ghtful mien, and during the whole of the
remainder of that day was more reserved, more taciturn, and more morose
than ever. But in the dead of night my sisters were awakened by slight
sounds, the cause of which they could not conjecture, which proceeded
from an uninhabited room next theirs, where Zamore was usually put to
bed on an old arm-chair. It sounded like a rhythmic tread, made more
sonorous by the silence of night. They at first supposed that the mice
were romping round, but the sound of steps and leaps on the flooring was
too loud for that. The bravest of my sisters rose, partly opened the
door, and by the light of a moonbeam streaming in through a pane, she
beheld Zamore on his hind legs, pawing the air with his fore paws, and
busy studying the dancing steps he had admired in the street that
morning. The gentleman was practising!

Nor did this prove, as might be supposed, a passing fancy, a momentary
attraction; Zamore persisted in his choregraphic aspirations and turned
out a fine dancer. Every time he heard the fife and drum he would run
out on the square, slip between the spectators' legs and watch, with the
closest attention, the trained dogs performing their exercises. Mindful,
however, of the whip-cut, he no longer attempted to take part in the
dancing; he took note of the poses, the steps, and the attitudes, and
then, at night, in the silence of his room, he would work away at them,
remaining the while, during the day, as austere in his bearing as ever.
Ere long he was not satisfied with copying; he took to composing, to
inventing, and I am bound to say few dogs surpassed him in the elevated
style. I often used to watch him through the half-open door; he
practised with such enthusiasm that every night he would drain dry the
bowl of water placed in one corner of the room.

When he had become quite sure of himself and the equal of the most
accomplished of four-footed dancers, he felt he could no longer hide his
light under a bushel and that he must reveal the mystery of his
accomplishments. The court-yard of the house was closed, on one side, by
an iron fence with spaces sufficiently wide to allow moderately stout
dogs to enter in easily. So one fine morning some fifteen or twenty dog
friends of his, connoisseurs no doubt, to whom Zamore had sent letters
of invitation to his debut in the choregraphic art, met around a square
of smooth ground nicely levelled off, which the artist had previously
swept with