ense
leather; it ran before it; and then!--one sudden jerk of that enormous
head, a sort of dirty mist about his mouth, no noise--and the bright
and fierce little fellow is dropt, limp and dead. A solemn pause;
this was more than any of us had bargained for. I turned the little
fellow over, and saw he was quite dead; the mastiff had taken him by
the small of the back like a rat, and broken it.

He looked down at his victim appeased, ashamed, and amazed; snuffed
him all over, stared at him, and taking a sudden thought, turned round
and trotted off. Bob took the dead dog up and said, "John, we'll bury
him after tea." "Yes," said I, and was off after the mastiff. He made
up the Cowgate at rapid swing; he had forgotten some engagement. He
turned up the Candlemaker Row, and stopt at the Harrow Inn.

There was a carrier's cart ready to start, and a keen, thin,
impatient, black-a-vised little man, his hand at his gray horse's
head, looking about angrily for something.

"Rab, ye thief!" said he, aiming a kick at my great friend, who drew
cringing up, and avoiding the heavy shoe with more agility than
dignity, and, watching his master's eye, slunk dismayed under the
cart--his ears down, and as much as he had of tail down too.

What a man this must be--thought I--to whom my tremendous hero turns
tail! The carrier saw the muzzle hanging, cut and useless, from his
neck, and I eagerly told him the story, which Bob and I always
thought, and still think, Homer or King David or Sir Walter alone were
worthy to rehearse. The severe little man was mitigated, and
condescended to say, "Rab, my man, puir Rabbie"--whereupon the stump
of a tail rose up, the ears were cocked, the eyes filled, and were
comforted; the two friends were reconciled. "Hupp!" and a stroke of
the whip were given to Jess; and off went the three.

Bob and I buried the Game Chicken that night (we had not much of a
tea) in the back green of his house in Melville Street, No. 17, with
considerable gravity and silence; and being at the time in the
"Iliad," and, like all boys, Trojans, we called him Hector, of
course.

WILLIAM M. THACKERAY

Born in 1811, died in 1863; lived in India until five years
old; educated at Cambridge; began to write for newspapers in
1833; went to Paris to study art in 1834; visited the east
in 1844, and the United States in 1852 and 1854; published
"Vanity Fair" in 1846-48, "Pendennis" in 1848-50, "Henry