Besides all this, Crusoe could speak! He spoke by means of the dog's dumb alphabet in a way that defies description. He conversed, so to speak, with his extremities--his head and his tail. But his eyes, his soft brown eyes, were the chief medium of communication. If ever the language of the eyes was carried to perfection, it was exhibited in the person of Crusoe. But, indeed, it would be difficult to say which part of his expressive face expressed most--the cocked ears of expectation, the drooped ears of sorrow; the bright, full eye of joy, the half-closed eye of contentment, and the frowning eye of indignation accompanied with a slight, a very slight pucker of the nose and a gleam of dazzling ivory--ha! no enemy ever saw this last piece of canine language without a full appreciation of what it meant. Then as to the tail--the modulations of meaning in the varied wag of that expressive member--oh! it's useless to attempt description. Mortal man cannot conceive of the delicate shades of sentiment expressible by a dog's tail, unless he has studied the subject--the wag, the waggle, the cock, the droop, the slope, the wriggle! Away with description--it is impotent and valueless here! As we have said, Crusoe was meek and mild. He had been bitten, on the sly, by half the ill-natured curs in the settlement, and had only shown his teeth in return. He had no enmities--though several enemies--and he had a thousand friends, particularly among the ranks of the weak and the persecuted, whom he always protected and avenged when opportunity offered. A single instance of this kind will serve to show his character. One day Dick and Crusoe were sitting on a rock beside the lake--the same identical rock near which, when a pup, the latter had received his first lesson. They were conversing as usual, for Dick had elicited such a fund of intelligence from the dog's mind, and had injected such wealth of wisdom into it, that he felt convinced it understood every word he said. "This is capital weather, Crusoe; ain't it, pup?" Crusoe made a motion with his head which was quite as significant as a nod. "Ha! my pup, I wish that you and I might go and have a slap at the grizzly bars, and a look at the Rocky Mountains. Wouldn't it be nuts, pup?" Crusoe looked dubious. "What, you don't agree with me! Now tell me, pup, wouldn't ye like to grip a bar?" Still Crusoe looked dubious, but made a gentle motion with his tail, as though he would have said, "I've seen neither Rocky Mountains nor grizzly bars, and know nothin' about 'em, but I'm open to conviction." "You're a brave pup," rejoined Dick, stroking the dog's huge head affectionately. "I wouldn't give you for ten times your weight in golden dollars--if there be sich things." Crusoe made no reply whatever to this. He regarded it as a truism unworthy of notice; he evidently felt that a comparison between love and dollars was preposterous.