His children cried, and he sent them out of the stable and went out himself.  Mother picked up all the puppies and brought them to our nest in the straw and licked them, and tried to bring them back to life; but it was of no use; they were quite dead.  We had them in our corner of the stable for some days, till Jenkins discovered them, and swearing horribly at us, he took his stable fork and threw them out in the yard, and put some earth over them.

My mother never seemed the same after this.  She was weak and miserable, and though she was only four years old, she seemed like an old dog.  This was on account of the poor food she had been fed on.  She could not run after Jenkins, and she lay on our heap of straw, only turning over with her nose the scraps of food I brought her to eat.  One day she licked me gently, wagged her tail, and died.

As I sat by her, feeling lonely and miserable, Jenkins came into the stable.  I could not bear to look at him.  He had killed my mother.  There she lay, a little, gaunt, scarred creature, starved and worried to death by him.  Her mouth was half open, her eyes were staring.  She would never again look kindly at me, or curl up to me at night to keep me warm.  Oh, how I hated her murderer!  But I sat quietly, even when he went up and turned her over with his foot to see if she was really dead.  I think he was a little sorry, for he turned scornfully toward me and said, “She was worth two of you; why didn’t you go instead?”

Still I kept quiet till he walked up to me and kicked at me.  My heart was nearly broken, and I could stand no more.  I flew at him and gave him a savage bite on the ankle.

“Oho,” he said, “so you are going to be a fighter, are you?  I’ll fix you for that.”  His face was red and furious.  He seized me by the back of the neck and carried me out to the yard where a log lay on the ground.  “Bill,” he called to one of his children, “bring me the hatchet.”

He laid my head on the log and pressed one hand on my struggling body.  I was now a year old and a full-sized dog.  There was a quick, dreadful pain, and he had cut off my ear, not in the way they cut puppies’ ears, but close to my head, so close that he cut off some of the skin beyond it.  Then he cut off the other ear, and, turning me swiftly round, cut off my tail close to my body.

Then he let me go and stood looking at me as I rolled on the ground and yelped in agony.  He was in such a passion that he did not think that people passing by on the road might hear me.

* * * * *

CHAPTER III

MY KIND DELIVERER AND MISS LAURA

There was a young man going by on a bicycle.  He heard my screams and springing off his bicycle, came hurrying up the path, and stood among us before Jenkins caught sight of him.

In the midst of my pain, I heard him in say fiercely “What have you been doing to that dog?”