I don’t know how the old man passed the night.  But little sleep, I warrant, came to his old eyes, for he was as timid as a child, and easily frightened, and a threat against his own life would have disturbed him less than one against the life of his dog.  But whether he slept or not, the hours of the night wheeled along their dark courses without stopping, and speedily brought the dreaded morning.  I know not when he died, or where, but well I know that the memory of that dreadful morning and the woe that came to him on it haunted him to the close of his life, and embittered the last hours of it.

The morning came as all mornings, whether they bring joy or grief to us, do come.  The threat the fellow had uttered against his dog the evening before had naturally disturbed him and the old man was nervous and excited, but he managed to cook his frugal breakfast and eat it with his companion.  I can well imagine his thoughts and his worriment.  “Law! what law?” I can hear him say.  “I’ve broken no law.  I’ve only loved and been loved by my dog.  That’s not wicked, surely.  He said he’d come again, and if I didn’t have the money ready.  Money! what money?  He knows I’ve no money.  Tax! what tax?  Do they tax a man’s heart in this city?  Can’t a man love anything here unless he’s rich?  Kill my dog!  I don’t believe it.  There isn’t a man on the earth wicked enough to kill an old man’s dog, an old man’s harmless dog; no, he didn’t, he couldn’t mean that! he just said it to scare me.  Yes, yes, I see now; he’d been drinking and he said it just to scare me.”  Thus, as I fancy, the poor old man sat muttering to himself, listening with dread to every passing step, listening and muttering to himself, while his old heart, quaked in his bosom, and his soul, which had so little to cheer it, as it journeyed along its lonely path, was sorely tried and disquieted within him.

The clock in a neighboring steeple was striking the ninth hour, and the old man paused in his muttering and sat counting the strokes as the iron tongue pealed them forth; counting them in his fear as if each stroke was a knell, and so indeed to him it was, and many of the chimes we listen carelessly to, would be knells to us, if we knew what would happen twixt them and their next chiming.

The vibration of the last stroke was swelling and sinking in the air, when a heavy step sounded on the stair, and without even the ceremony of knocking, the door was pushed suddenly open, and the fellow, who had intruded upon him the evening before, entered the room.  In one hand he held a rope and in the other a club.

“Well, old chap,” he said, “you see I am here as I told you I would be.  I’ve given you a whole night to study up the law.”

“Law! what law?” exclaimed the old man, interrupting him, “I don’t know that I broken”—­

“Come, come, old shuffler, none of your blarney, if you please,” broke in the fellow; “you know well enough what law I mean.  I mean the dog-law.”