J. COLE. 49

my heart that I can write of what follows
without pain.

Christmas was over, and my dear husband
again away for some months. As soon as I

> we were to

could really say, “Spring is here,’
leave London for our country home; and Joe
was constantly talking to Mrs. Wilson about
his various pets, left behind in the gardener’s
care. There was an old jackdaw, an especial
favorite of his, a miserable owl, too, who
had met with an accident, resulting in the loss
of an eye; a more eyvil-looking object than
“ Cyclops,” as my husband christened him,
I never saw. Sometimes on a dark night this
one eye would gleam luridly from out the
shadowy recesses of the garden, and an un-
earthly cry of “Hoo-oo-t,” fall on the ear,
enough to give one the “creeps for a hour,”
as Mary, the housemaid, said. But Joe loved
Cyclops, or rather “Cloppy,” as he called him ;
and the bird hopped after Joe about the gar-
den, as if he quite returned the feeling.

All our own dogs, and two or three maimed
ones, and a cat or two, more or less hideous,

and indebted to Joe’s mercy in rescuing them