When Jem left for the war, his dog went with him to the station and would not come home.
He was not a handsome dog. He was small and black and yellow, and named for the day of the week he arrived. He lay down in a shed by the tracks, and every time a train came in he went out to meet it, and looked at every face that got off, and when it was not Jem’s he went back and lay down again.
He did it for four and a half years. We brought him food. The station agents came and went, and each one inherited him. When Jem was reported missing, the dog did not stop. People said it was a sign, one way or the other. I did not believe in signs, and I watched him anyway.
Jem came home in the spring of 1919, on the slow afternoon train that nobody met. He had escaped from a prison camp and got across into Holland; he limped, and there was grey in his hair, and he had not sent word, because he wanted to walk up to the house.
He did not get far. There was nobody on the platform but the new agent and an old, stiff, rheumatic dog, who looked up, and knew him, and went quite mad.
I was not there. I have had it told to me so many times, by so many people, that I see it more clearly than things I saw with my own eyes.