It was touching to witness the gratitude of the old pointer, his whining and his whimpering and his eagerness to lick the face that he might not behold. He was happy, let us hope, if but for a moment. Suddenly he fell,—fell as though stricken with heart-disease, all in a heap; then tumbling over and measuring his length along the carpet, his head came down upon the floor with a thump. There he lay motionless,—motionless, save that every now and then his tail beat the floor softly, softly, and in a sort of drowsy rhythm, as though he but dreamt that he wagged it,—gently tapped the floor and ceased; once more, and stopped again, and yet again; and he was still. The stranger knelt over the outstretched form of the dying pointer. “Ponto! Ponto, old boy! Can you hear me? Yes? Then good-by, dear old fellow, good-by!” Deaf as he was, and breathing his last, that name and that voice seemed to penetrate the fast-closing channels of sense; and with two or three last fluttering taps—he had no other way—he seemed to say farewell, and forever. The young man rose, and, staggering across the room, threw his arm over his face and leaned against the wall. Charley made two or three hasty, forward strides, then halted with a hesitating look, then springing forward, placed a hand on either shoulder of the figure before him, and leaned upon his neck. “Dory!” whispered he, in a voice that trembled. A shiver, as from an electric shock, ran through the stalwart frame of the stranger. For a moment he seemed to hesitate; the next he had wheeled about, and, clasping his companion in his mighty arms, hugged him to his breast. “Charley!” cried he, in a broken voice; and his head rested upon the shoulder of his friend. CHAPTER XLV. I greatly fear that when I stated, somewhere in the course of the foregoing narrative, that I had firmly resolved to exclude love-making from its pages,—I greatly fear that none of my readers gave me credit for sincerity. Yet it was not a stroke of Bushwhackerish humor; I was in sober earnest, and was never more convinced than at this moment of the folly of breaking my original resolution. Here I am with three pairs of lovers on my hands,—all sighing like very furnaces—I, who am quite incapable of managing one couple. I suppose I have only myself to blame. I assembled a number of young Virginians in a country house. I should have known better. Yet, when I brought them together, it was an understood thing (on my part, at least) that there was to be no nonsense. The truth is, I think I have a just right to complain of my characters. I had a little story to tell,—the simplest in the world—the merest monograph,—and I introduced the main body of my personages as a setting, merely; just as a jeweller surrounds a choice stone with small pearls to bring its color into fuller relief. And here they are, upsetting everything.