The only reply we made to this, however, was to pass him over the tow-line, and he took it, and stepped out.
[Picture: Dog wrapped in tow-line] There is something very strange and unaccountable about a tow-line.

You roll it up with as much patience and care as you would take to fold up a new pair of trousers, and five minutes afterwards, when you pick it up, it is one ghastly, soul-revolting tangle.
I do not wish to be insulting, but I firmly believe that if you took an average tow-line, and stretched it out straight across the middle of a field, and then turned your back on it for thirty seconds, that, when you looked round again, you would find that it had got itself altogether in a heap in the middle of the field, and had twisted itself up, and tied itself into knots, and lost its two ends, and become all loops; and it would take you a good half-hour, sitting down there on the grass and swearing all the while, to disentangle it again.
That is my opinion of tow-lines in general.

Of course, there may be honourable exceptions; I do not say that there are not.

There may be tow-lines that are a credit to their profession--conscientious, respectable tow-lines--tow-lines that do not imagine they are crochet-work, and try to knit themselves up into antimacassars the instant they are left to themselves.

I say there _may_ be such tow-lines; I sincerely hope there are.