cky. Why,
there never was a blacker cat than the one that followed me into my rooms
in Bolsover Street the very first night I took them."

"Didn't it bring you luck?" I enquired, finding that he had stopped.

A far-away look came into his eyes.

"Well, of course it all depends," he answered dreamily. "Maybe we'd
never have suited one another; you can always look at it that way. Still,
I'd like to have tried."

He sat staring out of the window, and for a while I did not care to
intrude upon his evidently painful memories.

"What happened then?" I asked, however, at last.

He roused himself from his reverie.

"Oh," he said. "Nothing extraordinary. She had to leave London for a
time, and gave me her pet canary to take charge of while she was away."

"But it wasn't your fault," I urged.

"No, perhaps not," he agreed; "but it created a coldness which others
were not slow to take advantage of."

"I offered her the cat, too," he added, but more to himself than to me.

We sat and smoked in silence. I felt that the consolations of a stranger
would sound weak.

"Piebald horses are lucky, too," he observed, knocking the ashes from his
pipe against the window sash. "I had one of them once."

"What did it do to you?" I enquired.

"Lost me the best crib I ever had in my life," was the simple rejoinder.
"The governor stood it a good deal longer than I had any right to expect;
but you can't keep a man who is _always_ drunk. It gives a firm a bad
name."

"It would," I agreed.

"You see," he went on, "I never had the head for it. To some men it
would not have so much mattered, but the very first glass was enough to
upset me. I'd never been used to it."

"But why did you take it?" I persisted. "The horse didn't make you
drink, did he?"

"Well, it was this way," he explained, continuing to rub gently the lump
which was now about the size of an egg. "The animal had belonged to a
gentleman who travelled in the wine and spirit line, and who had been
accustomed to visit in the way of business almost every public-house he
came to. The result was you couldn't get that little horse past a public-
house--at least I couldn't. He sighted them a quarter of a mile off, and
made straight for the door. I struggled with him at first, but it was
five to ten minutes' work getting him away, and folks used to gather
round and bet on us. I think, maybe, I'd have stuck to it, however, if
it hadn't been for a temperance ch