lean snow, she--and this is our trouble--she, my mother,
is a black-and-tan.

When mother hid herself from me, I was twelve months old and able to
take care of myself, and as, after mother left me, the wharves were
never the same, I moved uptown and met the Master. Before he came, lots
of other men-folks had tried to make up to me, and to whistle me home.
But they either tried patting me or coaxing me with a piece of meat; so
I didn't take to 'em. But one day the Master pulled me out of a
street-fight by the hind legs, and kicked me good.

"You want to fight, do you?" says he. "I'll give you all the
_fighting_ you want!" he says, and he kicks me again. So I knew he
was my Master, and I followed him home. Since that day I've pulled off
many fights for him, and they've brought dogs from all over the province
to have a go at me; but up to that night none, under thirty pounds, had
ever downed me.

But that night, so soon as they carried me into the ring, I saw the dog
was overweight, and that I was no match for him. It was asking too much
of a puppy. The Master should have known I couldn't do it. Not that I
mean to blame the Master, for when sober, which he sometimes was--though
not, as you might say, his habit--he was most kind to me, and let me out
to find food, if I could get it, and only kicked me when I didn't pick
him up at night and lead him home.

But kicks will stiffen the muscles, and starving a dog so as to get him
ugly-tempered for a fight may make him nasty, but it's weakening to his
insides, and it causes the legs to wobble.

The ring was in a hall back of a public house. There was a red-hot
whitewashed stove in one corner, and the ring in the other. I lay in the
Master's lap, wrapped in my blanket, and, spite of the stove, shivering
awful; but I always shiver before a fight: I can't help gettin' excited.
While the men-folks were a-flashing their money and taking their last
drink at the bar, a little Irish groom in gaiters came up to me and give
me the back of his hand to smell, and scratched me behind the ears.

"You poor little pup," says he; "you haven't no show," he says. "That
brute in the tap-room he'll eat your heart out."

"That's what _you_ think," says the Master, snarling. "I'll lay you
a quid the Kid chews him up."

The groom he shook his head, but kept looking at me so sorry-like that I
begun to get a bit sad myself. He seemed like he couldn't bear to leave
off a-patting of me, and he say