ht I'd come
and warn yer like a man--he's got into bad hands, that there dawg."

"I am much obliged, Mr. Linton; you seem to be a
straightforward-dealing man."

"Well, sir, I tries to act upright and downstraight; and, as I ses,
if a man only does that he ain't got nothin' to fear, 'as he, Muster
Orkins?"

"When can I have him, Sam?"

"Well, sir, you can have him--let me see--Monday was a week, when you
lost him; next Monday'll be another week, when I found him; that'll be
a fortnit. Suppose we ses next Tooesday week?"

"Suppose we say to-morrow."

"Oh!" said Sam, "then I thinks you'll be sucked in! The chances are,
Mr. Orkins, you won't see him at all. Why, sir, you don't know how
them chaps carries on their business. Would you believe it, Mr.
Orkins, a gennelman comes to me, and he ses, 'Sam,' he ses, 'I want to
find a little pet dawg as belonged to a lidy'--which was his wife, in
course--and he ses the lidy was nearly out of her mind. 'Well,' I ses,
'sir, to be 'onest with you, don't you mention that there fact to
anybody but me'--because when a lidy goes out of her mind over a lorst
dawg up goes the price, and you can't calculate bank-rate, as they
ses. The price'll go up fablous, Mr. Orkins; there's nothin' rules the
market like that there. Well, at last I agrees to do my best for the
gent, and he says, just as you might say, Mr. Orkins, just now, 'When
can she have him?' Well, I told him the time; but what a innercent
question, Mr. Orkins! 'Why not before?' says he, with a kind of a
angry voice, like yours just now, sir. 'Why, sir,' I ses, 'these
people as finds dawgs 'ave their feelins as well as losers 'as theirs,
and sometimes when they can't find the owner, they sells the animal.'
Well, they sold this gennelman's animal to a major, and the reason why
he couldn't be had for a little while was that the major, being fond
on him, and 'avin' paid a good price for the dawg, it would ha' been
cruel if he did not let him have the pleasure of him like for a few
days--or a week."

Sam and I parted the best of friends, and, I need not say, on the best
of terms I could get. I knew him for many years after this incident,
and say to his credit that, although he was sometimes hard with
customers, he acted, from all one ever heard, strictly in accordance
with the bargain he made, whatever it might be; and what is more
singular than all, I never heard of old Sam Linton getting into
trouble.

CHAPTER X.

WHY