y-dog, an old enemy of mine, and the
little horror barked with all his might, and tried to give the alarm.
But luckily for me, little Annie had that day poked a pin through the
kid over his sound-hole, and so he had almost lost his voice, and was
not heard at all. When I came to reflect on the matter calmly, I must
own it _was_ rather an undignified method of running away, but I was too
anxious at the time to escape, and did not think much about it. Bob
hurried down some back lanes and byeways till he reached his own door,
and then he rushed in, and running upstairs, hid me under his bed. He
was up in the morning long before his mother, and got me out into the
back-yard, hiding me behind the old water-butt. Bob's mother happened to
be that week very busy, and away every day, so that he easily kept me
out of the way. There was a nice hue and cry at the Reeves's when the
children found out I had vanished, and Bob's mother came home each day,
giving him a full history of the loss, little suspecting he was
concerned in it.

"But evil deeds seldom meet with thorough success, and so Bob found out,
for a playfellow of his, it seems, had watched enough of his proceedings
to find out that all was not right, and one day he attacked him on the
subject. Bob was in a terrible fright, and at last made up his mind to
take me back to the Reeves's again, hoping to smuggle me in after the
same fashion he had brought me away. I was not much improved, as you may
fancy, after being stabled so long behind that dirty tarred barrel.
Indeed, I think the Reeves's children might almost have met me without
recognising me. But they were not destined to be put to the trial, for
just as Bob got near to the door, out sallied a whole tribe of the young
ones, bound for a late walk. Bob beat a precipitate retreat, and pitched
me headlong into a big laurel hedge, near the gate. As it proved
afterwards, the children had not seen me, and so there I lay all night,
when a drenching rain came down, and washed off all the paint I had
left. I was now a poor wreck of a thing, and did not look as if I was of
any value, and I was so out of heart and miserable, that I did not care
what became of me. So when I was picked out of the hedge by Bill Soames,
and carried to his cottage-home as a precious treasure, I was resigned
to my fate. Horses, said I to myself, are peculiarly liable to these ups
and downs of life, for, as we all know, the spirited racer that wins the