[Footnote 17: Letter, November 3, 1868.]

Shortly before the Ewings started from Fredericton they went into the
barracks, whence a battalion of some regiment had departed two days
before, and there discovered a large black retriever who had been left
behind. It is needless to say that this deserted gentleman entirely
overcame their feelings; he was at once adopted, named "Trouvé," and
brought home to England, where he spent a very happy life, chiefly in
the South Camp, Aldershot, his one danger there being that he was such
a favourite with the soldiers, they over-fed him terribly. Never did a
more benevolent disposition exist, his broad forehead and kind eyes,
set widely apart, did not belie him; there was a strong strain of
Newfoundland in his breed, and a strong likeness to a bear in the way
his feathered paws half crossed over each other in walking. Trouvé
appears as "Nox" in "Benjy," and there is a glimpse of him in "The
Sweep," who ended his days as a "soldier's dog" in "The Story of a
Short Life." Trouvé did, in reality, end his days at Ecclesfield,
where he is buried near "Rough," the broken-haired bull-terrier, who
is the real hero in "Benjy," Amongst the various animal friends whom
Julie had either of her own, or belonging to others, none was lovelier
than the golden-haired collie "Rufus," who was at once the delight
and distraction of the last year of her life at Taunton, by the tricks
he taught himself of very gently extracting the pins from her hair,
and letting it down at inconvenient moments; and of extracting, with
equal gentleness from the earth, the labels that she had put to the
various treasured flowers in her "Little Garden," and then tossing
them in mid-air on the grass-plot.

A very amusing domestic story, called "The Snap Dragons," came out in
the Christmas number of the _Monthly Packet_ for 1870.