Mr. Leopold stood with his back to an oak-tree, and I leant against the fence beside him listening to him. He was a tall, dark man, with a keen, thoughtful, and benevolent expression. He was quite strong and healthy-looking, and there was a squareness about his features that I think one does not often see in dark people. Mr. Furniss was of lighter complexion and hardly as tall; there was quite as much intelligence and benevolence in his face, but not so much of what I have called thoughtfulness as distinguished from intelligence, and there was a humorous glint in his eye which the other lacked. They began to talk about the disease which had been so successfully dealt with, and this was what they said:— _Leopold._ Well, Furniss, an enemy hath done this. _Furniss._ Done what? The picnic or the red sickness? _Leopold._ The red sickness, of course. Can’t you see what I mean? _Furniss._ No, I can’t. You’re too much of a mystic for me, Leopold; but I’ll tell you what, England owes a debt to you and me, my boy, for it was near enough to being a new edition of the black death or the plague. _Leopold._ Only the black death and the plague were imported, and this was indigenous. It sprung up under our noses in a healthy place. It came from nowhere, and, thank God, it is gone nowhither. _Furniss._ But surely the black death and the plague must have begun somewhere, and they too seem to have gone nowhither. _Leopold._ You’re right this far that they _all_ must have had the same sort of beginning. Only it is given to very few to see the beginning, as you and I have seen it, or so near the beginning. _Furniss._ Now, Leopold, I hardly see what you are driving at. I am not much on religion, as they say in America, but I believe there is a Power above all. Call that Power God, and let us say that God does as He pleases, and on the whole that it is best that He should. I don’t see that you can get much further than that. _Leopold._ I don’t believe that God ever made the plague, or the black death, or the red sickness. _Furniss._ Oh, don’t you? Then you are, I suppose, what the churchmen call a Manichee—you believe in the two powers of light and darkness, good and evil. Well, it is not a bad solution of the question as far as it goes, but I can hardly accept it. _Leopold._ No, I don’t believe in any gods but the One. But let me explain. That is a nice dog of yours, Furniss. You told me one day something about his breeding, and you promised to tell me more. _Furniss._ Yes, it is quite a problem in natural history. Do you know, Tommy’s ancestors have been in our family for four or five generations of men, and, I suppose, that is twenty generations of dogs. _Leopold._ You told me something of it. You improved the breed greatly, I believe? _Furniss._ Yes; but I have some distant cousins, and they have the same breed and yet not the same, for they have cultivated it in quite another direction. _Leopold._ What are the differences?