Miscellany: Faithful

In Strasbourg, France, a schoolmaster, one Bernard Joerg, lived with his dog. Last week the two went for a walk. Lost in abstraction, M. Joerg started to cross a railroad track; a train leaped out of the twilight, sprang at his shoulder like a huge beast, spun him around through the air, smashed his legs against a fence. Townsfolk came running—stopped, terrified, a dozen yards from the moaning, broken body. At Joerg’s feet crouched the dog. Something had hurt his master, let no one else try it. The dark snarling beast, the little circle of white faces, the bloody bundle on the ground. For an hour he kept at bay the doctor who could have saved his master. At last he was enticed aside. M. Joerg had bled to death.