curiosities, and if you please to take a fancy to any, I'm sure you are
very welcome. I don't know any good it does me to turn 'em over, and
look at them as I do times and often, but somehow when we lose them we
love, we hoard up all they loved. He had a little dog, poor Bob had, a
little yapping thing, and I never took to the animal, 'twas always
getting into mischief, and gnawing the nets, and stealing my fish, and I
used often to say, 'Bob, my boy, I love you but not your dog. No, that
saying won't hold good now. I can't love that dog of yours. Sell it,
boy--give it away--get rid of it some how.' All in good part, you know,
Miss, for I never had any words with him about it. And now Bob is
gone--do you know, Miss, I love that dumb thing with the sort of love I
should love his child, if he had left me one. If any one huffs Rover, (I
ain't a very huffish man,) but I can tell you I shew them I don't like
it, I let the creature lay at my feet at night, and I feed him myself
and fondle him for the sake of him who loved him so. And you may depend
Miss, the dog knows his young master is gone, and the way he is gone
too, for I could not bring him on the shore for a long while, but he
would set up such a howl as would rend your heart to hear. And that made
me love the poor thing I can tell you."

"But how did it happen?" softly asked Edith.

"Why Miss it ain't at all an extraordinary way in which he met his
death. It was in this way. He was very fond of me, poor boy, but he
liked his way better than my way too often. And may be I humoured him a
little too much. He was my Benjamin, you must know Miss, for his mother
died soon after he was born. Sure enough I made an idol of the lad, and
we read somewhere in the Bible, Miss, that 'the idols he will utterly
abolish.' But I don't like looking at the sorrow that way neither. I
would rather think that 'whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.' Well,