50 A DOG OF FLANDERS.

harvest. In winter the winds found
many holes in the walls of the poor
little hut, and the vine was black and
leafless, and the bare lands looked
very bleak and drear without, and
sometimes within the floor was
flooded and then frozen. In winter
it was hard, and the snow numbed
the little white limbs of Nello, and
the icicles cut the brave, untiring
feet of Patrasche.

But even then they were never
heard to lament, either of them. The
child’s wooden shoes and the dog’s
four legs would trot manfully together
over the frozen fields to the chime of
the bells on the harness; and then
sometimes, in the streets of Antwerp,
some housewife would bring them a