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her-coming out of that dreadful door; trespassing beyond the nursery bounds in the twilight, three or four years before, forgetting the two Bogies, when just then that door opened, and in the distance there was a sight which frightened me nearly to death. A large ugly head came out of the door, in the traditional wide, white, flappy cap borders, and the forest of curl-papers, which we knew were worn by Mrs. Scratchy. Rushing back to the nursery, I went to bed trembling, and crying myself to sleep, for I dared not tell what I had seen. What I did see, I think must have been a Gamp, of grim and gaunt proportions, but whoever or whatever she was, she remained an ideal of all that was most terrible for years. Our respect for Crib was much enhanced by knowing that he slept so pluckily all alone at the bottom of those stairs, while that dangerous Mrs. Scratchy was all the time at the top.

Part of the plan of training for being wild, was of a nautical character. We should very likely have to cross rivers and ponds sometimes when we were quite wild, and so the more I knew about boating the better, particularly as a very tempting opportunity for learning navigation presented itself. For a few days, once a month, there was always to be found a long shallow oval-shaped brewing-tub on the shores of a very small pond, some distance from the house, where the tub used to be taken for periodical cleaning and soaking, and by it was always a long flattish implement, known as a mashing stick, not at all unlike an oar, which did capitally for punting. I got the tub into the water, though it took a long time launching her, and she was very difficult to get into when she was once afloat, and remarkably unsteady on the water at all times; but the delight of finding only water below and sky above, and voyaging about in one's own boat, was almost overwhelming. The water was very shallow, and when stirred up by navigation, very dirty; but no voyage upon the bluest of Swiss lakes has ever seemed so beautiful since. It always upset as we came to land; it could not be helped, it was a way the boat had, and it could never be avoided; but shoes and socks soon got dry, and Crib was always there to welcome me heartily to land again. How to make him take to the sea I could not imagine; it took all my spare bits of bread and butter to coax him to get into the boat at all, and he would always jump out again, if he did get in, before we put to sea. At last I found that if another dog, called Floss, came in first, he would come too. So Floss a sleek and sleepy brown spaniel, who always did anything she was told—was made to lie down at one end of the boat, and Crib, at last, generally agreed to stand up at the other end, and once afloat, he seemed to think it was wiser to stay there, and all went right as long as he was steady; but if he moved, we went aground, and were always on the verge of upsetting as we got off again, for the difficulty of trimming a boat of that build, with two dogs, would have puzzled the oldest Jack Tar afloat. This boating was the greatest delight as long as it lasted; one day, however, having managed to get

a younger sister to the pool, and trimmed my boat with her, instead of the dogs, to our great pleasure we punted successfully round and round the pond, but of course upset in a foot and a half of muddy water on landing as usual, and frocks and shoes told a tale, which put an end for ever to a nautical career. I was then and there told that Bogy would have me' if I ever went near that pond again.

Crib's independence of character quite overawed me; dearly as he was loved, I hardly ever patted his yellow curls, from a sort of intuitive feeling that he thought it a nuisance. Floss, on the other hand, was so overcome at the slightest notice, that she would creep along the ground to one's feet, whining and throwing herself flat on her back, with her legs in the air, in a perfect paroxysm of humility, when you wanted to pat her, and I did not like her for being so absurd; it was not like Crib, not like my Crib, who was so stiff and stately, though so small; who would stand still for a moderate amount of patting, but never came to ask for it, looking about as you patted him all the time with a nonchalant air, as much as to say, 'If it pleases you to pat me, pray go on, only don't keep me long; and then giving himself a good shake, he would walk away and scratch his feet violently upon the grass, and look back just as if he was saying, 'That's over, now are you coming with me?' Floss, in spite of her humility, was looked upon in the nursery as a very illustrious dog, from a tradition that her eldest puppy had been given to the Queen by her former master; and as the mother of a dog at Court, we always felt she was 'greater than she knew.'

