Note D — Chapter VII · MY EARLY FRIENDS.

This dog, a collie, had been reared in a pastoral parish, where such dogs often accompany the shepherds to the kirk, and lie at their masters’ feet during the service. The collie in question had been the favourite of a bachelor clergyman, and was in the habit of walking sedately at his heels into his church, ascending the pulpit stairs and disposing itself quietly outside the pulpit door, to wait there till the “diet of worship” had terminated. The congregation were so used to the proceeding that it offended nobody’s sense of propriety. In course of time the clergyman took to himself a wife, who rather objected to his intrusive four-footed companion. In consequence of her sentiments the dog was thrown a good deal on its own devices, and thought fit to get up a friendship with a clergyman of a rival denomination in the place. This worthy gentleman threw his people into a ferment by walking up the aisle of his church one morning, followed unconsciously by his professional opponent’s dog, which thus publicly showed that it had seceded from one religious body and joined another.