companionship was shut out by mountain, rock, or river.

"Are you not _very_ lonely here?" was often my first instinctive
question, as I have dismounted at the door of a shepherd's hut in
the back country, and listened to the eternal roar of the river
which formed his boundary, or the still more oppressive silence
which seemed to have reigned ever since the creation.

"Well, mum, it aint very lively; but I've got Topsy (producing a
black kitten from his pocket), and there's the dogs, and I shall
have some fowls next year, p'raps."

But my object in beginning this chapter was not to enter into a
disquisition on other people's pets, with which after all one can
have but a distant acquaintance, but to introduce some of my own
especial favourites to those kind and sympathetic readers who take
pleasure in hearing of my own somewhat solitary existence in that
distant land. I am quite ready to acknowledge that I never
thoroughly comprehended the individuality of animals, even of fowls
and ducks, until I lived up at the Station. Perhaps, like their
masters, they really get to possess more independence of character
under those free and easy skies; for where would you meet with such
a worldly and selfish cat as "Sandy," or so fastidious and
intelligent a smooth terrier as "Rose"? Sandy was an old bachelor
of a sleek appearance, red in colour, but with a good deal of white
shirt-front and wristbands, as to the get-up of which he was most
particular. It was easy to imagine Sandy sitting in a club window;
and I am _sure_ he had a slight tendency to gout and reading French
novels. Sandy's selfishness was quite open and above-board. He
liked you very much until somebody else came whom he liked better,