It was not the public verdict Roger had to fear. Aunt Dorothy took my Father's place at the head of the table, her face white and rigid, carving the meat, but eating not a morsel, nor uttering a word. Aunt Gretel moved about on one pretence and another, holding half-whispered discourse with the elder servants of the house, from the broken snatches of which I gathered that she fell into great historical difficulties in her double anxiety to say nothing harsh of the wounded gentleman, and at the same time to prove that Roger had meant no harm. And I, meantime, could scarce have sat through that terrible meal at all, but for Roger's stag-hound Lion, who nestled in close to me, pressing his great head under my hand, and calling my attention by a soft moan, and from time to time secretly relieving me of the food I could not touch, bolting it in a surreptitious manner, regardless of consequences, which said as plainly as possible, "Thou and I understand each other. Our hearts are in the same place. I eat, not because I care a straw about it, but to please thee and help _him_." Only once, when my tears fell fast on his nose, as I stooped over him to hide them, his feelings betrayed him, and his great paws appeared for a moment on the clean Sabbath cloth, as with an inquiring whine he started up and tried to lick my face, which I supposed was his way of figuratively wiping away my tears. But at the gentlest touch on his paws he subsided, casting one anxious glance at Aunt Dorothy, who, however, neither saw him nor the brown foot-prints on the tablecloth. Always afterwards he maintained his gentlemanlike reserve, limiting all further expression of his feelings to spasmodic movements of his tail, and to his great soft wistful eyes, which he never took off from me, For dogs always know when anything is the matter. Their misfortune is they can never make out what it is. Roger's ancient foe, the old gray cat, meantime made secretly off with a piece of meat which Lion had dropped. And I caught sight of her slowly luxuriating over it in a corner, entirely regardless of the family circumstances. Every most trivial incident in that day glows as vividly and distinctly in my memory, in the fire of the passion that burned through it all, as every detail of the carving of Davenant Hall in the flames of the twelve bonfires. The meal passed in a silence so deep that every whisper of Aunt Gretel's and every moan of Lion's were clearly heard. But afterwards the men slunk hastily away to the farm-yard and stables, and Tib with bones and fragments to her hens and pigs, and the maidens began to clear away the wooden trenchers and our pewter dishes, the clatter and rattle sounding singularly noisy without the cheerful talk which generally accompanied it.