d to take hold of it,
but too abruptly, so that it was startled, and snapped at him. Whereon
he kicked it for a dangerous cur, and it went drifting back toward the
village, and fell in with the boys coming home from school. It thought,
no doubt, that they were going to kick it too, and nipped one of them who
took it by the collar. Thereupon they hullabalooed and stoned it down the
road to where I found them. Then I put in my little bit of torture, and
drove it away, through fear of infection to my own dog. After that it
seems to have fallen in with a man who told me: 'Well, you see, he came
sneakin' round my house, with the children playin', and snapped at them
when they went to stroke him, so that they came running in to their
mother, an' she' called to me in a fine takin' about a mad dog. I ran out
with a shovel and gave 'im one, and drove him out. I'm sorry if he
wasn't mad, he looked it right enough; you can't be too careful with
strange dogs.' Its next acquaintance was an old stone-breaker, a very
decent sort. 'Well! you see,' the old man explained to me, 'the dog came
smellin' round my stones, an' it wouldn' come near, an' it wouldn' go
away; it was all froth and blood about the jaw, and its eyes glared green
at me. I thought to meself, bein' the dog-days--I don't like the look o'
you, you look funny! So I took a stone, an' got it here, just on the
ear; an' it fell over. And I thought to meself: Well, you've got to
finish it, or it'll go bitin' somebody, for sure! But when I come to it
with my hammer, the dog it got up--an' you know how it is when there's
somethin' you've 'alf killed, and you feel sorry, and yet you feel you
must finish it, an' you hit at it blind, you hit at it agen an' agen.
The poor thing, it wriggled and snapped, an' I was terrified it'd bite
me, an' some'ow it got away."' Again our friend paused, and this time we
dared not look at him.

"The next hospitality it was shown," he went on presently, "was by a
farmer, who, seeing it all bloody, drove it off, thinking it had been
digging up a lamb that he'd just buried. The poor homeless beast came
sneaking back, so he told his men to get rid of it. Well, they got hold
of it somehow--there was a hole in its neck that looked as if they'd used
a pitchfork--and, mortally afraid of its biting them, but not liking, as
they told me, to drown it, for fear the owner might come on them, they
got a stake and a chain, and fastened it up, and left