‘The dogs kept to the shadows, whimpered softly, then were strangely still. Peter was moved to whisper the line from Psalms that had so moved him, hours before.
Deliver my soul from the sword,
My darling from the power of the dog.
He wondered if that Prayer Book were often used, if he might not snip out that bit and paste it into place in the scrapbook, a far better final entry than the rose leaves that, still red, had lost their odour. For she was delivered now– thanks to his father’s sacrifice, and to the sacrifice he himself had found it possible to make from a knowledge got from his father’s big black books. The dog was dead.’
The Power Of The Dog, Thomas Savage
Absence Club 