THE MONGREL.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 13741, 24 May 1910, Page 10

THE MONGREL.

AND HIS LAST ADVENTURE,

Hβ roee languidly from the heap of rubbish where he had spent the night, ya-.vned hugely, with a great exposure of red tongue and white teeth, opened a single rheumy eye (the other lad long been quenched by an aristocratic Spaniel he had smelled et weeks before), and launched upon the day's adventures. He pattered out into ihe street with his lurching trot and his single sly eye twinkling. His flap ears were the escutcheon of Spaniel blood, his little sharp head hinted at some Fox-terrier forefather, his slightly Lowed legs suggested the few corpuscles of Bulldog blood that ran in him, his coat war, rough like an Airedale Terrier's. And he was a mongrel, an outcast, a sanculotte, an Ishmaelitc, and other undesirable things. He smelled his way through tho crowd like the carelc,«s Bohemian he was, sniffing longingly at butchers boys with meat-filled baskets until they howled at him. Then he lurched swiftly out of the way of their boots, his tail between his legs, and his ears laid back. A policeman, missing the brass collar of c blameless life, stared suspiciously and bent down to him. Hβ fled, howling for his life as a man would if a groat genie bent down from the sky to grin at him. He lurched warily into an apparently deserted butcher's shop, gazing lickenshly up at a ruddy end enow white leg of mutton. It was far too high. He used bad dog language to himself, sniffed round in search of scraps, and fvund a cleaver that hummed sickening past his ears, grazed his nose, and filled him with, a terror that lasted until he reached the next street. A fat sybarite of a cat was purring on a doorstep. He chased her up an alley with most uncharitable feelings of envy end rage, and sauntered back to the main stream ot mo slightly happier. . Down by the muddy canal wharves he met with an adventure that all but ended his career, there and then, tie was sniffing around a canal barge, inhaling the scent of frying bacon that came from the little cabin like the spices of paradise, when a gang of other vagabonds, young human vagabonds, fell upon him with much terrific shoutiti" His white teeth snapped around, and he snarled like a trapped wolf But tV.p rone was round his neck with a deadly "brick at the other end. Human feet played a torturing tattoo on lus hind parts. He dropped into the muddy water, making a dash of white foam on the rainbow colours of the oil scum that floated on the still canal. He went right down, struggling. It seemed that all was over. Then, miraculously, the rope broke, he rose to the top. paddled to tho opposite bank, and scrambled ashore, half-drowned. He. curled himself up in a sunny corner of the warehouse wall for half an hour, his cunning eye watching a big Bull pup takin" a breakfast on the cabin floor of a coal boat. He rose and yawned wickedly. He lurched forward as nonchalantly as if he'had lunched off all the butchers' shops in the city, stopping: to sniff languidly at the ground. Then he leapt with all the hungry fury of his wolf ancestors singing in 1-s blood. The Bull pup was fat but faercc. For a minute they, fought for each other's throat. But starvation has bones of iron and teeth of steel, and death lurked in The Mongrel's eye. The Bull pup slunk away, and The Mongrel partook of breakfast. All the devil of tho outcast seemed to glow in him when he again took the adventure trail. Fortune seemed to fling the whole contents of her basket recklessly at him. He drank deeply from a full milk can that" stood on a d«-rstep awaiting the lie-abed housewife In a deserted side street he went on the, kinchon lay, met a small girl toddling along with bacon in a paper, looked swiftly and cunningly round, tumbled the%phild over, and calmly devoured the bacon while the child eat on the floor screaming. And then— He was lounging like the yellow tiiiof, he was round the rear of some cottages when a clucking and crowing from inside a tarred shed &et his ears a-cock and-his-mouth-a-water. The devil in him began to glow again. Joy! there was a hole big enough for him, thin rat that he was, to crawl through! Ho crept up the plank and drooped, murder in his eye, through the hole. Behind him, the daylight disappeared with a sudden sharp crash. He was trapped neatly. No " need to dwell upon the inassacro that followed. But he sat with glowing eyes and red, feather-speckled snout in tho darkness, full-to burstins, with a rampart of corpses around him. Daylight gleamed suddenly, and with it came a man and a roliceman. He was too full for fight. It was.a quiet, solemn procession that walked to the police station, a policeman leading a fat, bony cur by a. roiie, and a man who talked loudly and gazed triumphantly at the fat bony cur every other second. They thrust him into a clean whitewashed room where other homeless curs whined and barked and wagged their tails happily at the policeman, for they did not know he wielded death.

There were days of paradise that followed. Fat meals every day, cosy straw to sleep on, a pat on the back from the policeman; occasionally one of them was taken and never returned. Once they heard a faint far-off howl of terror that chilled their blood. But then the fat bones and biscuits came as usual, and they feasted and vre-o happy.

Then, after three days, the policeman came for The Mongrel.; He went with him; happily, leaping up- at him and licking Ins hand for it was the only hand that had over fed him, his single rye twinkling merrily. The policeman twitched him playfully on his wet black nose as he opened the door of a little, room and told him to <_o in: He nattered happily inside and sat with his head on one, side and his ears cocked. The door closed. He lay down, a sweet, pleasant smell lulling his senses. His nose dropped between his paws—and The Monr-rel slept.—S. A. \V., in "Manchester Evening News."