At the moment of our encounter he was positively leonine, because the hair was bristling along his spine. Suspicion of me had brushed it up the wrong way. His grey eyes might have been wolf's eyes, had not the pupils been round like any dog's, not slits like the wolf's. Altogether he was certainly a formidable beast, lean and sinewy as a creature of the jungle.

Without taking his gaze off me, he opened his mouth, displaying sierras of ivory, and made a queer noise, ending with an upward inflection like a question. Plaxy replied, "Yes, it's Robert. He's true as steel, remember." She smiled at me deprecatingly, and added, "And he may be useful."

Sirius politely waved his amply feathered tail, but kept his cold eyes fixed on mine.

Another awkward pause settled upon us, till Plaxy said, "We have been working on the sheep out on the moor all day. We missed our dinner and I'm hungry as hell. Come in and I'll make tea for us all." She added as we entered the little flagged kitchen, "Sirius will understand everything you say. You won't be able to understand him at first, but I shall, and I'll interpret."

While Plaxy prepared a meal, passing in and out of the little larder, I sat talking to her. Sirius squatted opposite me, eyeing me with obvious anxiety. Seeing him, she said with a certain sharpness fading into gentleness, "Sirius! I tell you he's all right. Don't be so suspicious!" The dog rose, saying something in his strange lingo, and went out into the garden. "He's gone to fetch some firewood," she said; then in a lowered voice, "Oh, Robert, it's good to see you, though I didn't want you to find me." I rose to take her in my arms, but she whispered emphatically, "No, no, not now." Sirius returned with a log between his jaws. With a sidelong glance at the two of us, and a perceptible drooping of the tail, he put the log on the fire and went out again. "Why not now?" I cried, and she whispered, "Because of Sirius. Oh, you'll understand soon." After a pause she added, "Robert, you mustn't expect me to be wholly yours ever, not fully and single-heartedly yours. I'm too much involved in--in this work of my father's." I expostulated, and seized her. "Nice human Robert," she sighed, putting her head on my shoulder. But immediately she broke away, and said with emphasis, "No, I didn't say that. It was just the female human animal that said it. What I say is, I can't play the game you want me to play, not wholeheartedly."

Then she called through the open door, "Sirius, tea!" He replied with a bark, then strode in, carefully not looking at me.

She put a bowl of tea for him on a little table-cloth on the floor, remarking, "He has two meals generally, dinner at noon and supper in the evening. But to-day is different." Then she put down a large crust of bread, a hunk of cheese, and a saucer with a little lump of jam. "Will that keep you going?" she asked. A grunt signified approval.

Plaxy and I sat at the table to eat our bread and rationed butter and war-time cake. She set about telling me the history of Sirius. Sometimes I put in an occasional question, or Sirius interrupted with his queer speech of whimper and growl.

The matter of this and many other conversations about the past I shall set down in the following chapters. Meanwhile I must say this. Without the actual presence of Sirius I should not have believed the story; but his interruptions, though canine and unintelligible, expressed human intelligence by their modulation, and stimulated intelligible answers from Plaxy. Obviously he was following the conversation, commenting and watching my reaction. And so it was not with incredulity, though of course with amazement, that I learned of the origin and career of Sirius.