' I got mine. Mista' Hoss, good-night!"

Whitey found a little frosted grass upon the common and remained there
all night. In the morning he sought the shed where Abalene had kept
him, but that was across the large and busy town, and Whitey was
hopelessly lost. He had but one eye; a feeble one; and his legs were
not to be depended upon; but he managed to cover a great deal of
ground, to have many painful little adventures, and to get monstrously
hungry and thirsty before he happened to look in upon Penrod and Sam.

When the two boys chased him up the alley, they had no intention to
cause pain; they had no intention at all. They were no more cruel than
Duke, Penrod's little old dog, who followed his own instincts, and,
making his appearance hastily through a hole in the back fence, joined
the pursuit with sound and fury. A boy will nearly always run after
anything that is running, and his first impulse is to throw a stone at
it. This is a survival of primeval man, who must take every chance to
get his dinner. So, when Penrod and Sam drove the hapless Whitey up the
alley, they were really responding to an impulse thousands and
thousands of years old--an impulse founded upon the primordial
observation that whatever runs is likely to prove edible. Penrod and
Sam were not "bad"; they were never that. They were something which was
not their fault; they were historic.

At the next corner Whitey turned to the right into the cross-street;
thence, turning to the right again and still warmly pursued, he
zigzagged down a main thoroughfare until he reached another
cross-street, which ran alongside the Schofields' yard and brought him
to the foot of the alley he had left behind in his flight. He entered
the alley, and there his dim eye fell upon the open door he had
previously investigated. No memory of it remained, but the place had a
look associated in his mind with hay, and as Sam and Penrod turned the
corner of the alley in panting yet still vociferous pursuit, Whitey
stumbled up the inclined platform before the open doors, staggered
thunderously across the carriage-house and through another open door
into a stall, an apartment vacant since the occupancy of Mr.
Schofield's last horse, now several years deceased.

II

The two boys shrieked with excitement as they beheld the coincidence of
this strange return. They burst into the stable, making almost as much
noise as Duke, who had become frantic at the invasion. Sam laid ha