y,' said master.

The man didn't say a word. He seemed to be brooding on something. He
was one of those silent men. He reminded me of Joe, the old dog down
the street at the grocer's shop, who lies at the door all day, blinking
and not speaking to anybody.

Master began to talk about me. It surprised me, the way he praised me.
I hadn't a suspicion he admired me so much. From what he said you would
have thought I had won prizes and ribbons at the Crystal Palace. But
the man didn't seem to be impressed. He kept on saying nothing.

When master had finished telling him what a wonderful dog I was till I
blushed, the man spoke.

'Less of it,' he said. 'Half a crown is my bid, and if he was an angel
from on high you couldn't get another ha'penny out of me. What about
it?'

A thrill went down my spine and out at my tail, for of course I saw now
what was happening. The man wanted to buy me and take me away. I looked
at master hopefully.

'He's more like a son to me than a dog,' said master, sort of wistful.

'It's his face that makes you feel that way,' said the man,
unsympathetically. 'If you had a son that's just how he would look.
Half a crown is my offer, and I'm in a hurry.'

'All right,' said master, with a sigh, 'though it's giving him away, a
valuable dog like that. Where's your half-crown?'

The man got a bit of rope and tied it round my neck.

I could hear mother barking advice and telling me to be a credit to the
family, but I was too excited to listen.

'Good-bye, mother,' I said. 'Good-bye, master. Good-bye, Fred. Good-bye
everybody. I'm off to see life. The Shy Man has bought me for half a
crown. Wow!'

I kept running round in circles and shouting, till the man gave me a
kick and told me to stop it.

So I did.

I don't know where we went, but it was a long way. I had never been off
our street before in my life and I didn't know the whole world was half
as big as that. We walked on and on, and the man jerked at my rope
whenever I wanted to stop and look at anything. He wouldn't even let me
pass the time of the day with dogs we met.

When we had gone about a hundred miles and were just going to turn in
at a dark doorway, a policeman suddenly stopped the man. I could feel
by the way the man pulled at my rope and tried to hurry on that he
didn't want to speak to the policeman. The more I saw of the man the
more I saw how shy he was.

'Hi!' said the policeman, and we had to stop.

'I've got a mess