hing sobriquet. That was when he had saved the girl's basket,
after a sharp fight with a larger and less honest dog. Sanders then spoke
of him, with half-concealed pride, as "the Boss," but this only lasted a
day or so. Publicly, in the neighborhood, he was known as "Sanders's dog."

One morning the dog came limping up the cut with a broken leg. Some said a
horse had kicked him; some that the factory boys had thrown stones at him.
He made no outcry, only came sorrowfully in, his mouth dry and
dust-covered, dragging his hind leg, that hung loose like a flail; then he
laid his head in the girl's lap. She crooned and cried over him all day,
binding up the bruised limb, washing his eyes and mouth, putting him in
her own bed. There was no one to go for her father, and if there were, he
could not leave the crossing. When Sanders came home he felt the leg over
carefully, the girl watching eagerly. "No, Kate, child, yees can't do
nothin'; it's broke at the jint. Don't cry, young one."

Then he went outside and sat on a bench, looking across the cut and over
the roofs of the factories, hazy in the breath of a hundred furnaces, and
so across the blue river fringed with waving trees where the blessed sun
was sinking to rest. He was not surprised. It was like everything else in
his life. When he loved something, it was sure to be this way.

That night, when the girl was asleep, he took the dog up in his arms, and
wrapping his coat around him so the corner loafers could not see, rang the
bell of the dispensary. The doctor was out, but a nurse looked at the
wound. "No, there was nothing to be done; the socket had been crushed.
Keep it bandaged, that was all." Then he brought him home and put him
under the bed.

In three or four weeks he was about again, dragging the leg when he
walked. He could still get around the shanty and over to the grocer's, but
he could not climb the hill, even with the pail empty. He tried one day,
but he only climbed half way. Sanders found him in the path when he went
home, lying down by the pail.

Sanders worried over the dog. He missed the long talks at the crossing
over the dinner, the poor fellow sitting by his side watching every
spoonful, his eyes glistening, the old ear furling and unfurling like
a toy flag. He missed, too, his scampering after the sparrows and pigeons
that often braved the desolation and smoke of this inferno to pick up
the droppings from the carts. He missed more than all the
c