bloodthirsty, treacherous monster by night. Such things are less
rare than is supposed, and since writing these stories I have heard
of another double-lived sheep-dog that added to its night
amusements the crowning barbarity of murdering the smaller dogs
of the neighborhood. He had killed twenty, and hidden them in a
sandpit, when discovered by his master. He died just as Wully did.

All told, I now have information of six of these Jekyll-Hyde dogs.
In each case it happened to be a collie.

Redruff really lived in the Don Valley north of Toronto, and many
of my companions will remember him. He was killed in i88g,
between the Sugar Loaf and Castle Frank, by a creature whose
name I have withheld, as it is the species, rather than the
individual, that I wish to expose.

Silverspot, Raggylug, and Vixen are founded on real characters.
Though I have ascribed to them the adventures of more than one of
their kind, every incident in their biographies is from life.

The fact that these stories are true is the reason why all are tragic.
The life of a wild animal always has a tragic end.

Such a collection of histories naturally suggests a common
thought--a moral it would have been called in the last century. No
doubt each different mind will find a moral to its taste, but I hope
some will herein find emphasized a moral as old as Scripture--we
and the beasts are kin. Man has nothing that the animals have not
at least a vestige of, the animals have nothing that man does not in
some degree share.