The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Ruling Passion by Henry van Dyke: carried a heart so black that he would bite while he was wagging his
tail. This smooth devil, and his four followers like unto himself,
had sworn relentless hatred to Pichou, and they made his life
difficult.
But his great and sufficient consolation for all toils and troubles
was the friendship with his master. In the long summer evenings,
when Dan Scott was making up his accounts in the store, or studying
his pocket cyclopaedia of medicine in the living-room of the Post,
with its low beams and mysterious green-painted cupboards, Pichou
would lie contentedly at his feet. In the frosty autumnal mornings,
when the brant were flocking in the marshes at the head of the bay,
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