heading, 'Domestic Tragedy,' in the newspapers, I broke into a cold
perspiration.  I expected to read that Josiah and Hannah had murdered
each other, and died cursing me.

"As the time went by, however, and I heard nothing, my fears began to
assuage, and my belief in my own intuitive good judgment to return.
Maybe, I had done a good thing for Josiah and Hannah, and they were
blessing me.  Three years passed peacefully away, and I was beginning to
forget the existence of the Hacketts.

"Then he came again.  I returned home from business one evening to find
him waiting for me in the hall.  The moment I saw him I knew that my
worst fears had fallen short of the truth.  I motioned him to follow me
to my study.  He did so, and seated himself in the identical chair on
which he had sat three years ago.  The change in him was remarkable; he
looked old and careworn.  His manner was that of resigned hopelessness.

"We remained for a while without speaking, he twirling his hat as at our
first interview, I making a show of arranging papers on my desk.  At
length, feeling that anything would be more bearable than this silence, I
turned to him.

"'Things have not been going well with you, I'm afraid, Josiah?' I said.

"'No, sir,' he replied quietly; 'I can't say as they have, altogether.
That Hannah of yours has turned out a bit of a teaser.'

"There was no touch of reproach in his tones.  He simply stated a
melancholy fact.

"'But she is a good wife to you in other ways,' I urged.  'She has her
faults, of course.  We all have.  But she is energetic.  Come now, you
will admit she's energetic.'

"I owed it to myself to find some good in Hannah, and this was the only
thing I could think of at that moment.

"'Oh yes, she's that,' he assented.  'A little too much so for our sized
house, I sometimes think.'

"'You see,' he went on, 'she's a bit cornery in her temper, Hannah is;
and then her mother's a bit trying, at times.'

"'Her mother!' I exclaimed, 'but what's _she_ got to do with you?'

"'Well, you see, sir,' he answered, 'she's living with us now--ever since
the old man went off.'

"'Hannah's father!  Is he dead, then?'

"'Well, not exactly, sir,' he replied.  'He ran off about a twelvemonth
ago with one of the young women who used to teach in the Sunday School,
and joined the Mormons.  It came as a great surprise to every one.'

"I groaned.  'And his business,' I inquired--'the timber business, who
carries that on?'

"'Oh, that!' answered Josiah.  'Oh, that had to be sold to pay his
debts--leastways, to go towards 'em.'

"I remarked what a terrible thing it was for his family.  I supposed the
home was broken up, and they were all scattered.

"'No, sir,' he replied simply, 'they ain't scattered much.  They're all
living with us.'

"'But there,' he continued, seeing the look upon my face; 'of course, all
this has nothing to do with you sir.  You've got troubles of your own, I
daresay, sir.  I didn't come here to worry you with mine.  That would be
a poor return for all your kindness to me.'

"'What has become of Julia?' I asked.  I did not feel I wanted to
question him any more about his own affairs.

"A smile broke the settled melancholy of his features.  'Ah,' he said, in
a more cheerful tone than he had hitherto employed, 'it does one good to
think about _her_, it does.  She's married to a friend of mine now, young
Sam Jessop.  I slips out and gives 'em a call now and then, when Hannah
ain't round.  Lord, it's like getting a glimpse of heaven to look into
their little home.  He often chaffs me about it, Sam does.  "Well, you
_was_ a sawny-headed chunk, Josiah, _you_ was," he often says to me.
We're old chums, you know, sir, Sam and me, so he don't mind joking a bit
like.'

"Then the smile died away, and he added with a sigh, 'Yes, I've often
thought since, sir, how jolly it would have been if you could have seen
your way to making it Juliana.'

"I felt I must get him back to Hannah at any cost.  I said, 'I suppose
you and your wife are still living in the old place?'

"'Yes,' he replied, 'if you can call it living.  It's a hard struggle
with so many of us.'

"He said he did not know how he should have managed if it had not been
for the help of Julia's father.  He said the captain had behaved more
like an angel than anything else he knew of.

"'I don't say as he's one of your clever sort, you know, sir,' he
explained.  'Not the man as one would go to for advice, like one would to
you, sir; but he's a good sort for all that.'

