Frankly, I would enjoy the country more, if I knew that all the dogs were away on visits.  Of course, the highroad is quite safe.  Its frequent traffic is its insurance.  Then, too, the barns are at such a distance, it is only a monstrous anger can bring the dog.  But if you are in need of direction you select a friendly white house with green shutters.  You swing open the gate and crunch across the pebbles to the door.  To the nearer eye there is a look of “dog” about the place.  Or maybe you are hot and thirsty, and there is a well at the side of the house.  Is it better to gird yourself to danger or to put off your thirst until the crossroads where pop is sold?

Or a lane leads down to the river.  Even at this distance you hear the shallow brawl of water on the stones.  A path goes off across a hill, with trees beckoning at the top.  There is a wind above and a wider sweep of clouds.  Surely, from the crest of the hill the whole county will lie before you.  Such tunes as come up from the world below—­a school-bell, a rooster crowing, children laughing on the road, a threshing machine on the lower meadows—­such tunes are pitched to a marvellous softness.  Shall we follow the hot pavement, or shall we dare those lonely stretches?

There is a kind of person who is steeped too much in valor.  He will cross a field although there is a dog inside the fence.  Goodness knows that I would rather keep to the highroad with such humility as shall not rouse the creature.  Or he will shout and whistle tunes that stir the dogs for miles.  He slashes his stick against the weeds as though in challenge.  One might think that he went about on unfeeling stalks instead of legs as children walk on stilts, or that a former accident had clipped him off above the knees and that he was now jointed out of wood to a point beyond the biting limit.  Or perhaps the clothes he wears beneath—­the inner mesh and very balbriggan of his attire—­is of so hard a texture that it turns a tooth.  Be these defenses as they may, note with what bravado he mounts the wall!  One leg dangles as though it were baited and were angling for a bite.

There is a French village near Quebec whose population is chiefly dogs.  It lies along the river in a single street, not many miles from the point where Wolfe climbed to the Plains of Abraham.  There are a hundred houses flat against the roadway and on the steps of each there sits a dog.  As I went through on foot, each of these dogs picked me up, examined me nasally and passed me on, not generously as though I had stood the test, but rather in deep suspicion that I was a queer fellow, not to be penetrated at first, but one who would surely be found out and gobbled before coming to the end of the street.  As long as I would eventually furnish forth the common banquet, it mattered not which dog took the first nip.  Inasmuch as I would at last be garnished for the general tooth, it would be better to wait until all were gathered