t them if not fastened up or carefully watched. He would even bark at a
passing hearse! In all other respects, he was the best-tempered dog in
the world, and I can only imagine that when very young he must have been
ill-used by either a sweep or a coalheaver.

C. R. T.

LUCKY AND UNLUCKY.

[_April 28, 1877._]

As letters telling of dogs and their doings occasionally appear in the
_Spectator_, perhaps the following rather pathetic anecdote of a dog I
know well may also find a place there. Two or three weeks ago, Lucky--so
called from having, when an outcast, found its present happy
home--perhaps by way of showing its gratitude to its benefactors,
presented them with five small Luckys, or rather, with one exception,
Unluckys, as the melancholy process always resorted to with these
too-blooming families had to be carried out in this instance, and the
five were reduced to one. Poor Lucky was inconsolable, looking
everywhere for them, and looking, too, with such appealing eyes into the
faces of her friends, and asking them so plainly where they were. Near
her kennel was an inclosed piece of ground for pigeons, and as it was
discovered that rats were carrying off the young pigeons, and as Lucky
had carried off one or two rats, it was decided one night to leave the
door of the pigeons' house open, that Lucky might have the run of it;
and the next morning, side by side with the puppy, was found a baby
pigeon, looking quite bright and at home, but hungry, and poor Lucky,
proud of the addition it had made to its family, was looking more
contented than it had done since the loss of its puppies. The pigeon
must have fallen from its nest, some distance from the ground, and
Lucky, while on the look-out for rats, must have found it, and carefully
carried it to her kennel, with the vague feeling, perhaps, that it was
one of her own lost little ones "developing" a little curiously.
Unfortunately the arrangement could not be a permanent one, and the
famished little pigeon was put back into its own nest, to be found again
the next morning in Lucky's bed, but this time dead. The old birds seem
to have deserted it, and it had died of starvation. If Lucky could give
this account herself, it might be much more interesting, for it was
thought not at all improbable that she had actually rescued from a rat
the bird she was so anxious to adopt, as a small wound was found upon
it such as a rat might have made, and as a yo