It was four months before any improvement was discernible: it was a year before confidence could really be said to have grown at all. In some directions it never grew. For instance, of labouring men, gardeners, and the like, Murphy always remained shy. It was in no spirit of unforgivingness, for he was perfectly civil; neither did he owe them any grudge, grudges being forbidden usually by dog law and only entertained by the poorest characters of all. Thus he never became familiar, even with those he met daily: his memory was phenomenal, and by passing by on the other side he showed that his associations in this direction were unhappy.

It fell to this dog’s lot to live a very quiet life and to be thrown with few—either dogs or men. His days were regulated by his master’s doings, and these again were regulated, of necessity, by method. The weeks came, and ran their course, and did not vary very greatly one from the other. There was the daily round of work—almost incessant work, life being supportable that way and in no other. There was the break, half-way through the morning, of a run of a quarter of an hour, wet or shine. There was the walk across country in the afternoon, also totally irrespective of the weather. There was the turn at night under similar conditions. That was the dog’s day in winter-time; perhaps also the man’s. In spring and summer both lived under the sky, and regarded a house only as a place to sleep in. Habit is second nature. Interests were many, and in some directions ran parallel—sporting instincts, especially, being quite ineradicable. Life for both was thus exceeding happy; and life grew always happier with friendship: that is as it should be.

With those he met Murphy was genial, if shy. He grew to love the members of his little home circle; though three of the quartet ever averred that, in reality, he only loved one wholly and altogether, and clung to him in a way that others noticed—folk on the land always referring to them, the country over, as “Him and his dog.”

Were they not always together? The shepherds on the downs recognised them at great distances, for shepherds see far. The shepherds’ dogs knew them equally well, and they see furthest. The ploughmen in the hollows caught sight of them against the skyline in the waning winter day, when the team grew weary as they themselves—which last fact, too, made these best of men shout with full lungs, “Please, will you tell us the time!” The man with the hand-drill sowing the spring seeds; the poorer folk, men and women with their buckets, stone-picking in the chill, autumnal weather; the stockmen as they drove the cattle home, or called them from the lush fields with the crack of a whip—spring-time and harvest, all the seasons through; in wind and rain, in the great heat, in the snow and the blizzard, it was always the same. And thus, in this unenclosed country, where there were great woods, but where hedges were almost non-existent, the men of the land would look up and pass the remark to their mates, with a jerk of the head, “Ther’s ’im an’ ’is dog; see?”

Outside the home circle—though, to be sure, a dog is, or should always be considered, a part of the family—Murphy’s passion was for Dan. He invariably got up when Dan entered the room, and often licked him many times upon the lips: he paid him every kind of attention; bullied him to play when out of doors; woke him when he judged it was not fitting he should be asleep; and, in fact, made a young dog of him again for a time, though Dan was really old. He already owed Dan a good deal, for Dan had initiated him into many things concerning rabbits, rats, and the rest, that all self-respecting dogs should know. Thus the old dog being an inveterate sportsman, Murphy followed suit—and both were, at all risks, encouraged so to be.

As Murphy furnished and grew stronger he naturally became more handsome, till passers-by would turn and remark upon the pair—the old dog and the young, lying on the bank of the river, patiently, while some one did mysterious things with paints; or they were seen returning together in the evening, sitting side by side in the stern of a boat. They were certainly a very uncommon pair.

Dan’s character had been, of course, fully formed long ago, and a truly wonderful character it was, as has already been related. Murphy’s was still in the making. If the whole of the first year was a period of difficulty, the first four months might well have staggered any one undertaking a self-imposed task of such a nature. The ideal aimed at was never suffered to be out of sight, but, like most ideals, it had a trick at times of receding almost beyond the range of hope. It was not that the dog was continually doing wrong. Perhaps it would have been better if he had been, for then there would have been something tangible. The difficulty consisted in conveying to the dog what he should not do, without frightening him, and without getting cross and losing temper. To train a dog that takes his thrashing, shakes himself, lays his ears back, and prepares for the next, oblivious of consequences, is not beyond the wit of man, though possibly a gift. But what is to be done in the case of a dog that is terror-stricken, even if the voice is raised? The position forms as fine a period of probation in its way as any that wilful man could desire; and at that the matter may be left.

