Jack by Catherine Louisa Pirkis

A white-haired mongrel terrier it was, with flopping ears, and only half a tail -- a thin, shadowy sort of thing that used to grub about in the twilight in the gutters, and in odd corners where poor people throw waste and rubbish, picking up its own living as best it could. If it had not known how to "fend for itself," it must have fared hardly indeed; for though it had a master who loved it, as he would have loved the sun in the heavens could his blind eyes have been lightened for one moment by its beams, and who treasured it as he did the memory of his dead wife, dead daughter, dead grandchild, yet he had nothing but his love to give it, and love, as we all know, though it never faileth, and is greater than faith and hope, in hard times cannot so much as buy an ounce of bread, nor even get a bone for a dog.

Caleb had been blind for more than twenty years. Once he had been a strong skilful workman, who had never known a dinnerless table nor a fireless hearth. Things had gone well with him in early life; he had married a stout young country woman, and had had one child by her -- a blue-eyed, fair-haired darling, whom they had christened Martha, but whom everyone loved to call Mattie. She looked as if she had been born to a pet-name, and she stuck to it as a right. Mattie was sent to school and taught embroideries and needlework; she was not to work hard, as her father and mother had done before her, but was to lead the quiet, gentle sort of life God so evidently intended her for; and if, by-and-by, when father and mother were getting old and could no longer work for their darling, some good honest workman were to come along and offer to marry her -- well! -- then he should have her, and God's blessing go with her.