Windy weather that day as the two sat down on the grass slope that edged the wooded path deep rutted awash with mud. Old trees creaked above their heads barren of leaves which lay rotting to brown around their feet. Makeshift shoes of bundled rags and boy’s feet sodden and encrusted with journeying. The two slumped huddled against each other., the boy sobbing, the young man staring blankly at the rawness of the scene. His hand absently caressing one pale hand of the shivering boy.

A picture of these two hands hangs in a gilt frame above a red sparkling fire, rich ornate mantlepiece worked with fierce imaginary beasts. In the centre placed on this, below the picture, an antique clock.

The boy’s sobbing ceases as he visualises within this room a large agressive dog moving restless and apprehensive among the empty heavy furniture. Shuddered at the thought of this dog, its studded collar.

Above the fire the picture of their hands absently one upon the other’s flesh and the dog stops in its circuts of the room and glares teeth bared snarls barking at the picture dimly visible in the red half-light.

Shuddered again. I saw a dog barking in a room, he whispered sadly. The young man had grown accustomed to this, the boy was full of visions. He enquired no further, thought later when the boy had added that this dog had been barking at a picture of their hands as they had been together then he too felt he could visualise the scene. Somewhere there was that room containing both their picture and the menace of the snarling dog.

They moved on unsettled. The glitter of the fire reflected in the dog’s black and bitter eyes.