emperors and Kamschatka princes, if there were any; and of the wicked glee of the rascally young sweeps who would rattle down Blackfriars' Road, and St. George's Road, and other roads of an evening, racing one against another—"taking home" the one-dog shay of some cat's meat man or dealer in greens, who had thus committed his chariot and animals to these sooty Jehus, while he himself staid at some favourite resort to smoke and tipple "heavy wet" till midnight. I say, young Ingram Wilson had made many a notch in his mind about these, and other dog-cart phenomena; but he had never felt so much melancholy interest in looking at a dog in a cart, as he felt in looking at this "very old and interesting dog."

There might be something in the way in which his attention was first aroused to look at the dog. He had just entered this by-street, and was so much absorbed in reflecting on his own increasingly perilous circumstances, that he had not even noticed the name of the street (though this was a practice he usually attended to so punctually, that he grew quite familiar with numerous localities during the six months):—he merely saw that it was a street of some length, with a ground-story room to every house on the right hand, what would be termed a cellar in the country,—fenced off by neat palisades from the flagged pavement. His reverie was broken suddenly, by the shrill, and peculiarly disagreeable, and well-known cry "Cat's m-e-a-t!" and the man jumped from his vehicle, the dog stood stock still, and almost along the whole line of the street, cats white, and black, and tabby, and tortoiseshell, were suddenly at the palisades, of the houses, setting up their backs and tails, and uttering a shrill "mew!" Ingram was a little struck with this; but still more with a fine large black tom-cat, that leaped from the palisade of the house where the cart was standing, and ran under the old dog's head. Setting up his back and tail, he passed under the head of the dog again and again, so coaxingly and soothingly, and uttered so kindly sympathetic a "purr," every time that he passed backward and forward, and the poor aged dog arched his neck, and hung his ears forward, and bent down to receive the soft rub of the cat's back under his chin, and looked so grateful, that Ingram stood still, and pondered curiously on this display of sympathy between brute creatures—a quality that he began to think scarce among human beings.

The poor old dog looked almost like a bag of leather, with a collection of old bones in it: he was so gaunt and worn, and the hair was so much chafed off, in sundry places with his harness; and, moreover, his back and limbs were so crooked and bent, that Ingram felt sure the dog had known no slight portion of slavery in his day. And, perhaps, he had a hard master, and no one sympathised with him but this black tom-cat, thought the poverty-stricken philosopher—but who sympathises with me? That was his only sour thought, but it did not abide with him. The man returned to the cart, said, "Go on!" and the dog went on; but none of the other cats came to rub under the old dog's head. Ingram felt he was attracting the man's frowning notice, by standing to look at the dog, and so he walked on to think.

"The world is not all misery for that poor old dog," thought Ingram, as he walked on: "very likely, the few minutes' pleasure he receives every morning from the gentle sympathy of the black tom-cat renders him happily forgetful of the labour and hardness of the remaining part of the day. And yet, the poor old dog looked as if he were poorly fed; and what a mortification it must be to be carrying food to the cats, and have so little himself: always in the smell of it, but never or seldom to taste: almost as bad as Tantalus steeped to the very chin, and most likely drenched through the skin, and yet dry as a fish! There is a something that pleases me, however, very much, in this act of the kind, brotherly tom-cat," said Ingram to himself, "and I'll see this sight again."

And Ingram saw the sight again, for he took care to walk in the same neighbourhood for the three mornings following, and felt increasing pleasure in witnessing the black tom-cat rub his back under the poor old dog's chin, while the dog looked each morning as richly gratified as ever. Ingram Wilson was satisfied that if those few minutes' pleasure did not form a compensation for the poor dog's every day's pain, they went very far towards it.

But the circumstance of a pale, handsome young man, though rather seedily dressed, coming through that particular street every morning, for four mornings, at the same hour, and standing to look at that old dog and tom-cat, was an occurrence not likely to go unnoticed in London, where people notice every minute circumstance in a way that much surprised Ingram Wilson, when he first began to find it out, for he had calculated on a very different sort of feeling in that respect. Nothing, indeed, annoyed him so much as the keen impudent stare of strangers, full in his face, and for several seconds: for Ingram did not reflect that he must be staring equally hard, or he would not know that other people were staring at him. And nothing pestered him more than to observe passengers smile and talk to their companions, as they observed Ingram's lips move, when some thought passed through his mind earnestly; and yet he forgot how much he had been struck with that circumstance, above every thing, when he first walked along Cheapside, and Ludgate and Fleet Streets, and the Strand: the very great number of people who talked to themselves as they walked alone, and even motioned with their hands in the most earnest manner.

Ingram had been closely observed, and the observance, on the fourth morning, produced him an adventure. He was turning to move on, at the end of his fourth soliloquy on the dog-and-cat spectacle, when a tall gentlemanly person, with a cane, stepped from the house where the tom-cat ran in, and seemed bent on walking along the street in Ingram's company.

"A fine morning, sir," said the gentleman: "you seemed to be interested with our fine old cat and his way of saying, 'How d'ye do?' to the old dog, every morning."

"Yes, sir, I was," answered Ingram, somewhat pleased with the pretty expression, as he thought it, of the gentleman, and the silvery voice in which he spoke.

"Ay, sir, there's more kindness among dumb creatures than we think of," rejoined the gentleman: "much more, I'm inclined to think, than amongst human beings."

"Do you think so, sir?" asked Ingram; for the observation awoke a vague painfulness that he did not like, at once, to express to a stranger.

"Why, have you found nothing but kindness, young man, in the world, hitherto?" said the stranger, with a look that Ingram thought so benevolent as to be completely melted by it. "Have you found nothing but kindness, now, in London, permit me to ask? You are from the country, I think?"

"Yes," answered Ingram, feeling too much at work with regret within to say more.

"Seeking for a situation, and finding none, perhaps?" continued the gentleman; "and—but I shall, perhaps, be obtruding where I have no right—perhaps, beginning to feel it difficult to subsist?"

Ingram looked volumes, but could not reply: he had lived on two cups of muddy coffee and a roll, daily, for the last month, and this was the first and only human being who had troubled himself to ask him a question relative to his circumstances. Ingram was next invited, very, very kindly, to return to the stranger's house; and he could not muster pride enough to refuse. There was one face at the window, which had been there every one of the four mornings that Ingram had passed, although he had not seen it; but he saw it now, and he