sire
to own just such a one grows upon him, and soon it becomes a
determination to own that identical one, for never another could equal
that. He looks stealthily around and finds the eyes of all are fixed
upon the musician and his bagpipe. No one notices him, and hailing it as
a happy omen, he pounces upon the coveted quadruped, grasps it tightly
in his hands, and skedaddles.

The music is ended and the crowd disperses. The absence of piggy is
unnoticed till the red-headed urchin whose playmate it is looks around
for the loved companion, of his childish sports, and finds it not. Great
research, amid loud outcries, is made, resulting only in the conviction
that the pet of the family is gone, leaving no trace behind.

TOM, with his prize, exultingly hurries homeward, his heart swelling
with joy at his luck. Like a dutiful son, he rushes to the arms of his
maternal parent and deposits in her capacious lap the dainty prize.
Visions of a luscious supper float through the mind of the female
piperess, as she bestows her motherly benediction upon her thoughtful
son, and proceeds to put into execution the well-conned lesson of
cooking a sucking pig.

Having accomplished the "First get your pig" part, the rest comes easy;
and at night, when the old Piper returns, his olfactories are sainted
with an odor that startles him from his generally despondent mood, and
awakens his curiosity as to the cause of such an unusual flavor from his
usually flavorless abode. He enters and finds a smiling wife and son,
with a smoking pig awaiting his coming. "What next occurred the Poet
tells us in the laconic words

"The pig was eat."

There was no necessity for describing the way of eating; the fact was
enough. But alas! there is always a dark side to everything, and this
happy family were no exception, The bones were left. They couldn't eat
them, and they didn't own a dog; so they picked them clean and threw
them away. But, "Murder will out," and the tiny bones told their own
tale. The village detective soon coupled the feet of the missing pig
with the unusual occurrence of a heap of bones before the door of the
musician's abode, and by a process of reasoning unknown to the
detectives of the present day, decided that those bones were a pig's
bones--a stolen pig's bones, from the fact that the Piper did not earn
enough to indulge in such luxuries as sucking-pigs. Now who stole the
sucking-pig?

Clearly not Madame Piper, for she was t