“Dog-law! dog-law!” answered the old man, “what law is that?”

“Oh, you don’t pull the wool over my eyes,” sneered the other; “you know what law I mean well enough, but, to jog your memory, I’ll say that the law I mean makes the owner of a dog pay a tax of three dollars, and if the tax isn’t paid”—­

“Three dollars!” ejaculated the poor man.  “Three dollars! when have I had so much money as that?  Three dollars! you might as well have asked me to pay three thousand as three.”

“Very well, very well,” exclaimed the other; “the law covers just such cases as yours—­covers them perfectly,” and he laughed a coarse, cruel laugh.  “Out with the money, or I take the dog.”

“Take my dog!” screamed the old man, “take Trusty!  What should you take him for?  You can’t want him.”

“Oh, yes, I do, old fellow,” retorted the other; “I want him very much indeed, I know just what to do with him, I’ll see to that.”

“Do with him?” cried the other, whose mind, perhaps because paralyzed by fear, perhaps because of the enormity of the deed, would not receive the horrible suggestion, “what would you do with Trusty?”

“Kill him, damn you!” shouted the other; “kill him as I have a hundred other curs this fall and pocket the money the law gives me for doing it.  Do you understand that, you old dead-beat?”

For a moment the wretched man never spoke, his lips paled to the color of ashes, and shrivelled as if suddenly parched against the teeth, and he clutched the back of a chair for support.  Twice he essayed to speak, his lips moved, but his tongue in its dryness clove to the roof of his mouth.  At last he gasped forth in the hoarse whisper of mortal terror: 

“Kill my dog! kill Trusty!”

It was a sorry sight, truly, and might well touch the hardest heart.  But the officer of the law—­God save the mark!—­remained unmoved.  What was one dog more or less to him? had he not already killed hundreds, as he said?  The sportsman’s favorite hunter, astray without his collar, the lady’s pet, crying pitifully in the street, unable to find its mistress’s door, the children’s playmate, waiting in front of the school house for school to close, the poor man’s help and comfort, his household’s joy, guardian and friend, caught in the street on his return from his humble master, to whom he carried his homely dinner.  What was one dog more or less to him, hardened by the murderous habit of his office and eager to earn his wretched fee,—­what was one dog more or less to him?

“Come, come,” he cried, as he uncoiled the rope he held in his hand, “out with the money or I take the dog.”