and mark every bolt-hole for the other dogs to stand at that belongs to the one where the rat is. As soon as I begin to put in the ferret, she will come over the hedge, give herself a shake, and sit down and watch the proceedings, not offering to take a part herself, as she feels there are more able dogs ready, and that this is not her strong point. Suppose a rat bolts and is killed and the ferret comes out, Chance will never leave the hole till she has taken a sniff at it to make sure all the rats have been cleared out. I have never known her make a mistake. If she says there is a rat in, there is one without any doubt; if she says there is not, it is no good running a ferret through the hole. Should I be alone, with no one to look out for the ferret when it comes out on the other side of a bank, Chance without a word being said to her will get over and look out, and directly the ferret appears will come back to me and give a wriggle, looking in the direction of the ferret, and then I know I must get over and pick it up.

She has one peculiarity. When she followed George Adams home, seven years ago, she was shy and scared; but, as it was a cold night, George, being a kind-hearted fellow, invited her to step indoors, an invitation she accepted in a frightened sort of way. On the hearth sat a little girl of three years old, eating her supper, and Chance, doubtless feeling very hungry, came and sat down in front of her and watched her with a wistful look. The child was not afraid and soon began feeding the dog, who took the pieces of food most gently from her fingers. When the child was taken up to bed, Chance secretly followed, and getting under the crib slept there all night. Only once since then has Chance failed to sleep in that same place, and that was the first night I had her. She was shut up in the kennel and never stopped barking all night. Since then she has always followed me home, eaten her supper at the kitchen door, and then gone off to her bed under the crib. Early in the morning she is again at my door and never goes near George's house till bed-time.

If Chance has no tail, the next dog on the list, "Tinker," makes up the average. He is a little black, hard-coated dog, with the head of a greyhound and tail of a foxhound. His head is nearly as long as his body, and his tail is just a little longer. In all ways he is a proficient at rat-catching, except that he has been known to mark a hole where there was no rat; but his strong point is killing. He will stand well back from a hole, and it does not matter how many rats bolt, or how fast, each gets one snap and is dead and dropped without Tinker having moved a foot. I named him Tinker, for a tinker gave him to me "cos he warn't no sort of waller."

Then on my list next comes "Grindum," a mongrel bull-terrier, just the tenderest hearted, mildest dispositioned dog that ever killed a rat. He has but a poor nose and is not clever, but he has one strong point, which he developed for himself without being taught. It is this: when I am ferreting a thick hairy bank with a big ditch, Grindum always goes some ten yards off and places himself in the ditch, and, let the excitement be what it will, he never moves; and should a rat in the thick grass escape the other dogs and bolt down the ditch, it is a miracle if it does not die when it reaches him. I have better and cleverer dogs, I know; but I think Grindum brings in as many twopences as any of them, and we are not going to part! The way I got Grindum is quite a little history, and I will tell it, though if you boys like, you can skip it and go on with a more serious part of your lesson.

Not far from where I lived there was, in a most out-of-the-way corner on a common, an old sand-pit, and in this a miserable dilapidated cottage, consisting of two rooms. This for some years had been empty, but one fine morning was discovered to be inhabited by a man, his wife and two children—a boy of twelve and a girl of seven—and a bull-terrier. No one knew anything about them or where they had come from, and when the landlord of the hut went to eject them, he found them in such a miserable half-starved condition that he left them alone.

Our parson called on them three times—the first time the wife told him they did not like strangers and parsons in particular; the second time the husband told him to clear out sharp, or he would do him a mischief; and the third time the man took up a knife and began sharpening it, preparatory, he said, to cutting the parson's throat!

Two months after this the man, after sitting drinking in the village pot-house all the morning, stepped round to an old mid-wife and asked her "to come and lay his wife out." The woman went and did her work and said nothing at the time, but later on it was whispered about that she had told some of her pals that "the poor crittur was black and blue, and that it was on her mind that the husband had murdered her!" After this, as I passed the cottage, I often saw the two children sitting on a log of wood outside, with the bull-dog sitting between them. None of the three ever moved out; all blinked their eyes at me as I passed, as if they were unaccustomed to the sight of a fellow-creature.

Two or three months passed, during which the man was constantly drinking at the village public-house; but he always left at sundown—"to look after the kids," he said. Then there was a poaching fray on a nobleman's estate near. Six keepers came on five poachers one moonlight night. There was a hard fight, and at last the keepers took two of the men and the other three bolted, but one was recognized as the man from the sand-pit and was "wanted" by the police.

A few nights after this I was walking down a lane in the dark near my house, when the sand-pit man stepped out of the hedge, leading his dog by a cord, and turning to me said, "Here, master, if you want a good dog, here is one for you; I am off to give myself up to the police, and I am going to turn queen's evidence against my pals." I replied that I did not want such a dog, so he said, "All right, then I'll cut his throat," and then and there prepared to do so. This was more than I could stand, so I took the cord and led the dog away, but before doing so, I asked, "How about your children?" He gave a short laugh, and said, "They would be properly provided for." It afterwards turned out that soon after leaving me he walked straight into the arms of two policemen, who saved him the trouble of giving himself up by taking him into custody.

I led my new dog home and tied him up in the corner of an open wood-shed, giving him a bundle of straw and a dish of bones, and by the starved look of him I should say this was the biggest meal he had ever had in his life.

I sat up late that night reading, and all the time in a remote corner of my mind the sand-pit man, the two children and the dog kept turning about, till at last, about midnight or later, I thought I would go to bed; but before doing so I made up my mind that I would see if my new dog was all right. I lit a lantern and stepped out of the door and found it was blowing and snowing and biting cold. Mercifully I persevered and reached the wood-shed, and what I saw there by the light of my lantern did startle me. There was the bull-dog sure enough lying curled up in the straw blinking hard at me, but—could I believe my eyes?—there lying with him, with their arms entwined round each other and round the dog, were the two children from the sand-pit fast asleep, but looking so