me by day. It was the same old scandal that they're
always bringing up against me. I was so young then that I didn't know. I
couldn't see any difference between mother--and other mothers.

But one day a pack of curs we drove off snarled back some new names at
her, and mother dropped her head and ran, just as though they had
whipped us. After that she wouldn't go out with me except in the dark,
and one day she went away and never came back, and, though I hunted for
her in every court and alley and back street of Montreal, I never found
her.

One night, a month after mother ran away, I asked Guardian, the old
blind mastiff, whose Master is the night watchman on our slip, what it
all meant. And he told me.

"Every dog in Montreal knows," he says, "except you; and every Master
knows. So I think it's time you knew."

Then he tells me that my father, who had treated mother so bad, was a
great and noble gentleman from London. "Your father had twenty-two
registered ancestors, had your father," old Guardian says, "and in him
was the best bull-terrier blood of England, the most ancientest, the
most royal; the winning 'blue-ribbon' blood, that breeds champions. He
had sleepy pink eyes and thin pink lips, and he was as white all over as
his own white teeth, and under his white skin you could see his muscles,
hard and smooth, like the links of a steel chain. When your father stood
still, and tipped his nose in the air, it was just as though he was
saying, 'Oh, yes, you common dogs and men, you may well stare. It must
be a rare treat for you colonials to see real English royalty.' He
certainly was pleased with hisself, was your father. He looked just as
proud and haughty as one of them stone dogs in Victoria Park--them as is
cut out of white marble. And you're like him," says the old mastiff--"by
that, of course, meaning you're white, same as him. That's the only
likeness. But, you see, the trouble is, Kid--well, you see, Kid, the
trouble is--your mother----"

"That will do," I said, for then I understood without his telling me,
and I got up and walked away, holding my head and tail high in the air.

But I was, oh, so miserable, and I wanted to see mother that very
minute, and tell her that I didn't care.

Mother is what I am, a street-dog; there's no royal blood in mother's
veins, nor is she like that father of mine, nor--and that's the
worst--she's not even like me. For while I, when I'm washed for a fight,
am as white as c