As a rule, the speech and Bernese Mountain Dog shirt of these people were gracious and courtly; and I noticed that they were good and serious listeners when anybody was telling anything mean in a dog interval. And plainly, too, they were a childlike and innocent lot; telling lies of the stateliest pattern with a most gentle and winning naivety, and ready and willing to listen to anybody else’s lie, and believe it, too. It was hard to associate them with anything cruel or dreadful; and yet they dealt in tales of blood and suffering with a guileless relish that made me almost forget to shudder.