Crib never cared much about Floss or any of the other dogs; but he was devoted to a cat who had been used to share his basket-bed and his dinner, when they were puppy and kitten togther. She was a large cat, not so very much smaller than Crib himself as to size; but he had a curious way of picking her up across the back, and amusing himself by walking about with her in his mouth. He had begun it when she was only a mouthful for even his puppy jaws; but it looked a very uncomfortable proceeding for both parties when they got older; however, Pussie seemed to like it, and Crib might often be seen deliberately walking all round the house with her in his mouth. He had carried her into the kitchen once or twice when strange dogs appeared in the courtyard: and this trick of his probably saved both their lives. One day, when he and his cat were sunning themselves at the back of the house, a mad dog, which was being pursued, ran into the yard, and flew at another dog who was there, and would certainly have bitten Crib next, if he had not instantly taken the precaution of picking up his cat and carrying her into the kitchen. The mad dog rushed up into a laundry, and worried a cat and her kittens who were lying in a basket there, passing a laundry-maid, who was in the room, without seeming to see her, and was afterwards hunted down and killed.

All the dogs spent a good deal of their time hunting on the bog; forbidden ground for me, so when Crib was going to hunt there, I could

only follow him to the edge of it, and sit on the remains of the nearest turf stack on terra firma, to watch him dashing out upon the great wide-away bog with Floss, and often two or three other dogs, who would come down to join the fun. Away they went, tails wagging and noses down, beating backwards and forwards, further and further out, till they got to the heather, half a mile or more away, which was always a sure find for a hare. Then one could see the wild scurry of delight as they touched upon the scent, the dogs jumping straight up, five times their own height, in their bounds to get above the heather, and in a moment more, coming silently and swiftly to the wood, who should be there but Puss herself, her pretty grey-brown fur the colour of the dried boggrass, her long ears well back to catch the yelps behind her, and her eyes back also. Many a time I thought I should catch Puss in my pinafore, sitting breathless in the very path she must take on her way to the hill; but I never did catch her, nor did the dogs either. One by one they always came trailing along the bog behind her, Waterloo, the red greyhound, with his long sweeping stride, never far behind poor Puss, a yelping terrier or two next, Crib a bad third, and Floss nowhere. The same old hare lasted them at least a year, but they were never a bit less keen upon it, and, after losing her periodically in the wood, went back to the bog as pleased and as fresh as ever. It is part of a foxhunter's creed, that a good fox rather enjoys being hunted, would rather be hunted than not, and in fact, likes the whole thing from the Tally-ho to 'the death,' and no one would like to be so unsportsmanlike as to doubt it; so I only hope, on the same principle, that Puss enjoyed her scurries from the boy to the wood, particularly as she never came in for that trying part of the fun, which, in a fox's case, is called 'the Finish.' The bog birds had no peace, and must have hated these prowling forays. Two or three pair of plovers would always follow the dogs, filling the air with their pretty plaintive notes, wailing little cries, as if they were begging them to go away, pitching down almost upon their backs, and nearly brushing them with their rounded wings, and getting more and more noisy as they fancied they decoyed the dogs further from their nests, alighting daintily on a heather tussock a few yards off, now and then in front of them, with their elegant crested heads looking out over the long dead grass, and then up and away as the dogs came on, the silvery lining of their wings glancing in the sun, and then, with a flitting wavering flight, flying back to their distant. nests. Very often a curlew, numbers of which nested about, would go right up into the sky, and fly backwards and forwards above its nest, its long sweet whistle sounding all over the bog. Many a nest, of snipe, and curlew, and wild fowl, must the dogs have dashed into as they beat the ground in good sportsmanlike fashion. Every now and then I could see them come to the edge of a wide bit of black water, and pause, one foot in the air, looking with their keen eyes across it 'like a moss-trooper on a foray,' a great dash in, and a splash of silver in the sun, a swim

over, one after the other, and away again, till they swept on and on, and were all out of sight, and one could only guess where they were by the fresh birds they put up, which went on wheeling and screaming above them.

Sometimes they were so long away I dared not wait any longer, and went home, and they went on hunting all the summer night, and came back very battered and boggy-looking dogs in the morning, but bringing with them a sweet bog fragrance on their coats from brushing through whole acres of candle-berry myrtle.

