Slam could always procure him a supply of pheasants’ eggs, and more than one village offender who had been sent to expiate his depredations in jail was known to have paid visits to Slam’s yard.

Slam was a dog-fancier as well as a rat-catcher, and therefore doggy boys were attracted to his premises, which, however, were sternly interdicted. In the first place they were out of bounds, though this of itself did not go for very much. There was no town very near Weston, and so long as the boys made their appearance at the specified hours they were not overmuch interfered with. Paper chases, or hare and hounds as they are sometimes called, were openly arranged and encouraged; and if boys liked to take walks in the country, they could do so with a minimum of risk. If they were awkward enough to meet a master face to face when out of bounds, he could hardly help turning them back and giving them a slight imposition; but if they saw him coming, and got out of his way, he would not look in their direction.

But to enter an inn, or to visit Slam’s, was a serious offence, entailing severe punishment, and even expulsion, if repeated.

Yet one beautiful warm summer’s evening, when the birds were singing and the grasshoppers chirruping, and all nature invited mankind to play cricket or lawn-tennis, if there were no river handy for boating, four youths might have been seen (but were not, luckily for them) approaching the forbidden establishment. A lane with high banks, now covered with ferns and wild flowers, and furrowed with ruts which were more like crevasses, ran up to the house; but they left this and went round the orchard to the back of the yard, in the wall of which there was a little door with a bell-handle beside it. On this being pulled there was a faint tinkle, followed by a canine uproar of the most miscellaneous description, the deep-mouthed bay of the blood-hound, the sharp yap-yap of the toy terrier, and a chorus of intermediate undistinguishable barkings, some fierce, some frolicsome, some expectant, being mixed up with the rattling of chains. Then an angry voice was heard amidst the hubbub commanding silence, and a sudden whine or two seemed to imply that he had shown some practical intention of being obeyed. A bolt was drawn, the door opened, and a short wiry man, dressed in fustian and velveteen, with a fur cap on his head and a short pipe in his mouth, stood before them.

“Come in, gents,” said he. “Your dawg’s at the other end of the yard, Mr Stubbs, that’s why you don’t see him. He’s had an orkardness with Sayres, Mr Robarts’ dog, as was in the next kennel, and I thought they’d have strangled themselves a-trying to get at one another, and so I had to separate them.”

“Will it be safe to let him loose?” asked Stubbs.

“No fear; he will never go near the other while he’s loose and the other one chained up; besides, he’ll be took up with seeing you, he will.”

It was very pleasant to the feelings of Stubbs that his dog knew him, which he evidently did, for he danced on his hind-legs, and wagged his tail, and whimpered, and did all that a bull-terrier can do in the way of smiling, when his proprietor approached for the purpose of freeing him from his chain. Their interviews were not as frequent as either dog or boy would have desired, but then they were very pleasant, for they brought the former a short spell of liberty, a meal of biscuit or paunch, and sometimes—oh, ecstasy!—the worrying of a rat, while Stubbs enjoyed the sense of proprietorship, and the knowledge that he was doing what was forbidden. He had dreams of leaving school and taking Topper home with him, and owning him as his friend before all the world, and he talked to Topper of that happy prospect, and Topper really quite seemed to understand that Stubbs was his master, who had paid money for him, and was now put to considerable expense for his board and lodging, let alone the danger he ran in coming to visit him. To an outsider, calmly reflecting, it did not seem a very good bargain for Stubbs, but still very much better than that of Perry, his friend and present companion, who kept a hawk, and vainly endeavoured to teach the bird to know him and perch on his wrist. But Perry was fond of hawks, and much regretted that the days were gone by when hawking was a favourite pastime.

The other two visitors at Slam’s that evening were Saurin and Edwards. Edwards had never been there before, and consequently his feelings were curiously compounded of fear and pleasurable expectation. He had looked from a distance at the place, the entrance to which was so sternly forbidden, and imagined all sorts of delightful wickedness—how delightful or why wicked he had no idea—going on inside. He was considerably disappointed to find himself in a dirty yard full of kennels to which dogs of all sorts and sizes were attached, none of whom looked as if it would be safe to pat them. There were a good many pigeons flying about, but he did not care for pigeons except in a pie. Perry’s hawk was only interesting to Perry. There was a monkey on a pole in a corner, but he was a melancholy monkey, who did nothing but raise and lower his eyebrows.

“Does the gentleman want a dawg?” asked Slam.

“He will see,” replied Saurin; “if there is a real good one that takes his fancy he may buy him. It’s all right; he’s a friend of mine. Have you got that tobacco for me?”

“To be sure; you will find it in your drawer.”

Saurin went to a little wooden outhouse which contained a table, a chest of drawers, a cask of dog-biscuits, cages of rats, and other miscellaneous articles, and opening a locker which seemed to be appropriated to him, he took out a meerschaum pipe and a tobacco-pouch, and came out presently, emitting columns of blue fragrant smoke from his mouth. Edwards looked at his friend with increased respect, the idea of being intimate with a fellow who could smoke like that made him feel an inch taller.

“I think it’s beginning to colour, eh?” asked Saurin.

“Beautifully, I should say,” replied Edwards.

“Won’t you try?”

“Thanks; I think I should rather like,” said Edwards, who began to feel ambitious, “but I have not got anything to smoke.”

“Oh, Slam will let you have a pipe, or a cigar if you like it better.”

Edwards, calling to mind that cigars smelt nicer than pipes, thought he should prefer one.

“Slam, my friend wants a cigar.”

“Well, sir, as you know, I can’t sell such things without a licence; but if the gent likes to have a few rats for one of the dawgs to show a bit of sport, I’ll give him a cigar with pleasure. It’s sixpence for half a dozen.”

“And, by the by, Edwards, it is usual to stand some beer to pay your footing. A couple of quarts of sixpenny will do.”

“That will make eighteenpence altogether,” responded Edwards cheerfully, producing that sum.

“I’ll send out for the beer at once,” said Mr Slam, taking the money and going towards the house.

Where he sent to is a mystery, for there was no public-house within a mile, and yet the can of beer arrived in about five minutes. It is much to be feared that Slam set the excise law at defiance when he felt perfectly safe from being informed against.

“Rats for Topper!” exclaimed Stubbs. “Oh, I say, Edwards, you are a brick, you know. I have been hard up lately, and he has not had a rat for ever so long. You won’t mind my letting them out for him, will you? You see, I should like him to think it was I who gave him the treat, if you don’t mind.”

Edwards had no objection to become a party to this innocent deception, and the cage of rats was brought out from some mysterious place where there was an unlimited supply of those vermin. Whereupon every individual dog in the establishment went off his head with excitement, and began barking and tearing at his chain in a manner to soften the hardest heart. That rats should be so near and yet so