“How much is it? how much is it?” cried the old man, fumbling in his pockets and bringing forth a few small pieces of silver and some pennies.  “Here take it, take it, it’s all I have—­there’s a ten-cent piece, isn’t it? and there’s two fives, and here, yes, God be praised, here’s a quarter of a dollar; Trusty earned that yesterday.  Let’s see, twenty-five, that’s the quarter, and ten is thirty-five, and two fives, that makes forty-five, and eight pennies, that makes fifty-three cents; won’t that do?  It’s every cent I have, as God is my witness—­it will do, won’t it?” And the old man seized one of the hands of the fellow, and strove to put his little hoarding into it.

But the hard-hearted wretch drew his hand back with a jerk, and, seizing the dog by the neck, slipped the rope over his head and saying, “The law allows me four times that for killing him,” opened the door and pulled the poor dog out after him into the street.

“God of heaven!” screamed the poor old man, as he rushed, bareheaded as he was, out of the door, and hurried in pursuit of the man, who was pulling the dog along and walking as fast as he could, while Trusty struggled and cried and did all he could to get rid of the rope.  “Where is thy justice or thy mercy?  Oh, sir; oh, sir;” he shouted, running after the man, “give me back my dog; oh, give him back to me, good people;” he cried, for his own cries and those of the dog, too, had already drawn a crowd to the scene, “good people, tell him not to kill my dog.”

[Illustration:  “It was to the honor of the crowd that they hooted the officer roundly.”]

It was to the honor of the crowd that they hooted the officer roundly, and called on him and shouted, “Give the old man back his dog,” and greater honor yet to them that some of the boys pelted him with snowballs and junks of ice as he hurried on, and one brawny chap, sitting on the seat of his cart, struck him a stinging blow with his black whip as he scuttled past, with, “Damn you, take that, for killing my dog.”  The officer shook his club at the honest fellow and said, “I’ll pay you for that, see if I don’t,” but he dared not stop to make the arrest, for the crowd was thickening and the air getting fuller of missiles, and every door and window was hooting him as he passed them, with the poor dog crying and moaning pitifully at his heels.  Even the women, God bless them (for the feeling against the law ran high in the city), opened the doors and lifted the windows of their houses, the ladies crying, “Shame on you, shame on you!” and the cooks and chamber maids from the nadir and zenith of their household worlds, with homelier and more piquant phrase and saucier tongues, scoffed him for the miserable work he was doing; but in spite of the popular uprising, now almost swelled to the dimensions of a mob, and the verbal uproar, through the hoarse murmur of which the boy’s gibe, the woman’s taunt and the strong man’s curse,