The hay harvest had been a light one, owing to the weather in the spring and the absence of wet. It was hardly off the ground before the corn harvest had begun and the long arms of the self-binder were to be seen waving in the air above the standing oats, the first of all, this season, to go down. “The moon had come in on dry earth,” as the harvesters expressed it; and with implicit faith in the moon, there would therefore be no rain. For once in a way faith was not misplaced: there was great heat, which ripened wheat and oats and barley too quickly, left the straw short, and covered the turnips with fly.

It was too hot in the day to go far—that is, for those in life who can choose their own time. So the dog and the man took their walks late, and prolonged them to the hour when the ruddy moon rose solemnly into the sky over the woods and set out on its low, summer curve to the west. Daylight lasted long after the sun went down: a hot glow spread gradually northward, and what with the light in this direction and the moon at full, only those two other worlds, Jupiter and Venus, were visible in the cloudless vault above. This was the time of day to be abroad, but, oddly enough, the hour when many were indoors. There was some excuse for the harvesters. They had been up with the sun: by half-past seven it was time to put the self-binder to bed in the field; by eight, or soon after, many were in bed themselves. Men and horses had sweated much, and had had a long day.

It was on an evening such as this that Murphy had his first lesson in working to the hand, for Job’s remark had given rise to a train of thought. Education was of course everything. Those who lived on the land should be educated in the things of the land; should learn, if not its deeper wonders and mysteries, at least its simple lessons and what lay at the back of these. It was in these fields and over these breezy downs that thews and sinews were to be braced, health and strength gathered, souls cleansed, if so be that the ways of the man were straight and true.

Here was God’s work always visible, from the wonders of the growth of the seeds to the coming of the music of the rains that washed the air and made the land sing with life. Here was always visible the infinite power of small things, beauty unstained, Nature’s laws always in full operation—the triumph of good work, the smothering of that which was ill. Here in these very fields had been gathered the strength of arm that had stood the country in good stead, when the drums beat and true men were wanted beyond seas. That seemed to be more as it should be. And so it may be yet—that is, when the craze of a day has passed, and the men of the land come back.

Education would do it. Some hearts would be bitten with the old love, and learn to forget the new. But the education must be true and not false, in tune with the life that shall be; not cramped and with little connection between it and the field of labour that lies ahead. Uniformity is often but to bring down to one dead level, to crush true liberty and freedom, to force unnatural growth, and to give this a trend untrue. Education on such lines seems curiously false to many minds, as well as stultifying.

Scot, who had no appearance of a sheep-dog—that is, as his class are generally portrayed in coloured prints—might possibly have been brought up as a water-spaniel, or he might have been the darling of a semi-detached villa and have learnt to walk drab, unlovely streets without endangering his life: it is all a matter of education, fortified by environment. As it was, he was brought up with a cottage for a home and learnt the mysteries of sheep, the tending and the care of them, what the stretching of limbs meant, no less than freedom and free air.

The life was a hard one, no doubt, in one sense. Sometimes there were short commons: there was much bad weather to be faced, when his master was clad in strange clothes and wore a sack like the hood of a monk over the top of his weather-worn cap, and he himself was glad to get to the shelter of the hut, where the stove was burning: there was the wet, when all alike were mud-smothered: there were the biting winds of March. But there came the glad spring and the long summer days; the one gave a flavour to the other and created a love for both, and deep down in the heart where that love burnt bright was the pride of his calling, the honour of tending sheep. Soft jobs were not for men—or manly dogs.

Of course Murphy could not be a sheep-dog; that is, unless Job Nutt had a mind to make him. Then, of course, he would have had a proper schoolmaster, and been brought up to things among which he had been born and bred, while lookers-on beheld a novel kind of sheep-dog. As it was, however, his master owned no sheep. Yet, seeing that his lot had not been that of some—to walk the streets for exercise, or to lie in the cramped garden of a villa in a town—it was only right he should learn all that he could, and that his education should partake of the fields and the upland downs around his home.

As to whether it would have been possible to have trained him to the streets at all must now be left among the things unknown. The impression remains that, seeing he never grasped the desperate dangers of the modern road, his life, had he been so foolish as to forsake the country for the town, would probably have been limited to hours. For a better, freer life he was fortunately born, and he certainly never threw this chance away, but made the very most of it, and came to great happiness thereby.

Of course it took time; but a beginning was made in those halcyon, summer days, and the art of working by the hand gradually brought to some perfection. No little of this dog’s gladness in life was centred eventually in this accomplishment, and he was never happier than when at practice. The education began by teaching him to lie down at the command—“Stop there,” and then in leaving him behind for gradually lengthening periods. So well did he know these words, that he would act on them instantly, and in this way once lost his walk by a slight misunderstanding. An explanation of the method was being given one day, when walking with a friend. The opening words were of course used. Some time after the dog was missed, and it was not until steps had been retraced for a considerable distance that he was found, lying where he had first heard the words and looking a little shy.

The next proceeding was to start him, and then to stop him, till by degrees he came to understand the movement of the hands or arms. In this way it was possible to send him to great distances, or move him to right or left, much after the manner in which we who are soldiers move our men. When a hand was uplifted high, he would drop at once, so that nobody would think that there was a dog within a mile: he might be lying in rough grass where the ragwort was high, or the wheat, as they say, was proud, and be himself invisible. But he could see well enough with those bright eyes of his, and the moment the arm was waved he was off with a stride of two yards or more, circling round and making the valley ring to his glad bark. He always entered into the whole fun of the thing, and looked upon it as the finest game that had ever been invented.

“Ah, well,” remarked Job as he watched, and Scot gave tongue for very jealousy—“ah, well, I allus liked that dog.”