"'And that reminds me, sir,' he went on, 'of what I've come here about.
You'll think it very bold of me to ask, sir, but--'

"I interrupted him.  'Josiah,' I said, 'I admit that I am much to blame
for what has come upon you.  You asked me for my advice, and I gave it
you.  Which of us was the bigger idiot, we will not discuss.  The point
is that I did give it, and I am not a man to shirk my responsibilities.
What, in reason, you ask, and I can grant, I will give you.'

"He was overcome with gratitude.  'I knew it, sir,' he said.  'I knew you
would not refuse me.  I said so to Hannah.  I said, "I will go to that
gentleman and ask him.  I will go to him and ask him for his advice."'

"I said, 'His what?'

"'His advice,' repeated Josiah, apparently surprised at my tone, 'on a
little matter as I can't quite make up my mind about.'

"I thought at first he was trying to be sarcastic, but he wasn't.  That
man sat there, and wrestled with me for my advice as to whether he should
invest a thousand dollars which Julia's father had offered to lend him,
in the purchase of a laundry business or a bar.  He hadn't had enough of
it (my advice, I mean); he wanted it again, and he spun me reasons why I
should give it him.  The choice of a wife was a different thing
altogether, he argued.  Perhaps he ought _not_ to have asked me for my
opinion as to that.  But advice as to which of two trades a man would do
best to select, surely any business man could give.  He said he had just
been reading again my little book, _How to be Happy_, etc., and if the
gentleman who wrote that could not decide between the respective merits
of one particular laundry and one particular bar, both situate in the
same city, well, then, all he had got to say was that knowledge and
wisdom were clearly of no practical use in this world whatever.

"Well, it did seem a simple thing to advise a man about.  Surely as to a
matter of this kind, I, a professed business man, must be able to form a
sounder judgment than this poor pumpkin-headed lamb.  It would be
heartless to refuse to help him.  I promised to look into the matter, and
let him know what I thought.

"He rose and shook me by the hand.  He said he would not try to thank me;
words would only seem weak.  He dashed away a tear and went out.

"I brought an amount of thought to bear upon this thousand-dollar
investment sufficient to have floated a bank.  I did not mean to make
another Hannah job, if I could help it.  I studied the papers Josiah had
left with me, but did not attempt to form any opinion from them.  I went
down quietly to Josiah's city, and inspected both businesses on the spot.
I instituted secret but searching inquiries in the neighbourhood.  I
disguised myself as a simple-minded young man who had come into a little
money, and wormed myself into the confidence of the servants.  I
interviewed half the town upon the pretence that I was writing the
commercial history of New England, and should like some particulars of
their career, and I invariably ended my examination by asking them which
was their favourite bar, and where they got their washing done.  I stayed
a fortnight in the town.  Most of my spare time I spent at the bar.  In
my leisure moments I dirtied my clothes so that they might be washed at
the laundry.

"As the result of my investigations I discovered that, so far as the two
businesses themselves were concerned, there was not a pin to choose
between them.  It became merely a question of which particular trade
would best suit the Hacketts.

"I reflected.  The keeper of a bar was exposed to much temptation.  A
weak-minded man, mingling continually in the company of topers, might
possibly end by giving way to drink.  Now, Josiah was an exceptionally
weak-minded man.  It had also to be borne in mind that he had a shrewish
wife, and that her whole family had come to live with him.  Clearly, to
place Josiah in a position of easy access to unlimited liquor would be
madness.

"About a laundry, on the other hand, there was something soothing.  The
working of a laundry needed many hands.  Hannah's relatives might be used
up in a laundry, and made to earn their own living.  Hannah might expend
her energy in flat-ironing, and Josiah could turn the mangle.  The idea
conjured up quite a pleasant domestic picture.  I recommended the
laundry.

"On the following Monday, Josiah wrote to say that he had bought the
laundry.  On Tuesday I read in the _Commercial Intelligence_ that one of
the most remarkable features of the time was the marvellous rise taking
place all over New England in the value of hotel and bar property.  On
Thursday, in the list of failures, I came across no less than four
laundry proprietors; and the paper added, in explanation, that the
American washing industry, owing to the rapid growth of Chinese
competition, was practically on its last legs.  I went out and got drunk.

