The old horse standing patiently by, with drooping head and hopeless, patient eyes, looked starved and weak.
His poor body was so thin that the bones seemed ready to push through the skin, on which showed the marks of the blows he had received that morning.

The fourth creature there was a dog, as thin as the horse, but younger, a lank, yellow, ugly, big-bodied dog, with a clever head, bright, speaking brown eyes, and as keen a nose for scent as any dog ever born possessed.
The brown eyes had been closed for a while in slumber, but presently they opened alertly; a fly had bitten his nose, and the owner of the nose got up to catch the fly.

This done, he looked around him.
He looked with drooped ears and tail at the sleeping man and woman, with ears a little raised at the old horse, and then with both ears and tail alertly cocked he looked about him eagerly, even anxiously.
A second later he was leaping up the steps and into the caravan; but in less than a minute he was out again, leaping over the steps at the other end, and out to the edge of the coppice.

What he was in search of was not in the van, or under it, or anywhere near it.
The dog did not whine, or make a sound.

He knew better than that.
A whine would have brought a heavy boot flying through the air at him, or a stick across his back, or a kick in the ribs, if he were foolish enough to go within reach of a foot.