to winking at a measure so lax as that of allowing a red "varmint" to
run at large in their midst, without even so much as a block and chain
to hamper the freedom of his movements, or some sign to bespeak his
inferiority to men and dogs. Perhaps, like some perverse people we have
known, Grumbo took particular delight in being unsatisfactory to every
one but himself. Or, perhaps by the observance of this policy he meant
to reproach his renegade leader for suffering himself to be so easily
led away from the orthodox faith in which they had lived so long and
happily together, and had acted in such harmonious concert. Perhaps,
too, it was meant as a warning that unless he should be given some
assurance that business should hereafter be done up in the regular,
scientific way, he would break with the captain altogether, and attach
himself to the fortunes of some other leader, more consistent and better
fitted to command, and who should have a more just appreciation of what
was due a brave and faithful follower.

But our four-footed hero, like many a two-footed hero we have read of,
was doomed in his day and generation to be misunderstood, unappreciated,
maligned, neglected. As usual in such cases, the result was a total
upsetting in the mind of the injured one of all orthodox notions of
human nature and the eternal fitness of things. I should hardly express
myself so boldly were I not backed by the testimony of some of Grumbo's
own contemporaries, by whom I have been informed that, a few weeks after
the events I am relating, his dogship renounced human society and a
mixed diet altogether, and withdrawing himself from the pale of the
civilized world to the solitudes of the forest, there, for the rest of
his days, lived the life of a misanthropic hermit. According to other
contemporaneous testimony, however, no less deserving our serious
consideration, an ebony monster, with a woolly head and flat nose, but
walking erect on two legs, and in other respects bearing a striking
resemblance to man, had something to do with the mysterious
disappearance of our canine hero from the theater of human action.
Moved with envy and spite at beholding the Fighting Nigger's renown and
at hearing his praises in the popular mouth, and itching to inflict upon
the object thereof the greatest possible injury he could, with the least
possible risk to himself, this ebony monster secretly, and in the most
dastardly manner, poisoned the heroic Grumbo--t