“I have a dog myself,” growled the sheriff. “Your mother writes a beautiful letter.” His eyes were already travelling down the cheap thin note-paper, folded at the top. “I know,” Mrs. Smith wrote, in her stiff, careful hand—“I know you will feel bad, Eddy, to hear that dear old Rowdy is gone. Your letter came the night before he died. Ruth was over, and I read it out loud to her; and when I came to that part where you sent your love to him, it seemed like he understood, he wagged his tail so knowing. You know how fond of you he always was. All that evening he played round—more than usual—and I’m so glad we both petted him, for in the morning we found him stiff and cold on the landing of the stairs, in his favorite place. I don’t think he could have suffered any, he looked so peaceful. Ruth and I made a grave for him in the garden, under the white rose tree. Ruth digged the grave, and she painted a Kennedy’s cracker-box, and we wrapped him up in white cotton cloth. I cried, and Ruth cried too, when we laid him away. Somehow it made me long so much more to see you. If I sent you the money, don’t you think you could come home for Christmas? Wouldn’t your employer let you if he knew your mother had not seen you for four years, and you are all the child she has got? But I don’t want you to neglect your business.”
The few words of affection that followed were not written so firmly as the rest. The sheriff would not read them; he handed the letter back to Paisley, and turned his Indian scowl on the back of the latter’s shapely head.
Paisley was staring at the columns of the page before him. “Rowdy was my dog when I was courting Ruth,” he said. “I was engaged to her once. I suppose mother thinks of that. Poor Rowdy! the night I ran away he followed me, and I had to whip him back.”
“Oh, you ran away?”
“Oh yes; the old story. Trusted clerk. Meant to return the money. It wasn’t very much. But it about cleaned mother out. Then she started the bakery.”
“You pay your ma back?”
“Yes, I did.”
“That’s a lie.”
“What do you ask a man such questions for, then? Do you think it’s pleasant admitting what a dirty dog you’ve been? Oh, damn you!”