But it wasn't the man who fainted, though he might have done so, being crazy home-sick as he was, and half-fed and overworked while he was yet soft from an easy life.No, it was the dog! She looked at her master's face, gave one cry of inexpressible joy, and fell over in a real feminine sort of a faint, and had to be brought to like any other lady, with camphor and water and a few drops of spirit down her throat.Then Cecil got up on the wagon seat, and she sat beside him with her head on his arm, and they rode home in absolute silence, each feeling too much for speech.After they reached home, however, Cecil showed her all over the place, and she barked out her ideas in glad sociability.
After that Cecil and Nita were inseparable.
She walked beside him all day when he was out with the cultivator, or when he was mow-ing or reaping.She ate beside him at table and slept across his feet at night.Evenings when he looked over the Graphic from home, or read the books his mother sent him, that he might keep in touch with the world, Nita was beside him, patient, but jealous.
Then, when he threw his book or paper down and took her on his knee and looked into her pretty eyes, or frolicked with her, she fairly laughed with delight.
In short, she was faithful with that faith of which only a dog is capable -- that unques-tioning faith to which even the most loving women never quite attain.
However, Fate was annoyed at this perfect friendship.It didn't give her enough to do, and Fate is a restless thing with a horrible appetite for variety.So poor Nita died one day mysteriously, and gave her last look to Cecil as a matter of course; and he held her paws till the last moment, as a stanch friend should, and laid her away decently in a pine box in the cornfield, where he could be shielded from public view if he chose to go there now and then and sit beside her grave.
He went to bed very lonely, indeed, the first night.The shack seemed to him to be removed endless miles from the other habi-tations of men.He seemed cut off from the world, and ached to hear the cheerful little barks which Nita had been in the habit of giving him by way of good night.Her ami-able eye with its friendly light was missing, the gay wag of her tail was gone; all her ridiculous ways, at which he was never tired of laughing, were things of the past.
He lay down, busy with these thoughts, yet so habituated to Nita's presence, that when her weight rested upon his feet, as usual, he felt no surprise.But after a mo-ment it came to him that as she was dead the weight he felt upon his feet could not be hers.And yet, there it was, warm and com-fortable, cuddling down in the familiar way.
He actually sat up and put his hand down to the foot of the bed to discover what was there.But there was nothing there, save the weight.And that stayed with him that night and many nights after.
It happened that Cecil was a fool, as men will be when they are young, and he worked too hard, and didn't take proper care of him-self; and so it came about that he fell sick with a low fever.He struggled around for a few days, trying to work it off, but one morn-ing he awoke only to the consciousness of absurd dreams.He seemed to be on the sea, sailing for home, and the boat was tossing and pitching in a weary circle, and could make no headway.His heart was burning with impatience, but the boat went round and round in that endless circle till he shrieked out with agony.
The next neighbors were the Taylors, who lived two miles and a half away.They were awakened that morning by the howling of a dog before their door.It was a hideous sound and would give them no peace.So Charlie Taylor got up and opened the door, discovering there an excited little collie.
"Why, Tom," he called, "I thought Cecil's collie was dead!""She is," called back Tom.
"No, she ain't neither, for here she is, shakin' like an aspin, and a beggin' me to go with her.Come out, Tom, and see."It was Nita, no denying, and the men, per-plexed, followed her to Cecil's shack, where they found him babbling.
But that was the last of her.Cecil said he never felt her on his feet again.She had performed her final service for him, he said.
The neighbors tried to laugh at the story at first, but they knew the Taylors wouldn't take the trouble to lie, and as for Cecil, no one would have ventured to chaff him.
