He was horribly bruised and sore
all over; his bones appeared to be all broken; he was limp and
could hardly get on his feet, and in that miserable condition
he continued for some three days.
At first we thought he had been in a big fight--he was
inclined that way, his master said--but we could discover no
tooth marks or lacerations, nothing but bruises. Perhaps, we
said, he had fallen into the hands of some cruel person in one
of the distant moorland farms, who had tied him up, then
thrashed him with a big stick, and finally turned him loose to
die on the moor or crawl home if he could. His master looked
so black at this that we said no more about it. But Jack was
a wonderfully tough dog, all gristle I think, and after three
days of lying there like a dead dog he quickly recovered,
though I'm quite sure that if his injuries had been
distributed among any half-dozen pampered or pet dogs it would
have killed them all. A morning came when the kennel was
empty: Jack was not dead--he was well again, and, as usual,
out.
Just then I was absent for a week or ten days then, back
again, I went out one fine morning for a long day's ramble
along the coast. A mile or so from home, happening to glance
back I caught sight of a black dog's face among the bushes
thirty or forty yards away gazing earnestly at me. It was
Jack, of course, nothing but his head visible in an opening
among the bushes--a black head which looked as if carved in
ebony, in a wonderful setting of shining yellow furze
blossoms.
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