"What is it,dear man?Where are you hurt?"The tail fluttered once;the eyes lost the look of life.Jolyon passed his hands all over the inert warm bulk.There was nothing--the heart had simply failed in that obese body from the emotion of his master's return.
Jolyon could feel the muzzle,where a few whitish bristles grew,cooling already against his lips.He stayed for some minutes kneeling;with his hand beneath the stiffening head.The body was very heavy when he bore it to the top of the field;leaves had drifted there,and he strewed it with a covering of them;there was no wind,and they would keep him from curious eyes until the afternoon.'I'll bury him myself,'he thought.Eighteen years had gone since he first went into the St.John's Wood house with that tiny puppy in his pocket.Strange that the old dog should die just now!Was it an omen?He turned at the gate to look back at that russet mound,then went slowly towards the house,very choky in the throat.
June was at home;she had come down hotfoot on hearing the news of Jolly's enlistment.His patriotism had conquered her feeling for the Boers.The atmosphere of his house was strange and pocketty when Jolyon came in and told them of the dog Balthasar's death.
The news had a unifying effect.A link with the past had snapped--the dog Balthasar!Two of them could remember nothing before his day;to June he represented the last years of her grandfather;to Jolyon that life of domestic stress and aesthetic struggle before he came again into the kingdom of his father's love and wealth!
And he was gone!
In the afternoon he and Jolly took picks and spades and went out to the field.They chose a spot close to the russet mound,so that they need not carry him far,and,carefully cutting off the surface turf,began to dig.They dug in silence for ten minutes,and then rested.