"My life became a curse to me.  All day long I thought of Josiah.  All
night I dreamed of him.  Suppose that, not content with being the cause
of his domestic misery, I had now deprived him of the means of earning a
livelihood, and had rendered useless the generosity of that good old sea-
captain.  I began to appear to myself as a malignant fiend, ever
following this simple but worthy man to work evil upon him.

"Time passed away, however; I heard nothing from or of him, and my burden
at last fell from me.

"Then at the end of about five years he came again.

"He came behind me as I was opening the door with my latch-key, and laid
an unsteady hand upon my arm.  It was a dark night, but a gas-lamp showed
me his face.  I recognised it in spite of the red blotches and the bleary
film that hid the eyes.  I caught him roughly by the arm, and hurried him
inside and up into my study.

"'Sit down,' I hissed, 'and tell me the worst first.'

"He was about to select his favourite chair.  I felt that if I saw him
and that particular chair in association for the third time, I should do
something terrible to both.  I snatched it away from him, and he sat down
heavily on the floor, and burst into tears.  I let him remain there, and,
thickly, between hiccoughs, he told his tale.

"The laundry had gone from bad to worse.  A new railway had come to the
town, altering its whole topography.  The business and residential
portion had gradually shifted northward.  The spot where the bar--the
particular one which I had rejected for the laundry--had formerly stood
was now the commercial centre of the city.  The man who had purchased it
in place of Josiah had sold out and made a fortune.  The southern area
(where the laundry was situate) was, it had been discovered, built upon a
swamp, and was in a highly unsanitary condition.  Careful housewives
naturally objected to sending their washing into such a neighbourhood.

"Other troubles had also come.  The baby--Josiah's pet, the one bright
thing in his life--had fallen into the copper and been boiled.  Hannah's
mother had been crushed in the mangle, and was now a helpless cripple,
who had to be waited on day and night.

"Under these accumulated misfortunes Josiah had sought consolation in
drink, and had become a hopeless sot.  He felt his degradation keenly,
and wept copiously.  He said he thought that in a cheerful place, such as
a bar, he might have been strong and brave; but that there was something
about the everlasting smell of damp clothes and suds, that seemed to sap
his manhood.

"I asked him what the captain had said to it all.  He burst into fresh
tears, and replied that the captain was no more.  That, he added,
reminded him of what he had come about.  The good-hearted old fellow had
bequeathed him five thousand dollars.  He wanted my advice as to how to
invest it.

"My first impulse was to kill him on the spot.  I wish now that I had.  I
restrained myself, however, and offered him the alternative of being
thrown from the window or of leaving by the door without another word.

"He answered that he was quite prepared to go by the window if I would
first tell him whether to put his money in the Terra del Fuego Nitrate
Company, Limited, or in the Union Pacific Bank.  Life had no further
interest for him.  All he cared for was to feel that this little nest-egg
was safely laid by for the benefit of his beloved ones after he was gone.

"He pressed me to tell him what I thought of nitrates.  I replied that I
declined to say anything whatever on the subject.  He assumed from my
answer that I did not think much of nitrates, and announced his intention
of investing the money, in consequence, in the Union Pacific Bank.

"I told him by all means to do so, if he liked.

"He paused, and seemed to be puzzling it out.  Then he smiled knowingly,
and said he thought he understood what I meant.  It was very kind of me.
He should put every dollar he possessed in the Terra del Fuego Nitrate
Company.

"He rose (with difficulty) to go.  I stopped him.  I knew, as certainly
as I knew the sun would rise the next morning, that whichever company I
advised him, or he persisted in thinking I had advised him (which was the
same thing), to invest in, would, sooner or later, come to smash.  My
grandmother had all her little fortune in the Terra del Fuego Nitrate
Company.  I could not see her brought to penury in her old age.  As for
Josiah, it could make no difference to him whatever.  He would lose his
money in any event.  I advised him to invest in Union Pacific Bank
Shares.  He went and did it.

