o me it must be the middle of the
night, the door at the end of the car opened, and a man looked in. "This
is all through baggage for New York, miss," I heard him say; "they
wouldn't put your dog in here."

"Yes, they did--I am sure this is the car," I heard in the voice I knew
so well; "and won't you get him out, please? He must be terribly
frightened."

The man stooped down and unfastened my chain, grumbling to himself
because I had not been put in another car. "Some folks tumble a dog
round as if he was a junk of coal," he said, patting me kindly.

I was nearly wild with delight to get with Miss Laura again, but I had
barked so much, and pressed my neck so hard with my collar that my voice
was all gone. I fawned on her, and wagged myself about, and opened and
shut my mouth, but no sound came out of it.

It made Miss Laura nervous. She tried to laugh and cry at the same time,
and then bit her lip hard, and said: "Oh, Joe, don't."

"He's lost his bark, hasn't he?" said the man, looking at me curiously.

"It is a wicked thing to confine an animal in a dark and closed car,"
said Miss Laura, trying to see her way down the steps through her tears.

The man put out his hand and helped her. "He's not suffered much, miss,"
he said; "don't you distress yourself. Now if you'd been a brakeman on a
Chicago train, as I was a few years ago, and seen the animals run in for
the stock yards, you might talk about cruelty. Cars that ought to hold a
certain number of pigs, or sheep, or cattle, jammed full with twice as
many, and half of 'em thrown out choked and smothered to death. I've
seen a man running up and down, raging and swearing because the railway
people hadn't let him get in to tend to his pigs on the road."

Miss Laura turned and looked at the man with a very white face. "Is it
like that now?" she asked.

"No, no," he said, hastily. "It's better now. They've got new
regulations about taking care of the stock; but mind you, miss, the
cruelty to animals isn't all done on the railways. There's a great lot
of dumb creatures suffering all round everywhere, and if they could
speak, 'twould be a hard showing for some other people besides the
railway men."

He lifted his cap and hurried down the platform, and Miss Laura, her
face very much troubled, picked her way among the bits of coal and wood
scattered about the platform, and went into the waiting room of the
little station.

She took me up to the filter and let some