“Where would you bury him, father?”
“I’ll tell you, John. Under the big maple, where he loved so much to lie in the hot summer days.”
While this conversation was going on at Captain Rhines’s, Joe Griffin, Charlie, and Fred were expatiating upon the merits of Tige, and regretting his loss, in Fred’s store. Joe Bradish came in, and after listening a while to their conversation, broke in with, “Such a fuss about a dog—an old dog, that ought to have been knocked on the head years ago. Anybody would think it was a Christian you was lamenting about.”
Fred was naturally of a warm temper, shared in the universal feeling of dislike to Bradish, and this rough remark, in his present state of feeling, was more than he could bear.
“There was more Christianity in him than there ever was in you,” retorted Fred; “more in one of his nails than in your whole body. He saved the lives of three of us, when we went to sleep in the tide’s way, at Indian Cave. If it hadn’t been for him, I should have been as miserable to-day as Pete Clash. It will be news to me when I hear of your lifting a finger to help anybody. You may keep still or leave the store.”
Bradish, without making any reply, went out.
“You’ve lost his custom, I reckon,” said Charlie.
“It won’t be much loss. He came in here the other day, lolling round, and upset the inkstand upon a whole piece of muslin. I was out of doors, and before I could get in, it went through the whole piece. He said he was master sorry, supposed he ought to buy something, and would take a darning-needle.”
The three friends, with Fannie and Captain Rhines’s family, buried Tige beneath a large rock maple that stood on the side of the hill, in the edge of the orchard. It was all full of holes, where Ben and John had tapped it. Between its roots they had made many a hoard of apples; and here Tige had loved to lie, as it was a cool place, and from it he could see everything that moved upon the water. They put a stone at the grave, on which his noble deeds were recorded.
John Rhines had long cherished a secret attachment to Fannie Williams; but the death of Tige occasioned a mingling of sympathies that brought matters to a focus, and after a short engagement they were married. Captain Rhines and his wife, with whom Fannie had been a favorite from childhood, were highly gratified; for since their daughters had married and gone, the large house seemed lonely, and this beautiful, lively, sweet-tempered girl was to them a perfect treasure.