Presently, from between the open gates came a man in khaki, accompanied
by a tall, slim, and graceful dog. It was he, not the man, that caught
my eye and for an instant snatched my thought from Little Boy Jim
rescuing a rocking-horse at the risk of his life. He was a police dog
with the dignity of a prince and the lightness of a plume.
"Lovely creature!" I said to myself, as he and the khaki man swung
toward us down the road. And I wished that Brian could see him, for the
dog Brian loved and lost at the Front was a Belgian police dog.
Perhaps, Padre, Brian wrote you about his wonderful pet, that he thought
worthy to name after the dog-star Sirius. I've forgotten to ask if he
did write; but I seldom had a letter from him from the trenches that
didn't mention Sirius. Everyone seemed to adore the dog, which developed
into a regimental mascot. What his early history was can never be known:
but Brian rescued him from a burning chateau in Belgium, just as Jim
rescued the rocking-horse of Mother Beckett's nursery story, though with
rather more risk! It was a chateau where some hidden tragedy must have
been enacted, because the Germans took possession of it with the family
still there--such of the family as wasn't fighting: two young married
women, sisters, wives of brothers. But when the Germans ran before the
British, and fired the chateau as they went, not a creature living or
dead was left in the house--except the dog--and nothing has ever been
heard of the sisters.
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