“At her, Flanbard!  At her, Garou!” And the two dogs sprang at the wretched woman, and one seized her by the throat, while the other caught her by the side.

When the brigadier came back, she was dying on the ground in a pool of blood, and “the man with the dogs” said with a laugh:  “There, you see, that is the way I break in my dogs!”

The custom-house officer rushed out in horror, followed by his hounds who licked his hands as they ran, and made them quite red.

The next morning “the man with the dogs” was found still bound, but chuckling, in his hovel that was turned into a slaughter-house.

They were both arrested and tried, when “the man with the dogs” was acquitted, and the brigadier sentenced to a term of imprisonment.  The matter gave much food for talk in the district, and is, indeed, still talked about, for “the man with the dogs” returned there, and is more celebrated than ever under his nickname, but his celebrity is not of a bad kind, for he is now just as much respected and liked as he was despised and hated formerly.  He is still, as a matter of fact, “the man with the dogs,” as he is rightly called, for he has not his equal as a dog-breaker for leagues around, but now he no longer breaks in mastiffs, as he has given up teaching honest dogs to “act the part of Judas,” as he says, for those dirty custom-house officers, and now he only devotes himself to dogs to be used for smuggling, and he is worth listening to when he says: 

“You may depend upon it, that I know how to punish such commodities as she was, where they have sinned!”

THE CLOWN

The hawkers’ cottage stood at the end of the Esplanade, on the little promontory where the jetty is, where all the winds, all the rain, and all the spray met.  The hut, both walls and roof, was built of old planks, more or less covered with tar, whose chinks were stopped with oakum, and dry wreckage was heaped up against it.  In the middle of the room an iron pot stood on two bricks, and served as a stove, when they had any coal, but as there was no chimney, it filled the room, which was ventilated only by a low door, with smoke, and there the whole crew lived, eighteen men and one woman.  Some had undergone various terms of imprisonment, and nobody knew what the others were, but though they were all, more or less, suffering from some physical defect and were nearly old men, they were still all strong enough for hauling.  For the “Chamber of Commerce” tolerated them there, and allowed them that hovel to live in, on condition that they should be ready to haul, by day and by night.

For every vessel they hauled, each got a penny by day and two-pence by night, but that was not certain, on account of the competition of retired sailors, fishermen’s wives, laborers who had nothing to do, but who were all stronger than those half-starved wretches in the hut.