The philosopher tells us that we advance more surely by making mistakes than we do by lines more usually held to be right. Murphy took the former and apparently correct course, like others before him. The first real stride he made was thus in connection with an error, and it did him a world of good. It came about like this.

By way of preface—what can possibly be more irritating to a dog than sheep? Master and dog were coming home together, and were persistently mobbed by a party of a dozen. Both agreed that if any real pluck lay at the back of the attentions so freely bestowed, the view entertained of the proceedings might be somewhat modified. But both were well aware that there was nothing of the kind; that the bold front was a sham, that inquisitiveness was the origin of it all, and that funk in reality filled every one of those dozen hearts, however much their owners hustled forward or lifted up their heads and stamped.

How long would Murphy stand such gross effrontery? That was the question of the moment. So far, he had followed close to heel, with his tail down—though it is fair to him to say that latterly he had come to carry it erect. Possibly the sheep approached closer than any dog of spirit could endure, or one frightened the others and they began to run away. In a moment it was all over; the sheep had turned tail, and Murphy was after them, and had even found his voice.

The field was one of five-and-thirty acres, so there was plenty of room for him to turn them this way and that. To continue calling was, of course, useless. Time was better employed in taking a grip of the feelings and deciding on what was to be done. To make matters worse, the farmer himself was seen to be viewing the proceedings from a distant gateway. He would undoubtedly expect the law to be carried out, and dogs that ran sheep to be either broken to better ways or shot. It made no difference that the sheep were not his but “on tack” in his fields. What was the lot of these might be the lot of his another day. A thrashing was, therefore, now imperative. But how was this to be administered, when the only weapon was a shooting-stick, and the site was the middle of a large grass field? The best thing to do was to sit down, and be patient.

A part of the dog’s education had already been that he was to stop when his master stopped, and when the latter sat or lay down he was to come in. He had already responded in a small way to this training, and now he dropped his games with the sheep, left them, and came slowly back. He guessed that something was about to happen by his master’s solemn silence, and therefore approached with caution. It is never necessary in the case of ordinary offences and with ordinary dogs to be over severe with the stick—if a suitable one is handy, which it generally is not. A lecture and a shaking does as well, with a tap or two with a stick to show it is there. Provoking as the incident had been, this last is what Murphy duly received. The shooting-stick was much brandished in the air, and the dog called “Murder,” long and loudly. The delinquent was evidently catching it, judged the farmer; and he waved his arm and disappeared.

That was gained, any way: what about the dog? He had learnt what the rattle of the shooting-stick meant. He had also learnt that sheep were to be suffered in their stupid, irritating ways, and not chased. For a short while he took the matter to heart, being always woefully depressed when he even thought he had done wrong. But he soon recovered, and showed contrition in the winning way he had now begun to acquire—by coming up shyly from behind, and endeavouring to reach the fingers of his master’s hand.

The whole episode proved a success—from the man’s point of view, at least; in the case of the dog and the sheep no doubt it was coloured. Murphy had certainly acquired confidence by what had happened, just as a boy may, when he gets his first fall out hunting, and finds himself less hurt than he fancied would be the case in turning a somersault. Added to this, there was also gain in the fact that from that day forward he was immaculate with sheep, as will be seen.

