him, most did not even look: all passed on. A dead dog more or less,--it
was nothing in Brabant: it would be nothing anywhere in the world.

After a time, amongst the holiday-makers, there came a little old man
who was bent and lame, and very feeble. He was in no guise for feasting:
he was very poorly and miserably clad, and he dragged his silent way
slowly through the dust amongst the pleasure-seekers. He looked at
Patrasche, paused, wondered, turned aside, then kneeled down in the rank
grass and weeds of the ditch, and surveyed the dog with kindly eyes of
pity. There was with him a little rosy, fair-haired, dark-eyed child of
a few years old, who pattered in amidst the bushes, that were for him
breast-high, and stood gazing with a pretty seriousness upon the poor
great, quiet beast.

Thus it was that these two first met,--the little Nello and the big
Patrasche.

The upshot of that day was, that old Jehan Daas, with much laborious
effort, drew the sufferer homeward to his own little hut, which was a
stone's-throw off amidst the fields, and there tended him with so much
care that the sickness, which had been a brain-seizure, brought on by
heat and thirst and exhaustion, with time and shade and rest passed away,
and health and strength returned, and Patrasche staggered up again upon
his four stout, tawny legs.

Now for many weeks he had been useless, powerless, sore, near to death;
but all this time he had heard no rough word, had felt no harsh touch,
but only the pitying murmurs of the little child's voice and the
soothing caress of the old man's hand.