"A lane! a lane!" and quickly the crowd has given way to form a narrow passage, at the end of which we see a man holding a dog between his knees. It is the first dog to be set on; his owner cries, "Set on!" and the dog loosed tears down the lane, through hoops held at regular intervals, right at the face of the bull, who has heard his yelp, and is waiting for him. The dog goes for the bull's nose; the animal keeps him off by always presenting a horn to his advance. We notice he does not _prod_ at the dog, but tries to sweep the horn along the ground under the dog's belly. The dog, quite conscious of the meaning of these tactics, is never for a moment still, but dancing to and fro, tries to get through the bull's guard. It seems for a while that this game of attack and defence might go on for the whole day. But suddenly the bull has managed to get his horn beneath the dog, and up he goes into the air, some twenty or thirty feet high. "Catch the dog, quick. He'll be done for if he touches ground." And see our friend from Reading holding out a pair of long arms, and down comes the dog, bespattering, as he falls into them, the man's face and clothes with blood and mud. When the day is over, many, who came out in holiday clothes, will return home sorry spectacles from dog-catching, covered with filth, and with torn and disordered clothes. Another dog is now ready. His fate is more speedily determined than that of his predecessor. The bull, almost immediately, sends him flying into the air, so high that he falls on the roof of the Town Hall, and in coming down is impaled on some spikes. This is a grand stroke by which the present bull has outdone all former bulls that have been fastened to that chain and stake for many a year. And while the poor dog is writhing and whining piteously, the crowd applauds vociferously. In one of the smaller carriages, two school boys occupy the back seat. These boys are now standing up, wildly clapping their hands and hurrahing, while the dog on the roof still writhes and cries out in its agony. One of those boys will live to be a farmer in Wokingham, and be well known for his love of animals. More than seventy years after the event he will often tell of this, his only visit to the bull-baiting, and express his wonder by what strange contagion he could have caught the spirit of that cruel crowd, and witnessed, with delirious delight, animal torture, which on any other day of his life would have brought tears to his eyes.[10]