Now what should wake me the next morning, just as daylight broke the neck of the darkness, but a pitiful whining and obstinate scratching at my door! And who should it be but that same lovely little lapdog of my young mistress now standing by thy knee! But had thou seen him then, master Richard! It was the devil's hackles he had been through! Such a torn dishclout of a dog thou never did see! I understood it all in a moment.

He had made one in the fight, and whether he had had the better or the worse of it, like a wise dog as he always was, he knew where to find what would serve his turn, and so when the house was quiet, off he came to old mother Rees to be plaistered and physicked.

But what perplexes my old brain is, how, at that hour of the night, for to reach my door when he did, and him hardly able to stand when I let him in, it must have been dead night when he left--it do perplex me, I say, to think how at that time of the night he got out of that prison, watched as it is both night and day by them that sleep not.' 'He couldn't have come over the wall ?' suggested Richard.
'Had thou seen him--thou would not make that the question.' 'Then he must have come through or under it; there are but three ways,' said Richard to himself.

'He's a big dog,' he added aloud, regarding him thoughtfully as he patted his sullen affectionate head.

'He's a big dog,' he repeated.
'I think a'most he be the biggest dog _I_ ever saw,' assented mistress Rees.
'I would I were less about the shoulders,' said Richard.
'Who ever heard a man worth his mess of pottage wish him such a wish as that, master Heywood! What would mistress Dorothy say to hear thee?
I warrant me she findeth no fault with the breadth of thy shoulders.' 'I am less in the compass than I was before the last fight,' he went on, without heeding his hostess, and as if he talked to the dog, who stood with his chin on his knee, looking up in his face.