treated puppies. The dog never made a
mistake but once. A man came to the house who had lost his pilate and
couldn't speak plain, and the dog thought he was speaking Chinese and so
he had his regular fit and bit the man worse than he had ever bit
anybody before.

Sitting Bull don't know Chinese but Mr. Travers says he's a "specialist
in cats," which means that he knows the whole science of cats. The very
first night I let him loose he chased a cat up the pear-tree and he sat
under that tree and danced around it and howled all night. The neighbors
next door threw most all their things at him but they couldn't
discourage him. I had to tie him up after breakfast and let the cat get
down and run away before I let him loose again, or he'd have barked all
summer.

The only trouble with him is that he can't see very well and keeps
running against things. If he starts to run out of the gate he is just
as likely to run head first into the fence, and when he chases a cat
round a corner he will sometimes mistake a stick of wood, or the
lawn-mower for the cat and try to shake it to death. This was the way he
came to get me into trouble with Mr. Martin.

He hadn't been at our house for so long (Mr. Martin, I mean) that we all
thought he never would come again. Father sometimes said that his friend
Martin had been driven out of the house because my conduct was such and
he expected I would separate him from all his friends. Of course I was
sorry that father felt bad about it but if I was his age I would have
friends that were made more substantial than Mr. Martin is.

Night before last I was out in the back yard with Sitting Bull looking
for a stray cat that sometimes comes around the house after dark and
steals the strawberries and takes the apples out of the cellar. At least
I suppose it is this particular cat that steals the apples for the cook
says a cat does it and we haven't any private cat of our own. After a
while I saw the cat coming along by the side of the fence looking wicked
enough to steal anything and to tell stories about it afterward. I was
sitting on the ground holding Sitting Bull's head in my lap and telling
him that I did wish he'd take to rat-hunting like Sam McGinnis's
terrier, but no sooner had I seen the cat and whispered to Sitting Bull
that she was in sight than he jumped up and went for her.

He chased her along the fence into the front yard where she made a dive
under the front piazza. Sitting Bull c