Here and there he would pin a newspaper before the cage of a newly-captured finch, fighting hard to escape by breaking its prison bars, beating its soft round bosom bare of feathers against the cruel wires, but with a fair prospect before it of finding relief for its restless spirit, if not for its body, and flight--where? Then there were the "tarriers" to look after, some of which justified their name by not finding customers. Here D. Wragg seemed quite at home, looking, as he stooped and tightened a chain or shortened a string, much like one of the breed Darwinised, and in a state of transition. D. Wragg's ministrations were needed, for since the shop had been left by Janet to his care, there had been sundry vicious commotions amongst the dogs. One slight skirmish had ended in a spaniel having an ear made more fringe-like in character. Then the restless little animals had executed a _gavotte_ upon their hind-legs, maybe a waltz, ending in a general tangle, and an Old Bailey performance, caused by the twisting together of string and chain into a Gordian knot, which puzzled D. Wragg into using a knife for sword in its solution--the dogs the while lying panting, with protruding eyes, and a general aspect of being at the last gasp. At last, though, the canine fancy were reduced to order, so far as was possible; for chained-up dogs are always moved by a restless spirit to reach something a few inches beyond their nose--canine examples, indeed, of human discontent; and if small and restless of breed, hang themselves upon an average about twelve times _per diem_--possibly without suicidal intent, though, from their miserable state, one cannot avoid suspicion. D. Wragg had growled almost as much as his dogs in reducing them to order; but he turned at last to go over other portions of his stock, pinching protruded rats' tails to make them lively; thrusting a hand down the stocking nailed over the hole in the top of the sparrow-cage, and taking out one panting black-cravatted cock-bird from amongst his scores of fellows, to find it naked of breast, with its heavy eyes half-closed, dying fast, and so escaping the sportive shot of the skilled marksman in some sweepstake--"so many birds each, shot from the trap."