Page:Malot - Nobodys Boy, Crewe-Jones, 1916.djvu/217

 off with their vegetables and flowers to the markets. They found us lying, huddled together in the snow, with a little covering of their straw over us. Vitalis was already dead, and I should have died but Capi had crept up to my chest and kept my heart warm. They had carried us into the house and I had been placed in one of the children's warm beds.

"And Capi?" I asked, when the gardener stopped talking.

"Capi?"

"Yes, the dog."

"I don't know, he's disappeared."

"He followed the body," said one of the children. "Didn't you see him, Benjamin?"

"Should say I did," answered another boy; "he walked behind the men who carried the stretcher. He kept his head down, and now and again he jumped up on the body, and when they made him get down he moaned and howled something terrible."

Poor Capi! how many times, as an actor, had he not followed Zerbino's funeral. Even the most serious children had been obliged to laugh at his display of grief. The more he moaned, the more they had laughed.

The gardener and his children left me alone. Not knowing quite what to do or what I was going to do, I got up and dressed. My harp had been placed at the foot of the bed upon which I was lying. I passed the strap over my shoulder and