order to avoid the morning whipping, which he knew would come, were he discovered in the forbidden place.

When we were returning home, we were to make some visits in London; so, thinking it best not to take Tawney, we entrusted him to a man who was going to our own town, with many charges as to feeding and watching him.

And when we had left London and arrived at home, there was poor Tawney safe and well, and extravagantly delighted to see us.

When we enquired about his behaviour on the road, of the man who had brought him, he told us that he had been in a terrible fright at the London station, thinking that he had lost Tawney entirely.

He had to cross London from one station to another; and there was an hour or two to spare before the starting of the train from the second station; so, wishing to leave the station for that time, and fearing to risk Tawney in the street, he tied him up, as he thought, safely in a shed belonging to the station. He was also taking with him some luggage belonging to us, among which was a large round packing-case, that usually stood in Mamma's room; these were shut up in a store-house at the other end of the

station.

At the appointed hour our friend returned to the station, and went to claim the dog; but no Tawney was in the shed, only the end of the broken rope which had fastened him. In great anxiety he ran about enquiring of all he met. No one knew anything of the dog, no one had seen him pass out of the station; and after fruitless search in in all the waiting and refreshment rooms, and in short

through the whole station; he was reluctantly obliged to go for the luggage in order to pursue his journey, when, on opening the door of the store-house, what was his joy on beholding the missing Tawney, seated on the top of the round packing case, that he well knew to belong to his mistress. How he found out that the luggage was in the store-house, and how he got in, we could not of course discover; and it only confirmed us in our opinion of Tawney's intense wisdom. We and Tawney enjoyed ourselves much for some weeks, taking long walks, long drives, and hunting rats in all the neighbours' stacks. We had some fine games in our own field, and a great deal of basking in the sun, as it was a beautiful summer, with constant sunshine.

I mentioned, that Tawney used to enrage the people in the cottages by trying to worry their cats. On one of these occasions, when he had made a dreadful confusion at the door of a cottage containing children, upsetting a tub of soap-suds, dirtying the clean sanded floor, and frightening an old woman nearly out of her wits, by his reckless endeavour to seize on the cat; a man had come angrily out of the cottage, and coming close up to the carriage, declared with a clenched fist, and a furious countenance, that if Tawney ever approached his door again, he would kill him. Papa, who happened to be with us, said that if he would give Tawney a good beating, it would punish the dog without punishing us; and as he was a great favourite, he begged that he would not think of killing him. Then we drove on, leaving the man standing sulkily in the road.

Whether Tawney had gone alone to this cottage for the purpose of worrying the cat, or whether the man had taken

his revenge for the first offence, or whether he had done anything in the matter, we shall never know; but we could not help suspecting him when the following sad affair happened.

It was a very sultry day, too much so to run or to do anything but lie on the grass, which we did during the whole morning. Papa sat reading on a bench placed in the shady side of the house, and we were on the grass beside him; Tawney lay roasting in the sun, and, now and then, panting with heat, came to us in the shade, or even went into the dining-room window and flung himself down under the table; some steps led into the garden from the window, and as the window-sill was not level with the dining-room floor, but raised about two feet above it, we had a stool or sort of step inside the window, as well as outside; Tawney generally sprang through, without troubling himself about the steps.

Soon after Tawney had entered the house, apparently for the purpose of cooling himself, we heard a tumble, then another, and I got up to see what he was doing. "Why Papa," I cried, "what can be the matter with Tawney, he is trying to jump out of the window and cannot reach the sill, and falls back again." Papa came to see, and again the dog made an ineffectual spring at the low window-sill. Papa lifted him out into the garden, saying he supposed he had half blinded himself with lying so long in the hot sunshine. But we continued to watch him, and presently we saw his limbs twitching in a sort of fit, and he ran wildly about us. Papa called to the gardener, and they took him into the stable, forbidding us to approach him, as they feared he was

going mad; they dashed water over him as he lay exhausted on the straw in the stable; but soon the fits became more and more violent, and our poor dog in a few hours was dead.

A man that examined him by Papa's desire, said there was no doubt that he had been poisoned by strychnine. He might have picked up something so poisoned while running in the roads, or it might have been purposely done by the angry man to whom I alluded. We never found out the manner in which it had been administered, and could only regret most heartily the loss of our dear playfellow. We had not another dog for a very long time, and never shall love one so well as Tawney.

70

PUFFER, THE PIGEON.

WHAT pretty things are pigeons, how happy and nice they look sitting on the house-top, and walking up and down the sloping roof with their pretty pink feet and slender legs; and then how they flutter up into the air, making circles round the house, and now and then darting off on a straight flight across the fields. Soon after we came to live at our country house, my sister had a present of a pair of fantail pigeons, quite white. They were beauties, not the slightest speck of any colour was on their feathers; and when they walked about with their tails spread out in a fan, and their necks pulled up so proudly, we thought them the prettiest creatures we had ever seen. Our Papa allowed us to have a nice place made for them in the roof of the stables, with some holes for them to go in at, and a board before the holes for them to alight on; inside there were some niches for nests, and as the fantails were quite young, we soon ventured to put them in there. At first we spread a net over their holes, so that they could only walk about on the board outside; and when we thought they knew the look of the place well, we let them have their entire liberty, and they never left us.

Next we obtained a pair of tumblers, these were small dumpy little birds, of a burnished sort of copper colour, and such queer short little bills; when they were flying, they turned head over heels in the air, without in the least