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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.”

“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?”