"She was a--unknown," says the Master. And I licks his hand.

"Dam unknown," says "Mr. Wyndham, sir," and writes it down. Then he
takes the paper and reads out loud: "'Sire unknown, dam unknown, breeder
unknown, date of birth unknown.' You'd better call him the 'Great
Unknown,'" says he. "Who's paying his entrance fee?"

"I am," says Miss Dorothy.

Two weeks after we all got on a train for New York, Jimmy Jocks and me
following Nolan in the smoking-car, and twenty-two of the St. Bernards
in boxes and crates and on chains and leashes. Such a barking and
howling I never did hear; and when they sees me going, too, they laughs
fit to kill.

"Wot is this--a circus?" says the railroad man.

But I had no heart in it. I hated to go. I knew I was no "show" dog,
even though Miss Dorothy and the Master did their best to keep me from
shaming them. For before we set out Miss Dorothy brings a man from town
who scrubbed and rubbed me, and sandpapered my tail, which hurt most
awful, and shaved my ears with the Master's razor, so you could 'most
see clear through 'em, and sprinkles me over with pipe-clay, till I
shines like a Tommy's cross-belts.

"Upon my word!" says Jimmy Jocks when he first sees me. "Wot a swell you
are! You're the image of your grand-dad when he made his debut at the
Crystal Palace. He took four firsts and three specials." But I knew he
was only trying to throw heart into me. They might scrub, and they might
rub, and they might pipe-clay, but they couldn't pipe-clay the insides
of me, and they was black-and-tan.

Then we came to a garden, which it was not, but the biggest hall in the
world. Inside there was lines of benches a few miles long, and on them
sat every dog in America. If all the dog snatchers in Montreal had
worked night and day for a year, they couldn't have caught so many dogs.
And they was all shouting and barking and howling so vicious that my
heart stopped beating. For at first I thought they was all enraged at my
presuming to intrude. But after I got in my place they kept at it just
the same, barking at every dog as he come in: daring him to fight, and
ordering him out, and asking him what breed of dog he thought he was,
anyway. Jimmy Jocks was chained just behind me, and he said he never see
so fine a show. "That's a hot class you're in, my lad," he says, looking
over into my street, where there were thirty bull terriers. They was all
as white as cream, and each so beautiful that if I could