te struggle to be free. She shot out of his pocket and
dropped with a bursting yell on the pavement. Recovering her feet
before Bones recovered from his surprise she fled. Thought is quick as
the lightning-flash. Bones knew that dogs find their way home
mysteriously from any distance. He knew himself to be unable to run
down Floppart. He saw his schemes thwarted. He adopted a mean device,
shouted "Mad dog!" and rushed after it. A small errand-boy shrieked
with glee, flung his basket at it, and followed up the chase. Floppart
took round by St. Paul's Churchyard. However sane she might have been
at starting, it is certain that she was mad with terror in five minutes.
She threaded her way among wheels and legs at full speed in perfect
safety. It was afterwards estimated that seventeen cabmen, four
gentlemen, two apple-women, three-and-twenty errand-boys--more or
less,--and one policeman, flung umbrellas, sticks, baskets, and various
missiles at her, with the effect of damaging innumerable shins and
overturning many individuals, but without hurting a hair of Floppart's
body during her wild but brief career. Bones did not wish to recapture
her. He wished her dead, and for that end loudly reiterated the calumny
as to madness. Floppart circled round the grand cathedral erected by
Wren and got into Cheapside. Here, doubling like a hare, she careered
round the statue of Peel and went blindly back to St. Martin's-le-Grand,
as if to add yet another link to the chain of fate which bound her
arch-pursuer to the General Post-Office. By way of completing the
chain, she turned in at the gate, rushed to the rear of the building,
dashed in at an open door, and scurried along a passage. Here the crowd
was stayed, but the policeman followed heroically. The passage was cut
short by a glass door, but a narrow staircase descended to the left.
"Any port in a storm" is a proverb as well known among dogs as men.
Down went Floppart to the basement of the building, invading the
sanctity of the letter-carriers' kitchen or _salle-a-manger_. A dozen
stalwart postmen leaped from their meals to rush at the intruder. In
the midst of the confusion the policeman's truncheon was seen to sway
aloft. Next instant the vaulted roof rang with a terrible cry, which
truth compels us to state was Floppart's dying yell.

None of those who had begun the chase were in at the death--save the
policeman,--not even Abel Bones, for that worthy did not