"The Union Pacific Bank held out for eighteen months.  Then it began to
totter.  The financial world stood bewildered.  It had always been
reckoned one of the safest banks in the country.  People asked what could
be the cause.  I knew well enough, but I did not tell.

"The Bank made a gallant fight, but the hand of fate was upon it.  At the
end of another nine months the crash came.

"(Nitrates, it need hardly be said, had all this time been going up by
leaps and bounds.  My grandmother died worth a million dollars, and left
the whole of it to a charity.  Had she known how I had saved her from
ruin, she might have been more grateful.)

"A few days after the failure of the Bank, Josiah arrived on my doorstep;
and, this time, he brought his families with him.  There were sixteen of
them in all.

"What was I to do?  I had brought these people step by step to the verge
of starvation.  I had laid waste alike their happiness and their
prospects in life.  The least amends I could make was to see that at all
events they did not want for the necessities of existence.

"That was seventeen years ago.  I am still seeing that they do not want
for the necessities of existence; and my conscience is growing easier by
noticing that they seem contented with their lot.  There are twenty-two
of them now, and we have hopes of another in the spring.

"That is my story," he said.  "Perhaps you will now understand my sudden
emotion when you asked for my advice.  As a matter of fact, I do not give
advice now on any subject."

* * * * *

I told this tale to MacShaughnassy.  He agreed with me that it was
instructive, and said he should remember it.  He said he should remember
it so as to tell it to some fellows that he knew, to whom he thought the
lesson should prove useful.




CHAPTER II


I can't honestly say that we made much progress at our first meeting.  It
was Brown's fault.  He would begin by telling us a story about a dog.  It
was the old, old story of the dog who had been in the habit of going
every morning to a certain baker's shop with a penny in his mouth, in
exchange for which he always received a penny bun.  One day, the baker,
thinking he would not know the difference, tried to palm off upon the
poor animal a ha'penny bun, whereupon the dog walked straight outside and
fetched in a policeman.  Brown had heard this chestnut for the first time
that afternoon, and was full of it.  It is always a mystery to me where
Brown has been for the last hundred years.  He stops you in the street
with, "Oh, I must tell you!--such a capital story!"  And he thereupon
proceeds to relate to you, with much spirit and gusto, one of Noah's best
known jokes, or some story that Romulus must have originally told to
Remus.  One of these days somebody will tell him the history of Adam and
Eve, and he will think he has got hold of a new plot, and will work it up
into a novel.

He gives forth these hoary antiquities as personal reminiscences of his
own, or, at furthest, as episodes in the life of his second cousin.  There
are certain strange and moving catastrophes that would seem either to
have occurred to, or to have been witnessed by, nearly every one you
meet.  I never came across a man yet who had not seen some other man
jerked off the top of an omnibus into a mud-cart.  Half London must, at
one time or another, have been jerked off omnibuses into mud-carts, and
have been fished out at the end of a shovel.

Then there is the tale of the lady whose husband is taken suddenly ill
one night at an hotel.  She rushes downstairs, and prepares a stiff
mustard plaster to put on him, and runs up with it again.  In her
excitement, however, she charges into the wrong room, and, rolling down
the bedclothes, presses it lovingly upon the wrong man.  I have heard
that story so often that I am quite nervous about going to bed in an
hotel now.  Each man who has told it me has invariably slept in the room
next door to that of the victim, and has been awakened by the man's yell
as the plaster came down upon him.  That is how he (the story-teller)
came to know all about it.

Brown wanted us to believe that this prehistoric animal he had been
telling us about had belonged to his brother-in-law, and was hurt when
Jephson murmured, _sotto voce_, that that made the twenty-eighth man he
had met whose brother-in-law had owned that dog--to say nothing of the
hundred and seventeen who had owned it themselves.

We tried to get to work afterwards, but Brown had unsettled us for the
evening.  It is a wicked thing to start dog stories among a party of
average sinful men.  Let one man tell a dog story, and every other man in
the room feels he wants to tell a bigger one.