Far out, far beyond the haunts of the turf-cutters, and beyond the heather, the bog was at one time swarming with snakes. The wettest parts were always the snakiest! for snakes delight in water, and even when they are swarming upon hot dry rocky bits of ground, as they so often are, there is sure to be water near. They may often be seen swimming in the most graceful way, with their heads above the water, in the black bog pools, or lying asleep on a patch of bare boggy soil the black colour of which they seem to take, by a wonderful law of nature, the bog adders being darker by many shades than those of the uplands. On hot summer days, a whole knot of snakes may sometimes be found basking on a moss-hag; a shot fired into one of these knots, one day, is said to have left twenty-six for dead, while well and wounded snakes glided away in all directions. But that was fifty years ago; there are not half the number now, although the turf-cutters have a great dread of them still; and no wonder, as they believe a bitten person swells up and goes all over diamonds and stripes like the snake that bit him. People are hardly ever bitten; but dogs suffer dreadfully. They are generally stung in the throat, which swells very much; if they are taken care of at once they seem to recover, but only for a time; they are nearly always fatally poisoned, and in a very short time begin to pine away, showing symptoms of spasmodic affections, often ending in frightful convulsions. A dog hardly ever seems to get over it ultimately; and the snakes murdered most of our dogs, poor Crib and Floss amongst the number.

The day Floss was bitten, she was seen walking round the house with Crib, evidently just come from the bog, both dogs looking very miserable, and Floss, creeping up to her master, whining all the time most piteously, threw herself on her side, as if she was dead, at his feet; he saw there was something the matter, and taking her up, soon found the fatal lump beginning to swell under her throat, so she was carried into the house, drenched with quantities of oil, and rubbed with it, and she recovered as usual for a few weeks; but after that, she got off her feed, and more than a year afterwards, died, quite worn away to skin and bone. When Crib was bitten we never knew; but a year or more after Floss had died, he began to show the same symptoms; he got so worn away, poor little dog, that he seemed a bundle of yellow hair and bones, and his attacks of convulsions were pitiful. The servants declared he was poisoned by eating toads, which he had been seen to pick up in

mistake for frogs. At last he was so ill, that it was thought better he should disappear; and so he did. One day I missed my poor little yellow dog waiting at the window, upon three legs, (for his fits had partly paralyzed him,) where he came day after day to be ready for me when lessons were over; that day I missed him, but was afraid to ask, for the sack and the bow-string had been familiar institutions amongst our pets of late; but when another day came, and there was no sign of Crib, I asked the servants, and getting very well-meaning but highly ambiguous answers, in a sort of despair I went to the Calcraft of the household, who I was sure had seen the last of Crib, if anybody had, and then was told if I would not cry I might see him; and so, with fingers clasped and tightened, to try to help to keep my promise, he took me to a shed, where I kissed a bunch of wet yellow curls, blinded by the tears which were not to drop. It hardly looked like poor Crib's head, he was so stiff and strange; but deep into my mind came the chilling, blank, cold dread, with which the unaccustomed sight of death so sadly overwhelms many a child; a dread which often remains for years an ever recurring misery, and which is never told.

I was broken-hearted for Crib: I could not go near our castles, for they reminded me too much of him; I could not work in my little garden, for Crib was buried there, and I did not like to touch the earth so near his grave; and with him, too, the whole scheme of my life had come to an end; how could I turn wild without Crib? so it was no use thinking of all that any more; 'and now the worst of it all was,' as I thought to myself after every fresh bit of childish misery in a burst of tears and temper,Crib's dead, and I don't mind if I die too, for I shall be nothing in the world but an ugly, stupid, tiresome, tame child, after all!'

GWYNFRYN.

A MISSIONARY PRIEST IN PARIS.

THE name of the Abbé Planson is well known and well loved in France. He was a missionary priest—that is, he had no fixed cure of souls; but he used to travel about the country, stopping in towns and villages to preach, and, still more, to visit all the charitable institutions, to see that they were well organized, well worked, that their funds were sufficient-in short, that they fulfilled the intentions of their pious founders. Where these charitable societies were wanting, he never rested till he had himself established them, and seen them in full work. This good man, with no private property beyond his Breviary and his cassock, built more than twenty churches, more than twenty houses of refuge for the poor and for penitents; he never spent eighteenpence on a dinner, but he gave thousands of pounds in charity. The writer who not long ago published the account we are going to give, knew the good Abbé

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