And so did every one.

With each little addition to the sum of knowledge he possessed, master and dog grew closer to one another. It is always a moot point whether our dogs consider they belong to the family with which they live, or whether they do not regard the matter the other way about, and judge that the family belongs to them. In Murphy’s case there is no shadow of doubt that, so far as his master was concerned, that master most certainly belonged to him. At first, the position had been different. There was reason for that. But even the reason had now apparently passed out of mind: injustice had doubtless been forgiven, and what was far more wonderful—or rather, would have been, had man been in the case and not a dog—had also, so far as could be seen, been totally forgotten.

So completely had confidence been won that anything was permitted, even to the playful brandishing of a stick. Sticks were things to play with. They had no relation to punishment at all. Besides, was not life a state to be enjoyed, and as happy as the day was long? And had he not taught his one great friend no end of facts of which he had hitherto been desperately ignorant?

It was all very well for Him to say that he had educated and trained this dog. The dog had all the while been training Him. It was all very well for Him to think in his heart that he had given this dog happiness in life. Happiness had in a measure also come back to Him. There had been, in more than one direction, a strange parallel between their cases, and as this had made itself felt, it had bound them both more closely together. They were now not only never apart, but they were of one mind in other ways as well—in joy of life as they found it under the sky; in the happiness of comradeship as they learnt to rely on it—indoors and out; in the deeper meaning of friendship, with the trust and undeviating truth that friendship claims; in the faith that the one had always in the other, through the good days and the hard.

Those who watched were often overheard to say, “The dog has taken charge of the man.” And so he had, to a certain degree. He had learnt his master’s habits exactly. He knew the time of day by the striking of the clock; and, morning after morning, at a particular hour, if this master, with his funny ways, delayed his going, he would get up from his familiar corner and come and stand and fix him with his eyes. Or, if this failed, would come, gently, closer, and lay his chin upon a knee, and make him lay down his work and come out for the regulation interval. In the longer marches of old days, there were halts in every hour. Come out! Come out! New strength and new ideas are to be gathered outside; you will grow stale in here, whether you choose to practise this art or that. Houses are well enough to sleep in and to give shelter; but it is the heavens that give strength, and it is God’s heaven that somehow, if only feebly, must get itself reflected in man’s work.

So, in another instant, these two would be out together; the one going as far as tether would allow; the other doing what was yet another of his joys in life, and that caused such fun and merriment to lookers-on—the hunting of birds. Of that he never tired on the longest or the hottest day. Blackbirds gave the finest sport of all, as they generally flew only three feet above the ground. He knew their note at once; but probably the laugh of the green woodpecker vexed him more than most, while he certainly regarded the mocking notes of cuckoos as insults to himself. Of birds of various kinds he caught many, young and old, but was never known to hurt a single one.

The most remarkable of his exploits in this direction was when he found himself at one time by the sea. It was a lonely coast, where great crimson cliffs rose sheer out of the sand, their ledges, here and there, covered with tamarisk, gorse, and shaven thorn—right to their very summit three hundred feet above, from whence the moors stretched far away inland. A heavy surf beat there at times, setting these cliffs echoing in such a way as to make speech difficult. On these wild days it was well that this dog had learnt to work so perfectly by hand, for he had no fear of the rollers, and the wonder was that he escaped from being drowned.

At the bottom of the whole fun of this new situation lay the fact that these cliffs were inhabited by innumerable gulls. To catch one of these was Murphy’s aim, and often was he washed out on to the sands in a smother of spindrift, in his mad eagerness to attain his end. The herring-gulls were the finest sport of all, with their constant melancholy cries—“pew-il,” “pee-ole,” or their hoarser note of warning, “kak-k-kak”; their bodies two feet in length; their spread of wing no less than four feet four. For months he chased them, till at last some must possibly have known him. It was perhaps on this account that one of them was not quick enough in getting under way on one occasion. Murphy flung himself into the air and got him; and not only got him, but brought him along, with the great wings beating the air about him, so that the dog was scarcely visible for the bird. It was the old story again, of the hare in his earlier days, for the gull was not harmed, and when liberated flew out to sea, with the cry “pew-il,” “pee-ole” flung back from the waves as he went.

“I never thought to live tu zee the like o’ that,” remarked a longshoreman passing at the time: but then he was a stranger to Murphy, and also to his ways.

What happiness was to be had in life; what sport and splendid fun—sport all day long; fun without end! Did not the morning begin with a game?—the dog lying down in one corner of the hall, fixing his master with his eye as he appeared, and then, after pausing a while as if to say, “Are you ready?” launching himself full tilt, till he was brought up in a final leap against his master’s chest, full five feet from the ground. Of course the whole hall was in a smother every time, with mats and rugs all out of place upon the slippery floor. And then the noise! The only thing was to leave the house and work off some of the steam out there.

No dog with a particle of nervousness or hesitation left would do such things as that. But he only did them with his master. When with others, report had it that he was a different dog, with no taste for hunting or for chasing birds—a dog, in fact, that invariably got into one room and lay there alone, unless he changed his place for the mat by the front door.

Of course He would come back. Folk always did. There could be no break in this friendship: it would last for ever. He had heard his master count the years: “Four”—that was his own age—he knew that much; and from four his master would count up to ten; then hesitate; then say “eleven”; then hesitate again, and remark, “twelve—perhaps: yes, little man; you’ll see me out—easy!”

And those who watched and looked on added this to what they had said before, “What will happen, if anything happens to that dog?”

It was a funny way of putting it, but the remark was always met, in reply, with, “Don’t let us meet trouble half-way, or make a circuit of the hills to look for it;

“‘Fortis cadere, cedere non potest.’”

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