“Yesterday, the gentleman who has represented us in Ireland, and whose energy enabled us to publish information which no other journal was in a position to obtain at that period or at any other, visited Stretchville. As we had not seen Mr. Blank before his departure for Hibernian shores, and were anxious to notice for ourselves what manner of man this was who for the past four months has been carrying his life in one hand, his repeater in the other, and his note-book and pencil in ----. But to abbreviate.
“We found him a pale, calm, intellectual-looking gentleman, upon whose brow the impress of truth and candor were stamped in Nature’s indelible marking-ink. He was accompanied by a miserable anatomy of a greyhound, whose spectral leanness was a miracle. It had no tail. The thin elongation of its body was so superlative that it seemed as if Nature had given up in despair the task of adding a caudal appendage in shadowy proportion to the other outlines. Our curiosity was excited, and we asked him how he came into possession of the canine ghost.
“‘I do not like telling the story,’ he answered; ‘I have a horror of being suspected of giving utterance to an untruth. But this mute witness will corroborate my tale by the want of his own. You remember I was down in the West of Ireland during the recent famine. My mission brought me into Ballykill--something or somebody. I never witnessed anything like the destitution among the landlords there in my life before. They were worn to threads.
“‘I was informed that on a moonlight night it took three of them to make a shadow. I would not have believed myself that less than a dozen could produce anything like a respectable shade.
“‘Well, one landlord, who had been master of the hounds, had only two of the pack left. He and his family had lived during the winter upon the others.
“‘The first of these two dogs, poor creature, fell to pieces trying to bark at me--just collapsed like a house of cards.
“‘The second animal you see with me. His sagacity was remarkable. He felt it his duty to bark at the stranger, but the fate of his companion warned him of the danger. So he leaned carefully against a wall, and succeeded in emitting a howl. I was struck by his extraordinary instinct. I bought him from his skeleton owner, a poor lath of a fellow you could blow out with a puff like a rush-light.