en Mr. Sagittarius, running at his fullest speed, emerged from
Zoological House, wearing the hat and coat that the saturnine little
clergyman had left behind him, the night was damp and gusty. As he
hastened down the drive, and the sound of twenty guitars, playing
"Oh would I were a Spaniard among you lemon groves!" died away in the
lighted mansion behind him, he heard the roaring of the beasts in the
gardens close by. In the wet darkness it sounded peculiarly terrific.
He shuddered, and, holding up Mr. Ferdinand's trousers with both hands,
hurried onward through the mire, whither he knew not. His only thought
was that all was now discovered and that his life was in danger. A
woman's vanity had wrecked his future. He must hide somewhere for the
night, and get away in the morning, perhaps on board some tramp steamer
bound for Buenos Ayres, or on a junk weighing anchor for Hayti or Java,
or some other distant place. Vague memories of books he had read when a
boy came back to him as he ran through the unkempt wilds of the Regent's
Park. He saw himself a stowaway hidden in a hold, alone with rats and
ships' biscuits. He saw himself working his way out before the mast,
sent aloft in hurricanes on pitch-black nights, or turning the wheel the
wrong way round and bringing the ship to wreck upon iron-bound coasts
swarming with sharks and savages. The lions roared again, and the black
panthers snarled behind their prison bars. He thought of the peaceful
waters of the river Mouse, of the library of Madame, of the happy little
circle of architects and their wives, of all that he must leave.

What wonder if he dropped a tear into the muddy road? What wonder if a
sob rent the bosom of Mr. Ferdinand's now disordered shirt front? On and
on Mr. Sagittarius--or Malkiel the Second, as he may from henceforth
be called--went blindly, on and on till the Park was left behind, till
crescents gave way to squares, and squares to streets. He passed an
occasional policeman and slunk away from the penetrating bull's-eye.
He heard now and then the far-off rattle of a cab, the shrill cry of
a whistle, the howl of a butler summoning a vehicle, the coo of a cook
bidding good-night to the young tradesman whom she loved before the area
gate. And all these familiar London sounds struck strangely on his ear.
When would he hear them again? Perhaps never. He stumbled on blinded
with emotion.

Dogs, we know are guided by a strange instinct to find their homes