evil was even more trying to her feelings and the preacher was instant
certainly out of season. Not the least important personage in the
Wimpole Street house was Miss Barrett's devoted companion Flush. Loyal
and loving to his mistress Flushie always was; yet to his lot some
canine errors fell; he eyed a visitor's umbrella with suspicion; he
resented perhaps the presence of a rival; he did not behave nicely to a
poet who had not written verses in his honour; for which he was duly
rebuked by his mistress--the punishment was not capital--and was
propitiated with bags of cakes by the intruder. When the day for their
flight drew near Miss Barrett proposed somewhat timidly that her maid
Wilson should accompany her to Italy, but she was gratefully confident
that Flush could not be left behind. Just at this anxious moment a
dreadful thing befell; a gang of dog-stealers, presided over by the
arch-fiend Taylor, bore Flushie away into the horror of some obscure and
vulgar London alley. He was a difficult dog to capture and his ransom
must be in proportion to his resistance. There was a terrible tradition
of a lady who had haggled about the sum demanded and had received her
dog's head in a parcel. Miss Barrett was eager to part with her six
guineas and rescue her faithful companion from misery. Was this an
occasion for preaching from ethical heights the sin of making a
composition with evil-doers? Yet Browning, still "a fighter" and armed
with desperate logic, must needs declaim vehemently against the iniquity
of such a bargain. It is something to rejoice at that he was dexterously
worsted in argument, being compelled to admit that if Italian banditti
were to carry off his "Ba," he would pay down every farthing he might
have in the world to recover her, and this before he entered on that
chase of fifty years which was not to terminate until he had shot down
with his own hand the receiver of the infamous bribe.

The journey of Miss Barrett to Pisa having been for the present