watch-dogs were kept for their vigilant and ferocious hostility to the
negro of the quarters and to all strangers. One of these, a powerful,
notorious, bloodthirsty brute, long-bodied, deer-legged--you may possibly
know that big breed the planters called the "cur-dog" and prized so highly
-darted out of hiding and silently sprang at the visitor's throat. Gregory
swerved, and the brute's fangs, whirling by his face, closed in the sleeve
and rent it from shoulder to elbow. At the same time another, one of the
old "bear-dog" breed, was coming as fast as the light block and chain he
had to drag would allow him. Gregory neither spoke, nor moved to attack or
retreat. At my outcry the dogs slunk away, and he asked me, diffidently,
for a thing which was very precious in those days--pins.

But he was quickly surrounded by pitying eyes and emotional voices, and
was coaxed into the house, where the young ladies took his coat away to
mend it. While he waited for it in my room I spoke of the terror so many
brave men had of these fierce home-guards. I knew one such beast that was
sired of a wolf. He heard me with downcast eyes, at first with evident
pleasure, but very soon quite gravely.

"They can afford to fear dogs," he replied, "when they've got no other
fear." And when I would have it that he had shown a stout heart he smiled
ruefully.

"I do everything through weakness," he soliloquized, and, taking my book,
opened it as if to dismiss our theme. But I bade him turn to the preface,
where heavily scored by the same feminine hand which had written on the
blank leaf opposite, "Richard Thorndyke Smith, from C.O."--we read
something like this:

The seed of heroism is in all of us. Else we should not forever relish, as