“It’s a hard case, ma’am,” said the sergeant, “but maybe the boy is only a bit wild not having his father over him, and maybe it’s just that he’s used to yourself, for there isn’t a child at all that doesn’t love his mother. Let you behave yourself now, Tomás; attend to your mother, and leave the beasts and the insects alone, like a decent boy, for there’s no insect in the world will ever like you as well as she does. Could you tell me, ma’am, if we have passed the first turn on this road, or is it in front of us still, for we are lost altogether in the darkness?”
“It’s in front of you still,” she replied, “about ten minutes down the road; you can’t miss it, for you’ll see the sky where there is a gap in the trees, and that gap is the turn you want.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” said the sergeant; “we’d better be moving on, for there’s a long tramp in front of us before we get to sleep this night.”
He stood up and the men rose to follow him when, suddenly, the boy spoke in a whisper.
“Mother,” said he, “they are going to hang the man,” and he burst into tears.
“Oh, hush, hush,” said the woman, “sure, the men can’t help it.” She dropped quickly on her knees and opened her arms, “Come over to your mother, my darling.”
The boy ran to her.
“They are going to hang him,” he cried in a high, thin voice, and he plucked at her arm violently.
“Now, then, my young boy-o,” said the sergeant, “none of that violence.”
The boy turned suddenly and flew at him with astonishing ferocity. He hurled himself against the sergeant’s legs and bit, and kicked, and struck at him. So furiously sudden was his attack that the man went staggering back against the wall, then he plucked at the boy and whirled him across the room. In an instant the two dogs leaped at him snarling with rage—one of these he kicked into a corner, from which it rebounded again bristling and red-eyed; the other dog was caught by the woman, and after a few frantic seconds she gripped the first dog also. To a horrible chorus of howls and snapping teeth the men hustled outside and slammed the door.
“Shawn,” the sergeant bawled, “have you got a good grip of that man?”
“I have so,” said Shawn.
“If he gets away I’ll kick the belly out of you; mind that now! Come along with you and no more of your slouching.”
They marched down the road in a tingling silence.
“Dogs,” said the Philosopher, “are a most intelligent race of people—”
“People, my granny!” said the sergeant.
“From the earliest ages their intelligence has been observed and recorded, so that ancient literatures are bulky with references to their sagacity and fidelity—”
“Will you shut your old jaw?” said the sergeant.
“I will not,” said the Philosopher. “Elephants also are credited with an extreme intelligence and devotion to their masters, and they will build a wall or nurse a baby with equal skill and happiness. Horses have received high recommendations in this respect, but crocodiles, hens, beetles, armadillos, and fish do not evince any remarkable partiality for man—”
“I wish,” said the sergeant bitterly, “that all them beasts were stuffed down your throttle the way you’d have to hold your prate.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said the Philosopher. “I do not know why these animals should attach themselves to men with gentleness and love and yet be able to preserve intact their initial bloodthirstiness, so that while they will allow their masters to misuse them in any way they will yet fight most willingly with each other, and are never really happy saving in the conduct of some private and nonsensical battle of their own. I do not believe that it is fear which tames these creatures into mildness, but that the most savage animal has a capacity for love which has not been sufficiently noted, and which, if more intelligent attention had been directed upon it, would have raised them to the status of intellectual animals as against intelligent ones, and, perhaps, have opened to us a correspondence which could not have been other than beneficial.”
“Keep your eyes out for that gap in the trees, Shawn,” said the sergeant.
“I’m doing that,” said Shawn.
The Philosopher continued:
“Why can I not exchange ideas with a cow? I am amazed at the incompleteness of my growth when I and a fellow-creature stand dumbly before each other without one glimmer of comprehension, locked and barred from all friendship and intercourse—”
“Shawn,” cried the sergeant.
“Don’t interrupt,” said the Philosopher; “you are always talking.—The lower animals, as they are foolishly called, have abilities at which we can only wonder. The mind of an ant is one to which I would readily go to school. Birds have atmospheric and levitational information which millions of years will not render accessible to us; who that has seen a spider weaving his labyrinth, or a bee voyaging safely in the trackless air, can refuse to credit that a vivid, trained intelligence animates these small enigmas? and the commonest earthworm is the heir to a culture before which I bow with the profoundest veneration—”
“Shawn,” said the sergeant, “say something for goodness’ sake to take the sound of that man’s clack out of my ear.”
“I wouldn’t know what to be talking about,” said Shawn, “for I never was much of a hand at conversation, and, barring my prayers, I got no education—I think myself that he was making a remark about a dog. Did you ever own a dog, sergeant?”
“You are doing very well, Shawn,” said the sergeant, “keep it up now.”
“I knew a man had a dog would count up to a hundred for you. He won lots of money in bets about it, and he’d have made a fortune, only