There is a story going--I cannot vouch for its truth, it was told me by a
judge--of a man who lay dying.  The pastor of the parish, a good and
pious man, came to sit with him, and, thinking to cheer him up, told him
an anecdote about a dog.  When the pastor had finished, the sick man sat
up, and said, "I know a better story than that.  I had a dog once, a big,
brown, lop-sided--"

The effort had proved too much for his strength.  He fell back upon the
pillows, and the doctor, stepping forward, saw that it was a question
only of minutes.

The good old pastor rose, and took the poor fellow's hand in his, and
pressed it.  "We shall meet again," he gently said.

The sick man turned towards him with a consoled and grateful look.

"I'm glad to hear you say that," he feebly murmured.  "Remind me about
that dog."

Then he passed peacefully away, with a sweet smile upon his pale lips.

Brown, who had had his dog story and was satisfied, wanted us to settle
our heroine; but the rest of us did not feel equal to settling anybody
just then.  We were thinking of all the true dog stories we had ever
heard, and wondering which was the one least likely to be generally
disbelieved.

MacShaughnassy, in particular, was growing every moment more restless and
moody.  Brown concluded a long discourse--to which nobody had listened--by
remarking with some pride, "What more can you want?  The plot has never
been used before, and the characters are entirely original!"

Then MacShaughnassy gave way.  "Talking of plots," he said, hitching his
chair a little nearer the table, "that puts me in mind.  Did I ever tell
you about that dog we had when we lived in Norwood?"

"It's not that one about the bull-dog, is it?" queried Jephson anxiously.

"Well, it was a bull-dog," admitted MacShaughnassy, "but I don't think
I've ever told it you before."

We knew, by experience, that to argue the matter would only prolong the
torture, so we let him go on.

"A great many burglaries had lately taken place in our neighbourhood," he
began, "and the pater came to the conclusion that it was time he laid
down a dog.  He thought a bull-dog would be the best for his purpose, and
he purchased the most savage and murderous-looking specimen that he could
find.

"My mother was alarmed when she saw the dog.  'Surely you're not going to
let that brute loose about the house!' she exclaimed.  'He'll kill
somebody.  I can see it in his face.'

"'I want him to kill somebody,' replied my father; 'I want him to kill
burglars.'

"'I don't like to hear you talk like that, Thomas,' answered the mater;
'it's not like you.  We've a right to protect our property, but we've no
right to take a fellow human creature's life.'

"'Our fellow human creatures will be all right--so long as they don't
come into our kitchen when they've no business there,' retorted my
father, somewhat testily.  'I'm going to fix up this dog in the scullery,
and if a burglar comes fooling around--well, that's _his_ affair.'

"The old folks quarrelled on and off for about a month over this dog.  The
dad thought the mater absurdly sentimental, and the mater thought the dad
unnecessarily vindictive.  Meanwhile the dog grew more ferocious-looking
every day.

"One night my mother woke my father up with: 'Thomas, there's a burglar
downstairs, I'm positive.  I distinctly heard the kitchen door open.'

"'Oh, well, the dog's got him by now, then,' murmured my father, who had
heard nothing, and was sleepy.

"'Thomas,' replied my mother severely, 'I'm not going to lie here while a
fellow-creature is being murdered by a savage beast.  If you won't go
down and save that man's life, I will.'

"'Oh, bother,' said my father, preparing to get up.  'You're always
fancying you hear noises.  I believe that's all you women come to bed
for--to sit up and listen for burglars.'  Just to satisfy her, however,
he pulled on his trousers and socks, and went down.

"Well, sure enough, my mother was right, this time.  There _was_ a
burglar in the house.  The pantry window stood open, and a light was
shining in the kitchen.  My father crept softly forward, and peeped
through the partly open door.  There sat the burglar, eating cold beef
and pickles, and there, beside him, on the floor, gazing up into his face
with a blood-curdling smile of affection, sat that idiot of a dog,
wagging his tail.

"My father was so taken aback that he forgot to keep silent.

"'Well, I'm--,' and he used a word that I should not care to repeat to
you fellows.

"The burglar, hearing him, made a dash, and got clear off by the window;
and the dog seemed vexed with my father for having driven him away.

"Next morning we took the dog back to the trainer from whom we had bought
it.

"'What do you think I wanted this dog for?' asked my father, trying to
speak calmly.

