“No doubt,” returned Witherlee, smoking, with a sarcastic smile. “Perhaps he’s commencing his education—developing, on Kant’s principle, all the perfection of which the doggish nature is capable.” “Dog?” inquired Monsieur Bagasse, curiously. “Oh, it’s a dog we passed this morning,” explained Wentworth; “a miserable old vagabond white cur, with just about life enough in him to crawl. Some Irish and negro boys were lugging the poor old devil along by the ears and tail, and whacking him with sticks, as we came along, and Harrington, of course, stopped to order them off.” “Bright in Harrington,” put in Witherlee, with a sneer; “as if they wouldn’t be at him again before we’d gone twenty yards!” “Yes, by Jupiter, but before we had gone twenty yards, Fernando, you and I went into the shop, you know, where you bought the cigars, and it was there that Harrington said he had to go back to the house for something, and made off with himself. It never occurred to me till now—but I’ll bet a franc he went back to those boys!” He burst into a peal of laughter at the idea. “I’d give something to know what Harrington did with the old cur,” he said in a moment. “Took him off to the butcher’s perhaps, and sold him for sausages,” suggested Witherlee. “Ah, Missr Wentwort’,” said the old man, grotesquely serious, “you friend, Missr Harrin’ton, is vair fine, vair mush humane, vair fine zhentilman. I feel vair mush warm to him.” “Rather too much of the Don Quixote order, though,” drawled Witherlee, affectedly, giving the Spanish pronunciation to the ‘Don Quixote’ and calling it Don Kehoty. “O you be hanged, Fernando,” burst in Wentworth. “He’s no more like Don Kehoty, as you call it, than you’re like Sancho Panza. He’s the grandest fellow that ever lived, and makes me ashamed of myself every day of my life. Hallo, I guess he’s coming.”