The Waverley novels, by Sir Walter Scott, complete in 12 vol., printed from the latest English ed., embracing the author's last corrections, prefaces & notes.

54 WAVERLEY NOVELS.
a dog, and the whole kennel will fall on him and worry him; fishes devour
their own kind when they are wounded with a spear; cut a crow's wing, or
break its leg, the others will buffet it to death."
"That maybe true of the more irrational kinds.of animals among each
other," said Alice, " for their whole life is wellnigh a warfare; but the dog
leaves his own race to attach himself to ours; forsakes, for his master, the
company, food, and pleasure of his own kind; and surely the fidelity of
such a devoted and voluntary servant as Bevis hath been in particular,
ought not to be lightly suspected."
"I am not angry with the dog, Alice; I am only sorry," replied her
father. "I have read, in faithful chronicles, that when Richard II. and
Henry of Bolingbroke were at Berkeley Castle, a dog of the same kind
deserted the King, whom he had always attended upon, and attached himself
to Henry, whom he then saw for the first time. Richard foretold, from the
desertion of his favourite, his approaching deposition.* The dog was afterwards kept at Woodstock, and Bevis is said to be of his breed, which
was heedfully kept up. What I might foretell of mischief from his
desertion, I cannot guess, but my mind assures me it bodes no good."
There was a distant rustling among the withered leaves, a bouncing or
galloping sound on the path, and the favourite dog instantly joined his
master.
"Come into court, old knave," said Alice, cheerfully, " and defend thy
character, which is wellnigh endangered by. this absence." But the dog
only paid her courtesy by gamboling around them, and instantly plunged
back again, as fast as he could scamper.
" Iow now, knave?" said the knight; " thou art too well trained, surely.
to take up the chase without orders." A minute more showed them Phoebe
Mayflower approaching, her light pace so little impeded by the burden which
she bore, that she joined her master and young mistress just as they arrived
at the keeper's hut, which was the boundary of their journey. Bevis, who
had shot a-head.to pay his compliments to Sir Henry his master, had
returned again to his immediate duty, the escorting Phoebe and her cargo
of provisions. The whole party stood presently assembled before the door
of the keeper's hut.
In better times, a substantial stone habitation, fit for the yeoman-keeper
of a royal walk, had adorned this place. A fair spring gushed out near
the spot, and once traversed yards and courts, attached to well-built and
convenient kennels and mews. But in some of the skirmishes which were
common during the civil wars, this little silvan dwelling had been attacked
and defended, stormed and burnt. A neighbouring squire, of the Parliament side of the question, took advantage of Sir Henry Lee's absence, who
was then in Charles's camp, and of the decay of the royal cause, and had,
without scruple, carried off the hewn stones, and such building materials as
the fire left unconsuined, and repaired his own manor-house with them.
The yeoman-keeper, therefore, our friend Joceline, had constructed, for his
own accommodation, and that of the old woman he called his dame, a
wattled hut, such as his own labour, with that of a neighbour or two, had
erected in the course of a few days. The walls were plastered with clay,
white-washed, and covered with vines and other creeping plants; the roof
was neatly thatched, and the whole, though merely a hut, had, by the neathanded Joliffe, been so arranged as not to disgrace the condition of the
dweller.
The knight advanced to the entrance; but the ingenuity of the architect,
for want of a better lock to the door, which itself was but of wattles curiously twisted, had contrived a mode of securing the latch on the inside with
a pin, which prevented it from rising; and in this manner it was at present
This story occurs, I think, in Froissart's Chronicles.