"'Well,' replied the trainer, 'you said you wanted a good house dog.'

"'Exactly so,' answered the dad.  'I didn't ask for a burglar's
companion, did I?  I didn't say I wanted a dog who'd chum on with a
burglar the first time he ever came to the house, and sit with him while
he had supper, in case he might feel lonesome, did I?'  And my father
recounted the incidents of the previous night.

"The man agreed that there was cause for complaint.  'I'll tell you what
it is, sir,' he said.  'It was my boy Jim as trained this 'ere dawg, and
I guess the young beggar's taught 'im more about tackling rats than
burglars.  You leave 'im with me for a week, sir; I'll put that all
right.'

"We did so, and at the end of the time the trainer brought him back
again.

"'You'll find 'im game enough now, sir,' said the man.  ''E ain't what I
call an intellectual dawg, but I think I've knocked the right idea into
'im.'

"My father thought he'd like to test the matter, so we hired a man for a
shilling to break in through the kitchen window while the trainer held
the dog by a chain.  The dog remained perfectly quiet until the man was
fairly inside.  Then he made one savage spring at him, and if the chain
had not been stout the fellow would have earned his shilling dearly.

"The dad was satisfied now that he could go to bed in peace; and the
mater's alarm for the safety of the local burglars was proportionately
increased.

"Months passed uneventfully by, and then another burglar sampled our
house.  This time there could be no doubt that the dog was doing
something for his living.  The din in the basement was terrific.  The
house shook with the concussion of falling bodies.

"My father snatched up his revolver and rushed downstairs, and I followed
him.  The kitchen was in confusion.  Tables and chairs were overturned,
and on the floor lay a man gurgling for help.  The dog was standing over
him, choking him.

"The pater held his revolver to the man's ear, while I, by superhuman
effort, dragged our preserver away, and chained him up to the sink, after
which I lit the gas.

"Then we perceived that the gentleman on the floor was a police
constable.

"'Good heavens!' exclaimed my father, dropping the revolver, 'however did
you come here?'

"''Ow did _I_ come 'ere?' retorted the man, sitting up and speaking in a
tone of bitter, but not unnatural, indignation.  'Why, in the course of
my dooty, that's 'ow _I_ come 'ere.  I see a burglar getting in through
the window, so I just follows and slips in after 'im.'

"'Did you catch him?' asked my father.

"'Did I catch 'im!' almost shrieked the man.  ''Ow could I catch 'im with
that blasted dog of yours 'olding me down by the throat, while 'e lights
'is pipe and walks out by the back door?'

"The dog was for sale the next day.  The mater, who had grown to like
him, because he let the baby pull his tail, wanted us to keep him.  The
mistake, she said, was not the animal's fault.  Two men broke into the
house almost at the same time.  The dog could not go for both of them.  He
did his best, and went for one.  That his selection should have fallen
upon the policeman instead of upon the burglar was unfortunate.  But
still it was a thing that might have happened to any dog.

"My father, however, had become prejudiced against the poor creature, and
that same week he inserted an advertisement in _The Field_, in which the
animal was recommended as an investment likely to prove useful to any
enterprising member of the criminal classes."

MacShaughnassy having had his innings, Jephson took a turn, and told us a
pathetic story about an unfortunate mongrel that was run over in the
Strand one day and its leg broken.  A medical student, who was passing at
the time, picked it up and carried it to the Charing Cross Hospital,
where its leg was set, and where it was kept and tended until it was
quite itself again, when it was sent home.

The poor thing had quite understood what was being done for it, and had
been the most grateful patient they had ever had in the hospital.  The
whole staff were quite sorry when it left.

One morning, a week or two later, the house-surgeon, looking out of the
window, saw the dog coming down the street.  When it came near he noticed
that it had a penny in its mouth.  A cat's-meat barrow was standing by
the kerb, and for a moment, as he passed it, the dog hesitated.

But his nobler nature asserted itself, and, walking straight up to the
hospital railings, and raising himself upon his hind legs, he dropped his
penny into the contribution box.

