tender-natured creature; and they were happy on a crust and a few leaves of cabbage, and asked no more of earth or heaven, save, indeed, that Petrasche should be always with them, since without Petrasche, where would they have been?

Petrasche was their store of gold and wand of wealth, their bread-winner, their only friend and comforter. Petrasche dead or gone from them, they must have laid themselves down and died. For Jehan Daas was old, and a cripple; Nello was but a child; Petrasche was their dog.

A dog of Flanders

tawny-yellow, large of head and limb, with wolf-like ears that stood erect, and legs bowed and feet widened by hard service. Petrasche came of a race which had toiled hard, from sire to son, in Flanders, many a century slaves of slaves, dogs of the people, beasts of the shafts and harness, creatures that lived straining in the cart, and died, breaking their hearts on the flints of the

streets.

Petrasche had labored hard all his days over the sharp-set stones of the long, shadowless, weary roads. He had been born to pain and toil. He had

been fed on curses and baptized with blows. Why not? It was a Christian country; but Petrasche was only a dog, and his owner was a drunkard and a brute.

The life of Petrasche was a life of torture. His master was a sullen, ill-living, brutal man, who heaped his cart with pots, and pans, and flagons, and buckets, and other wares of crockery, and brass, and tin, and left Petrasche to draw the load as best he might, whilst he, himself, lounged idly by the side of the cart, in fat and sluggish ease, smoking his black pipe, and stopping at every wine-shop on the road.

Happily for Petrasche

or unhappily — he was very strong. He came of an iron race; so that he did not die, but managed to drag on a wretched existence under the brutal burdens, the lashes, the hunger, the thirst, the blows, which are the only wages which the Flemish pay the most patient of all their four-footed victims.

One day, after two years of this long agony, Petrasche was going on one of the straight, dusty, unlovely roads that lead to the city of Rubens.

It

His cart was

was full midsummer, and very warm. very heavy, piled high with goods. His owner walked on without noticing him, other than by the crack of the whip.

Going along thus, in the full sun, on a scorching highway, having eaten nothing for twenty-four hours, and, which was far worse to him, not having tasted water for nearly twelve, being blind with dust, sore with blows, Petrasche, for once, staggered, foamed a little at the mouth, and fell.

He fell in the middle of the white, dusty road, in the full glare of the sun; he was sick unto death, and motionless. His master gave him kicks, and oaths, and blows with a cudgel of oak, which had been often the only food and drink, the only reward, offered to him. But Petrasche was beyond the reach of pain, or of curses; down in the white powder of the summer dust, he lay as if dead.

After a while, his owner struck off the leathern bands of the harness, kicked the body into the grass, in savage wrath pushed the cart up hill, and left the dying dog for the ants to sting and for the crows to pick.

Petrasche lay there, flung in the grass-green ditch. It was a busy road that day, and hundreds of people, on foot and on mules, in wagons or in carts, Some saw him; most did not even look;

went by.

all passed on.

After a time, amongst the holiday-makers, there came a little old man who was bent, and lame, and very feeble. There was with him a little rosy, fairhaired, dark-eyed child of a few years of age, who pattered in amidst the bushes, that were, for him, breast-high, and stood gazing upon the poor, great, quiet beast.

Thus it was that these two first met the little Nello and the big Petrasche.

That day, old Jehan Daas, with much effort, drew the sufferer home to his own little hut, which was a stone's throw off, and there tended him with so much care that the sickness, which had been brought on by heat and thirst and abuse, with time and shade and rest, passed away, and health and strength returned, and Petrasche staggered up again upon his four, stout, tawny legs.

For many weeks he had been useless, near to

death; but all this time he had heard no rough word, had felt no harsh touch, but only the pitying murmurs of the little child's voice, and the soothing caress of the old man's hand.

In his sickness, they, too, had grown to care for him, this lonely old man and the little, happy child. He had a corner of the hut, with a heap of dry grass for his bed; and they had learned to listen eagerly for his breathing in the dark night, to tell them that he lived.

When he first was well enough to give a loud, hollow, broken bay, they laughed aloud, and almost wept together for joy; and little Nello, in delighted glee, hung round his rugged neck chains of daisies, and kissed him with fresh and ruddy lips.

So, then, when Petrasche arose, strong, big, gaunt, powerful, his great, wistful eyes had a gentle wonder in them that there were no curses and no blows; and his heart awakened to a love which never wavered while life lasted. But Petrasche, being a dog, was grateful, and lay, pondering long, with grave, tender, brown eyes, watching his friends.