r the feeling against the law ran high in the
city), opened the doors and lifted the windows of their houses, the
ladies crying, "Shame on you, shame on you!" and the cooks and chamber
maids from the nadir and zenith of their household worlds, with homelier
and more piquant phrase and saucier tongues, scoffed him for the
miserable work he was doing; but in spite of the popular uprising, now
almost swelled to the dimensions of a mob, and the verbal uproar,
through the hoarse murmur of which the boy's gibe, the woman's taunt and
the strong man's curse, came and smote upon him in volleys, still he
clutched the rope and rushed along, threatening the crowd that was
closing in ahead of him with his club, and so making headway on his
dreadful errand, while the poor old man, unable to keep up with him, was
filling the air with his cries, and, without knowing what he was saying,
perhaps, kept calling on the people, saying, "Oh, good people, good
people, don't let him kill my dog."

Indeed, his grief was piteous to see, for he was half distraught with
fear, and like as a mother whose child had been snatched from her and
was being hurried to death, so he, with tears, sobs and screams, kept
entreating one moment the crowd and the next beseeching heaven, saying,
"Don't let him kill my dog," and being an old man and white-headed, and
as his countenance and gestures were eloquent with the eloquence of true
grief, the people were filled with pity for him and their hearts melted
with sympathy at the piteous spectacle they beheld.

Then up spake the honest carter, saying, "Friends, let's give the old
man a lift, for it's a shame that one so old should lose his dog. How
much is it you lack of the tax?" he asked of the poor old gentleman as
he came panting up. But he was so confused and tremulous with terror
that he could not answer, and so being unable to do more he stretched
his old shaken hands in which the money was still, tightly clutched, up
to him, but the old hands shook so that the carter could not count it,
until he had taken it into his own steady palm.

"Here's fifty cents and a few odd pennies," he shouted, "and the law
demands three dollars; two dollars and a half is wanted; who'll help
make up the three dollars and save the old man's dog? Here's fifty
cents," he added as he took a silver half-dollar from his pocket and
dropped it into the hat, "it's half I earnt yesterday, and more than
I'll earn to-day, perhaps, for times