the bedclothes, presses it lovingly upon the wrong man. I have heard
that story so often that I am quite nervous about going to bed in an
hotel now. Each man who has told it me has invariably slept in the room
next door to that of the victim, and has been awakened by the man's yell
as the plaster came down upon him. That is how he (the story-teller)
came to know all about it.

Brown wanted us to believe that this prehistoric animal he had been
telling us about had belonged to his brother-in-law, and was hurt when
Jephson murmured, _sotto voce_, that that made the twenty-eighth man he
had met whose brother-in-law had owned that dog--to say nothing of the
hundred and seventeen who had owned it themselves.

We tried to get to work afterwards, but Brown had unsettled us for the
evening. It is a wicked thing to start dog stories among a party of
average sinful men. Let one man tell a dog story, and every other man in
the room feels he wants to tell a bigger one.

There is a story going--I cannot vouch for its truth, it was told me by a
judge--of a man who lay dying. The pastor of the parish, a good and
pious man, came to sit with him, and, thinking to cheer him up, told him
an anecdote about a dog. When the pastor had finished, the sick man sat
up, and said, "I know a better story than that. I had a dog once, a big,
brown, lop-sided--"

The effort had proved too much for his strength. He fell back upon the
pillows, and the doctor, stepping forward, saw that it was a question
only of minutes.

The good old pastor rose, and took the poor fellow's hand in his, and