proof of corruption.

Nevertheless, or, rather, on account of all this, the dog Argus is
exceedingly dear to his master, and of both I had the other day a
singular revelation when I set out at evening to call upon my
friend.

The sun had set, but the air was still clear and it was light enough
to have shot a bat (had there been bats about and had one had a gun)
when I knocked at the cottage door and opened it. Right within, one
comes to the first of the three rooms which the Recluse possesses,
and there I found him tenderly nursing the dog Argus, who lay
groaning in the arm-chair and putting on all the airs of a Christian
man at the point of death.

The Recluse did not even greet me, but asked me only in a hurried
way how I thought the dog Argus looked. I answered gravely and in a
low tone so as not to disturb the sufferer, that as I had not seen
him since Tuesday, when he was, for an elderly dog, in the best of
health, he certainly presented a sad contrast, but that perhaps he
was better than he had been some few hours before, and that the
Recluse himself would be the best judge of that.

My friend was greatly relieved at what I said, and told me that he
thought the dog was better, compared at least with that same
morning; then, whether you believe it or not, he took him by the
left leg just above the paw and held it for a little time as though
he were feeling a pulse, and said, "He came back less than twenty-four
hours ago!" It seemed that the dog Argus, for the first time in fourteen
years, had run away, and that for the first time in perhaps twenty or