On other occasions, to stay at home when her friends were going abroad, or to submit to confinement, was so severe a trial of Skatta’s philosophy, that it was the one decree which found and left her rebellious. It was no easy task to detain a dog that, when shut into a room on the second floor of the house, with the windows closed, broke through a pane of glass, and precipitated herself twelve or fifteen feet to the ground; and with such rapidity did she clear the glass in taking the leap, that she was not punished for her defiant temerity by more than a few inconsiderable scratches and bruises.
She once walked a distance of fifteen miles with her master, and at the end of the journey was tied up in a stable, since he was going where she could not conveniently accompany him. I need not say that she gnawed through the string, seized an opportunity, when the stable-door was open, to make her escape, and, not being able to trace her master, ran the whole way home again, and arrived in the course of two more hours, very travel-stained, tired, and hungry, but content. This is nothing of a feat compared to that performed by an Argyleshire terrier, which, having been conveyed in a carriage through one of the passes into an entirely different district, set off at the first available moment, and crossed a great solitary mountain range—taking a week to do it—arriving at last, a gaunt but happy skeleton, at what it persisted in regarding as its own door. How the poor animal subsisted in the meantime was only known to Him who feedeth the young ravens when they cry.
I remember Skatta’s being lent to a sportsman, who was very desirous of availing himself of her powers; but no bribe of game or sport would detain her from her friends. So soon as she was let loose, she broke away and rushed back to them, the quick pattering of her feet sounding in every room of the house, her gleaming eyes and vibrating tail appealing to each member of the family in turn with a “Here I am, you see; I could not and I would not stay away.”
The pertinacity with which Skatta followed her master sometimes produced awkward results. He was attending the funeral of an old retainer of the family, to whom he desired to pay particular respect. He believed that the dog was safe at a distance when he was motioned to a place of honour close to the open grave. He observed a little disturbance among the ring of mourners, and, to his horror, discovered Skatta in the centre, by his side, with her head poked inquisitively forward over what was to her a great black hole.
Skatta came to us when some of us were young enough to dress her in Rona’s cast-off clothes; she lived sufficiently long with us to see the steps of the youngest grow slow, and care settling on their brows. She was a silent witness to many changes—to the passing away of one honoured face, the breaking up of the old home, the dispersion of the family. She herself was so old that both her sight and hearing were nearly gone, and she could hardly answer to the signal of the master she had loved so well. Her life was becoming a burden to her—she was getting diseased as well as infirm. It was feared she would prove dangerous to a child in the house where she lived, as she had always been jealous of children where her master was concerned, disliking to see him take them into his arms, sniffing and growling at them if they came too near him according to her ideas, and fiercely resenting any liberty taken with herself under the circumstances. So old Skatta was sentenced—with what regret may be imagined—to a death quick and painless, for the sake of higher humanity.
A contemporary of Skatta’s was a huge black and white watch-dog, named “Foam,” a good-natured, but formidable creature, which, when it was let loose, used to come bounding to greet us, and such was its impetus that, when it planted a paw on each shoulder, it caused each one of us to reel and stagger under its caress.
An interregnum in our connection with dogs occurred, during which, as I have heard masters and mistresses say after the loss of a confidential and trusty servant, various unavailable retainers passed across the domestic stage without making a lengthened stay, or filling successfully the vacant post.
There was “James Craig,” a white, straight-haired terrier, boasting the becoming contrast of lively black eyes and a black nose. His temper was irascible, and his life was rendered so unendurable to him by the mischievous attentions of several lads, whose office chanced to be in the vicinity of his home, and who insisted on stamping their feet at him, that he in turn made life unbearable to his human neighbours, and had to be banished from the establishment. His fate was hard. He was always an excitable dog, and he managed, while quite in his senses, to inspire some credulous panic-stricken people with the notion that he was mad, under which delusion he was stoned to death.
There was “Bobby,” a pretty, but weak-minded black spaniel, which also suffered a violent death. He had not the sense to get out of the way of a coach which drove over him.