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“Is that your property, sir?”

“I never think of him in that way,” answered the old man, mildly. “He has been my companion–I may say my only companion–these many years, and I love him as property is not loved. No, sir, Trusty is not property–he is my companion and my friend.”

“I didn’t come here to listen to any of your crazy nonsense, but as an officer of the law, to see if you have registered your dog, and paid your tax as it commands, and, if you hadn’t, to see that the penalty was put upon you as you deserve, you old begging loafer, you.”

“I’ve broken no law that I know of,” replied the beggar, “I love my dog, that is all. I hope it breaks no law for a man to love his dog in this city, does it, friend?”

“If you don’t know what the law is, you’d better find out,” answered the fellow, roughly. “What right have you to own a dog, anyway? It strikes me that it is about enough for you to sponge your own living out of the community, without sponging another for a miserable whelp of a dog like that.”

“Trusty eats very little,” replied the old man, respectfully, “and he amuses people a great deal, especially the children; and, besides, he is a great comfort to me, and God knows that I have nothing else to comfort me in all the world–wealth, home, friends, and one dearer than all,–all lost, and thou’rt all I have left, Trusty, to comfort me,” and he looked affectionately at his companion, whose head was resting lovingly on his knee.

“Oh, I’ve heard the whining of your class before to-night,” replied the fellow, “and am not to be taken in by any of your sniffling, so you needn’t try that trick on me. Law is law, and I shall see it enforced, and on you, too, in spite of your shuffling, you miserable old sneak of a beggar, you.”

“Friend,” answered the old man with dignity, as he rose from the chair and looked the fellow calmly in the face, “better men than you or I have begged their daily bread before now, and eaten it, too, with an honest conscience and a grateful heart, and more than once when night has overtaken me, weary of journeying along inhospitable roads, and I have been compelled to make my bed on the leaves under some hedge, I’ve remembered that the Son of God when on the earth to teach us the sweet lesson of charity, ‘had not where to lay his head.’ The lesson he came to teach, you certainly have not learned, or you would never have made my poverty and my misfortunes the butt of your scoffings.”

The old man spoke with dignity, but the coarseness of the fellow’s nature and the hardening influence of the business he was engaged in prevented him from feeling either shame or sympathy, for he turned toward the door with an oath, saying: “You’ll hear from me in the morning, old chap, but I’ll tell you this to chew on over night; that if your tax money isn’t ready when I come again, I’ll teach you what it is to break the laws in this city, and insult the officers whose duty it is to see them enforced against just such white-headed old dead-beats as you!” and with another oath, he passed out of the door and shut it with a slam.

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.