ter and tied the end
of a ball of twine to the tail of a dog, and "sicked" the dog on another
dog that was following a passing sleigh, causing the twine to pay out
until the whole ball was scattered along the block. "Condemn you, I've a
notion to choke the liver out of you. Who tied that twine to the dog's
tail?"

The boy choked up with emotion, and the tears came into his eyes, and he
said he didn't know anything about the twine or the dog. He said he
noticed the dog come in, and wag his tail around the twine, but he
supposed the dog was a friend of the family, and did not disturb him.
"Everybody lays everything that is done to me," said the boy, as he put
his handkerchief to his nose, "and, they will be sorry for it when I die.
I have a good notion to poison myself by eating some of your glucose
sugar."

"Yes, and you do about everything that is mean. The other day a lady came
in and told me to send up to her house, some of my country sausage, done
up in muslin bags, and while she was examining it she noticed something
hard inside the bags, and asked me what it was, and I opened it, and I
hope to die if there wasn't a little brass padlock and a piece of red
morocco dog collar imbedded in the sausage. Now how do you suppose that
got in there?" and the grocery man looked savage.

The boy looked interested, and put on an expression as though in deep
thought, and finally said, "I suppose the farmer that put up the sausage
did not strain the dog meat. Sausage meat ought to be strained."

The grocery man pulled in about half a block of twine, after the
dog had run against a fence and broke it, and told the boy he knew
perfectly well how the brass padlock came to be in the sausage, but
thinking it was safer to have the good will of the boy than the ill will,
he offered him a handful of prunes.

"No," said the boy, "I have swore off on mouldy prunes. I am no
kinder-garden any more. For years I have eaten rotten peaches around this
store, and everything you couldn't sell, but I have turned over a new leaf
now, and after this nothing is too good for me. Since Pa has got to be an
inventor, we are going to live high."

"What's your Pa invented? I saw a hearse and three hacks go up on your
street the other day and I thought may be you had killed your Pa."

"Not much. There will be more than three hacks when I kill Pa, and don't
you forget it. Well, sir, Pa has struck a fortune, if he can make the
thing work. He has got an