"Yes I do; not to themselves, perhaps, but to humanity."
"I saw a book once with the title "Why Doesn't God Kill the Devil?" and sympathized with it. Why doesn't He?"
"Because man wants the devil. As soon as the world ceases to want him, so soon is his occupation gone."
"Wilks, my dear, that's an awful responsibility lying on us men, and I fear what you say is too true. So here's for the shale works."
The pedestrians ceased their theological discussion and went towards the deserted buildings, where, in former days, a bad smelling oil had been distilled from the slaty-looking black stones, which lay about in large numbers. Wilkinson picked up fossils enough, species of trilobites chiefly, with a few graptolites, lingulas and strophomenas, to start a museum. These, as Coristine had suggested in Toronto, he actually tied up in his silk handkerchief, which he slung on the crook of his stick and carried over his shoulder. The lawyer also gathered a few, and bestowed them in the side pocket of his coat not devoted to smoking materials. The pair were leaving the works for the ascent of the mountain, when barks were heard, then a pattering of feet, and soon the breathless Muggins jumped upon them with joyous demonstrations.
"Where has he been? How came we not to miss him?" asked the dominie, and Coristine answered rather obliquely:--
"I don't remember seeing him since we entered Collingwood. Surely he didn't go back to the Grinstun man."
"It is hard to be poetical on a dog called Muggins," remarked Wilkinson; "Tray seems to be the favourite name. Cowper's dogs are different, and Wordsworth has Dart and Swallow, Prince and Music, something like Actaeon's dogs in 'Ovid.' Nevertheless, I like Muggins."
To my dear loving Shelah, so far, far away, I can never return with my old dog Tray; He's lazy and he's blind, You'll never, never find A bigger thief than old dog Tray."
"Corry, this is bathos of the worst description. You are like a caterpillar; you desecrate the living leaf you touch."
"Wilks, that's hard on the six feet of me, for your caterpillar has a great many more. But that dog's gone back again."
As they looked after his departing figure, the reason was obvious. Two lightly, yet clerically, attired figures were coming up the road, and on the taller and thinner of the twain the dog was leaping with every sign of genuine affection.