Rab, if he will behave himself." "I'se warrant he's do that, doctor;"
and in slunk the faithful beast. I wish you could have seen him. There
are no such dogs now. He belonged to a lost tribe. As I have said, he
was brindled, and gray like Rubislaw granite; his hair short, hard, and
close, like a lion's; his body thick-set, like a little bull,--a sort of
compressed Hercules of a dog. He must have been ninety pounds' weight,
at the least; he had a large blunt head; his muzzle black as night, his
mouth blacker than any night, a tooth or two--being all he had--gleaming
out of his jaws of darkness. His head was scarred with the records of
old wounds, a sort of series of fields of battle all over it; one eye
out, one ear cropped as close as was Archbishop Leighton's father's; the
remaining eye had the power of two; and above it, and in constant
communication with it, was a tattered rag of an ear, which was forever
unfurling itself, like an old flag; and then that bud of a tail, about
one inch long, if it could in any sense be said to be long, being as
broad as long,--the mobility, the instantaneousness of that bud were
very funny and surprising, and its expressive twinklings and winkings,
the intercommunications between the eye, the ear, and it, were of the
oddest and swiftest.

Rab had the dignity and simplicity of great size; and, having fought his
way all along the road to absolute supremacy, he was as mighty in his
own line as Julius Caesar or the Duke of Wellington, and had the gravity
[Footnote: A Highland game-keeper, when asked why a certain terrier, of
singular pluck, was so much more solemn than the other dogs, said, "Oh,
sir, life's full o' sairiousness to him: he just never can get eneuch o'
fechtin'."] of all great fighters.

You must have often observed the likeness of certain men to certain
animals, and of certain dogs to men. Now, I never looked at Rab without