“He makes you feel like an old man, Chet McAusland, just to look at him,” she protested. But Chet shook his head.
“I won’t feel old long as I can see you,” he told her.
So Old Tantry lived on and grew more decrepit. One day in the winter of his thirteenth year he followed Chet down into the wood lot and hunted him out there—and was so weary from his own exertions that Chet had to carry the dog up the hill and home and put him to bed in the barn.
“I ought to put you away, Tantry,” he said to himself as he gave the weary old creature a plate of supper. “It’s time you were going, old dog. But I can’t—I can’t.”
His fourteenth year saw Tantrybogus dragging out a weary life. Till then there had been nothing the matter with him save old age, but in his fourteenth summer a lump appeared on his right side against the ribs, and it was as large as a nut before Chet one day discovered it. Thereafter it grew. And at times when the old dog lay down on that side he would yelp with pain and get up hurriedly and lie down on the other side. By September the lump was half as large as an apple. And when Chet touched it Tantry whined and licked Chet’s hand in a pitiful appeal. Even then Chet would not do that which Mary wished him to do.
“He’ll go away some day and I’ll never see him again,” he told her. “But as long as he wants to stay—he’ll stay.”
“It’s cruel to the dog,” Mary told him. “You keep him, but you won’t let him do what he wants to do. I’m ashamed of you, Chet McAusland.”
Chet laughed uncomfortably.
“I can’t help it, Mary,” he said.