering nor moaning—lost to all feeling but the satisfied assurance of his love. “Well, Ronald, and how about my experiment?” “You’ve beaten me,” was the reply. “What a wonderful woman you are!” II “In quo tam similem videbis Issam Ut sit tam similis sibi nec ipsa.” MARTIAL. She was a very little dog with a very large soul, and all her soul looked out of her eyes. No one whom she loved could doubt her love, when once her eyes had assumed their final expression. “I am your friend for life,” they said, “and for death—and perhaps beyond it.”