“Yes,” I replied, “pull up a moment, Paddy, till I have a look at them.”
A pair of lovely Basset hounds they were, a dark or liver-coloured and a light one, coupled together by a short chain. They were waiting for some one, apparently; the white one turned his head to look at us, but the other was all eagerness, all attention. He seemed to me to hear a footstep.
“Waiting for some one, I should think,” I said to my driver.
“Indeed, yes, sorr,” replied Paddy. “It is waiting for their master they do be. It is waiting for him they’ll never see again, they are, sorr. They call them ‘the old man’s dogs,’ and every evening at five o’clock out they trot, just as you see them, and there they stand, sorr, and there they listen for hours and hours together; then trot back, with hanging heads and tails, sorr; but they’ll never see him more.”
“Is he dead, then?” I inquired.
“Yes, sorr,” said Paddy; “but we’ll drive on a bit if we’re going to talk.”
I gave one last glance towards the dogs, and the look of eager expectancy in the dark one’s eyes I shall not soon forget.
“It was all owing to treachery, I think, sorr,” said Paddy, as we drew up under a drooping lime-tree.
“But there it was; the old man B— used to stay much in foreign parts, but he came home at last to settle down. He had an only daughter with him, that he loved right dearly, and barring her neither kith nor kin, that ever we could see, belonging to him.
“He was always cheerful, sorr, and she seemed always happy. He used to go to L— every day; his carriage waited him on his return at the station, and them two faithful brutes, sorr, at the old gate. So everything seemed to go as cheerfully as wedding-bells, and just as easy like.