The Heart of a Dog

by Albert Payson Terhune

Cyril, naturally, had not had the remotest intent of labouring through the bitter cold and the snow to the house of any neighbour; there to tell his woful tale of oppression. The semblance of martyrdom, without its bothersome actuality, was quite enough for his purpose. Once before, at home, when his father had administered a mild and much-needed spanking, Cyril had made a like threat; and had then gone to hide in a chum’s home, for half a day; returning to find his parents in agonies of remorse and fear, and ready to load him with peace-offerings. The child saw no reason why the same tactics should not serve every bit as triumphantly, in the present case.

He knew the maids were in the kitchen and at least one man was in the stables. He did not want his whereabouts to be discovered before he should have been able to raise a healthy and dividend-bringing crop of remorse in the hearts of the Mistress and the Master, so he resolved to go farther afield.

In the back of the meadow, across the road, and on the hither side of the forest, was a disused cattle-barrack, with two stalls under its roofpile of hay. The barrack was one of Cyril’s favourite playhouses. It was dry and tight. Through his thick clothing he was not likely to be very cold, there; for an hour or two. He could snuggle down in the warm hay and play Indians, with considerable comfort; until such time as the fright and penitence of his hosts should have come to a climax and make his return an ovation.

Meanwhile, it would be fun to picture their uneasiness and fear for his safety; and to visualise their journeyings through the snow to the houses of various neighbours, in search of the lost child.

Buoyed up by such happy thoughts as these, Cyril struck out at a lively pace for the highroad and into the field beyond. The barrack, he knew, lay diagonally across the wide meadow, and near the adjoining woods. Five minutes of tramping through the snow ought to bring him to it. And he set off, diagonally.

But, before he had gone a hundred yards, he lost his first zest in the adventure. The darkness had thickened; and the vagrant wind-gusts had tightened into a steady gale;—a gale which carried before it a blinding wrack of stingingly hard-driven snow.

The grey of the dying dusk was blotted out. The wind smote and battered the spindling child. Mechanically, he kept on for five or six minutes, making scant and irregular progress. Then, his spirit wavered. Splendid as it would be to scare these hateful people, there was nothing splendid in the weather that numbed him with cold and took away his breath and half-blinded him with snow.

What was the fun of making others suffer; if he himself were suffering tenfold more? And, on reaching the barrack, he would have all that freezing and blast-hammering trip back again. Aw, what was the use?

And Cyril came to a halt. He had definitely abandoned his high enterprise. Turning around, he began to retrace his stumbling steps. But, at best, in a large field, in a blizzard and in pitch darkness, and with no visible landmarks, it is not easy to double back on one’s route, with any degree of accuracy. In Cyril’s case, the thing was wholly impossible.

Blindly he had been travelling in an erratic half-circle. Another minute of walking would have brought him to the highroad, not far from the Place’s gateway. And, as he changed his course, to seek the road, he moved at an obtuse angle to his former line of march.