s a civilised
creature, so altered by education, that in my hunting days I always
brought the game to my master instead of eating it myself; and here, on
the London high road, there was not even game to be caught. I really
was quite at a loss what to do.

In course of time I came up with a traveller sitting under a hedge,
eating a lump of bread and cheese. I would not have accepted bread and
cheese at home if it had been offered me, but now I stopped in front of
the eater and began to beg for some, licking my lips, and wagging my
tail in my most insinuating manner.

He threw me a scrap of coarse bread, saying, "There's for you; but I
dare say you are too well fed to eat it."

His supposition would have been true enough the day before; but hunger
cures daintiness, and now I was glad of such a mouthful. I bolted it in
an instant, and looked for more. He threw me one other crust, saying
that was all he could spare; and, finishing the rest himself, went on
his way, leaving me as hungry as ever.

By and by, in passing through a village, I came to a butcher's shop. The
butcher was not in sight, and meat was spread in the most tempting
manner on the board.

"How easily," thought I, "I could steal that nice raw chop, and run away
with it! Nobody could see me, and I do not believe any body could catch
me."

_Steal it_--the thought startled me. Brought up from my earliest
puppyhood in the strictest principles of honesty; able, as I imagined,
to see the best-stocked larder, or the most amply-supplied table,
without even wishing to touch what was not my own;--was I now, on the
very first temptation, the first time in my life that I had ever been
really hungry, to forget all I had been taught, and to become a _thief_?
Was it only the fear of blows that had kept me honest? Was my honesty
worthy the name, if I was only honest when I had no temptation to be
otherwise? I was ashamed of myself, and turning from the shop, passed on
with drooping ears.

Presently I met with a dog so extra fat as to show plainly that he had
never gone without his dinner, and yet he was growling over a bone as if
he had been starving. On looking more closely at him, I perceived that
he was in possession of two bones, either of them enough for one dog;
but he was unable to make use of one, for fear of the other's being
taken from him. So there he lay, with his paws upon both, growling
instead of enjoying himself. He was a larger dog than I, but not n