“It isn’t any use, old chap. You have got to be tied up.”
Sadly the terrier sank down in his master’s lap, a look of utter dejection on his face.
The doctor laughed. “It isn’t as bad as that, old sport. If I come back we’ll have good times yet. If I don’t, I’ll tell them to send you home to the mistress. If I don’t come back, you take good care of the mistress.
“Here come my orders, old chum,” said the physician, giving Pep a final hug as an orderly came in and put a telegram in the surgeon’s hand. The doctor read the letter hurriedly and put it into his pocket.
He then brought a heavy dog chain and snapped it into Pep’s collar and led him out of the dispensary to a storeroom where he sometimes slept at night. He fastened the chain securely to a staple in the wall and after giving Pep a parting hug, departed hurriedly, unmindful of his whimpers and angry barks. Half an hour later the doctor was on a train speeding away to the front, while Pep sulked dolefully in the storeroom.
Pep seemed to know instinctively that his master had gone for a long time. The doctor had left him several times before for half a day since they had been in France, but now it was different. That long confidential talk in the dispensary and the affectionate hugs and lavish petting foretold to his dog mind a long separation.
That night Pep howled so persistently that his friend, the Captain, finally came into the storeroom and gave him a sound thrashing. After this he was silent except for occasional half stifled whimpers and sobs of grief. But though he seemed to take his hard fate stoically, he was not reconciled.
The Captain led him each day on the leash into the dispensary and chained him to the leg of the table. He watched the movements of every one who came in and if any one spoke to him he at once told them in as plain language as a dog could use to unsnap his chain and let him go. But the Captain warned each newcomer that Pep was to be kept strictly on the chain until his master’s return.
In the daytime he was not so lonesome or unconsolable, but in the night he often lay awake whimpering for his master or working at his chain and collar trying to get loose. He would spend hours tugging at the chain, pulling at the staple with his teeth, or trying to get at his collar, until he lay down utterly exhausted.
So it fared with Pep for two weeks, until finally one night when he had tugged and strained even more violently than usual, one of the links in his chain which had been only partly welded broke and he was free.