Though Murphy was quickly judged as one who had been “born good,” and continued to be so regarded all his life, it is not to be supposed that he never transgressed, and thereby never incurred the punishment of a shaking. He was canine, as men are human; the two terms are equally synonymous with error, and faults, one way or the other, have to suffer correction. But in his case, the faults of which he was guilty were almost invariably confined to those of a petty and irritating description—exhibition of nervousness when there was no need, failure in the recognition of his name, lifelong inability to get out of the way of traffic on the roads, which made walks along roads very rare occurrences indeed, and many others of a like nature. Had it been otherwise, where would have been the training for both? On the one hand, there was always the ideal of enabling this dog to regain confidence in the human being, and making him the merry, happy fellow he had once been; on the other, there was the test as to whether this could be done without loss of hope in the face of repeated and almost continuous failure, and without the exhibition of irritability or loss of temper when provocations arose at first a score of times on every day.

Of his pluck there was never the slightest question. Again and again he would charge, for instance, into a quickset hedge when his nose told him a rat was there, and come out a mass of thorns, and with the rat fixed to his lip or cheek. He would then simply knock the rat off with a fore-paw without whimpering, and hold it down that some one else might come and kill it, for he seemed unable, or unwilling, to kill anything himself. Then, again, he habitually went straight up to the most savage of dogs—several times at the risk of his life, in the case of well-known fighters twice the size of himself—and by his manner or his charm invariably came away harmless.

He could never be made to understand—and it is the cause of shame now to realise the irritation that this caused on many an occasion—that all the dogs in the world, any more than other inhabitants of the world, are not necessarily our friends, or intend even to be friendly; and that dogs, like those about them, are frequently in the habit of quarrelling and rending one another without regard to feelings, and with little of the spirit of give and take that life and a common lot might elsewhere be said to demand.

He was often told these things, but if, as with many of his kind, he looked as if he understood, he never really doubted to the end that other dogs were at least, and of necessity, his friends. He did not court their company. They often seemed to bore him, and more and more the older he grew; but he had a curious way of inviting some to his house, and it was no uncommon occurrence to find a strange dog lying in the morning in the hall that he had sometimes brought a long distance.

Of his hospitality in this way he once gave a remarkable instance. A neighbour’s dog was of uncertain manners, to dogs and men alike. One evening he came to call. Now Murphy’s dinner was always placed at six o’clock in one corner of the hall, and had just been brought when this visitor appeared. Not to be outdone in hospitality, Murphy at once pointed out the repast that had been spread, and stood by while the other ate, though he had himself had nothing since the early morning, and could, had he been so minded, have knocked the stranger into the proverbial cocked hat. All he did was to wag his tail and look pleased, as his dinner slowly disappeared. But, after all, such episodes as these belong to a later period, when he had become well-nigh human; when—it may as well be now confessed—he came to love the company of a man more than the company of dogs, when confidence had been won back, and happiness—happiness that with those he knew and loved showed itself in an intense and merry joy of life—had been finally regained.

One other peculiarity about him, or, rather, accomplishment, he possessed, must be noticed here, for, with a lifetime’s experience of dogs, no parallel can be recalled, or has been gatherable elsewhere. First of all, he was certainly musical, and often after a long day’s work, when the landscape outside was wintry, dreary, and wet, and the piano was thrown open and thrashed for joy of sound and relief, Murphy would rise from his mat and come and lie close to his master’s feet. He did not sing or howl on these occasions, in the way that with many dogs conveys the impression that music is pain. On the contrary, he remained quite silent, contenting himself with a sigh and a lick of the lips, which almost gave the impression that he would have said, if he could, “Just play that again, will you?”

This is, however, by the way. What he excelled in was what is generally known as talking. The sound was not a howl, or like one; it came from deep in his throat, and was deep in tone, inflections being produced by movements of the jaw at the same time. To ask him a question was generally to get an answer in this way, though rarely out of doors, where his attention was necessarily distracted. But when once he had started, he continued to respond, and so to carry on quite a lengthy conversation. That was his sole trick, if indeed it could be so classed, for he evolved it entirely himself. Of tricks proper he knew none, and through life entirely declined to learn any. Perhaps Dan, whose repertory was large, had told him what a bore they were, and cautioned him to do his utmost to avoid them.