hardiness and intelligence of the sturdier breed, and the
instinct of devotion to the working master. So he had turned from
a soft-hearted bit lassie of a mistress, and the cozy chimney
corner of the farm-house kitchen, and linked his fortunes with
this forlorn old laborer.

A grizzled, gnarled little man was Auld Jock, of tough fiber, but
worn out at last by fifty winters as a shepherd on the bleak
hills of Midlothian and Fife, and a dozen more in the low stables
and storm-buffeted garrets of Edinburgh. He had come into the
world unnoted in a shepherd's lonely cot. With little wit of mind
or skill of hand he had been a common tool, used by this master
and that for the roughest tasks, when needed, put aside, passed
on, and dropped out of mind. Nothing ever belonged to the man but
his scant earnings. Wifeless, cotless, bairnless, he had slept,
since early boyhood, under strange roofs, eaten the bread of the
hireling, and sat dumb at other men's firesides. If he had
another name it had been forgotten. In youth he was Jock; in age,
Auld Jock.

In his sixty-third summer there was a belated blooming in Auld
Jock's soul. Out of some miraculous caprice Bobby lavished on him
a riotous affection. Then up out of the man's subconscious memory
came words learned from the lips of a long-forgotten mother. They
were words not meant for little dogs at all, but for sweetheart,
wife and bairn. Auld Jock used them cautiously, fearing to be
overheard, for the matter was a subject of wonder and rough jest
at the farm. He used them when Bobby followed him at the
plow-tail or scampered over the heather with him behind the
flocks. He used them on the market-day journeyings, and on summer