MacShaughnassy was much affected by this story.  He said it showed such a
beautiful trait in the dog's character.  The animal was a poor outcast,
vagrant thing, that had perhaps never possessed a penny before in all its
life, and might never have another.  He said that dog's penny seemed to
him to be a greater gift than the biggest cheque that the wealthiest
patron ever signed.

The other three were very eager now to get to work on the novel, but I
did not quite see the fairness of this.  I had one or two dog stories of
my own.

I knew a black-and-tan terrier years ago.  He lodged in the same house
with me.  He did not belong to any one.  He had discharged his owner (if,
indeed, he had ever permitted himself to possess one, which is doubtful,
having regard to his aggressively independent character), and was now
running himself entirely on his own account.  He appropriated the front
hall for his sleeping-apartment, and took his meals with the other
lodgers--whenever they happened to be having meals.

At five o'clock he would take an early morning snack with young Hollis,
an engineer's pupil, who had to get up at half-past four and make his own
coffee, so as to be down at the works by six.  At eight-thirty he would
breakfast in a more sensible fashion with Mr. Blair, on the first floor,
and on occasions would join Jack Gadbut, who was a late riser, in a
devilled kidney at eleven.

From then till about five, when I generally had a cup of tea and a chop,
he regularly disappeared.  Where he went and what he did between those
hours nobody ever knew.  Gadbut swore that twice he had met him coming
out of a stockbroker's office in Threadneedle Street, and, improbable
though the statement at first appeared, some colour of credibility began
to attach to it when we reflected upon the dog's inordinate passion for
acquiring and hoarding coppers.

This craving of his for wealth was really quite remarkable.  He was an
elderly dog, with a great sense of his own dignity; yet, on the promise
of a penny, I have seen him run round after his own tail until he didn't
know one end of himself from the other.

He used to teach himself tricks, and go from room to room in the evening,
performing them, and when he had completed his programme he would sit up
and beg.  All the fellows used to humour him.  He must have made pounds
in the course of the year.

Once, just outside our door, I saw him standing in a crowd, watching a
performing poodle attached to a hurdy-gurdy.  The poodle stood on his
head, and then, with his hind legs in the air, walked round on his front
paws.  The people laughed very much, and, when afterwards he came amongst
them with his wooden saucer in his mouth, they gave freely.

Our dog came in and immediately commenced to study.  In three days _he_
could stand on his head and walk round on his front legs, and the first
evening he did so he made sixpence.  It must have been terribly hard work
for him at his age, and subject to rheumatism as he was; but he would do
anything for money.  I believe he would have sold himself to the devil
for eightpence down.

He knew the value of money.  If you held out to him a penny in one hand
and a threepenny-bit in the other, he would snatch at the threepence, and
then break his heart because he could not get the penny in as well.  You
might safely have left him in the room with a leg of mutton, but it would
not have been wise to leave your purse about.

Now and then he spent a little, but not often.  He was desperately fond
of sponge-cakes, and occasionally, when he had had a good week, he would
indulge himself to the extent of one or two.  But he hated paying for
them, and always made a frantic and frequently successful effort to get
off with the cake and the penny also.  His plan of operations was simple.
He would walk into the shop with his penny in his mouth, well displayed,
and a sweet and lamblike expression in his eyes.  Taking his stand as
near to the cakes as he could get, and fixing his eyes affectionately
upon them, he would begin to whine, and the shopkeeper, thinking he was
dealing with an honest dog, would throw him one.

To get the cake he was obliged, of course, to drop the penny, and then
began a struggle between him and the shopkeeper for the possession of the
coin.  The man would try to pick it up.  The dog would put his foot upon
it, and growl savagely.  If he could finish the cake before the contest
was over, he would snap up the penny and bolt.  I have known him to come
home gorged with sponge-cakes, the original penny still in his mouth.

So notorious throughout the neighbourhood did this dishonest practice of
his become, that, after a time, the majority of the local tradespeople
refused to serve him at all.  Only the exceptionally quick and
able-bodied would attempt to do business with him.

Then he took his custom further afield, into districts where his
reputation had not yet penetrated.  And he would pick out shops kept by
nervous females or rheumatic old men.

They say that the love of money is the root of all evil.  It seemed to
have robbed him of every shred of principle.