"Strange," he muttered, "there seems to be some sort o' fate as links me wi' that Post-Office. It was here I began my London life as a porter, and lost my situation because the Postmaster-General couldn't see the propriety of my opening letters that contained coin and postage-stamps and fi'-pun' notes, which was quite unreasonable, for I had a special talent that way, and even the clargy tell us that our talents was given us to be used. It wasn't far from here where I sot my little nephy down, that time I got rid of him, and it was goin' up these wery steps I met with the man I'm tryin' my best to bring to grief, an' that same man wants to marry one of the girls in the Post-Office, and now, I find, has saved my Tot from bein' burnt alive! Wery odd! It was here, too, that--" Floppart at this moment turned the flow of his meditations by making a final and desperate struggle to be free. She shot out of his pocket and dropped with a bursting yell on the pavement. Recovering her feet before Bones recovered from his surprise she fled. Thought is quick as the lightning-flash. Bones knew that dogs find their way home mysteriously from any distance. He knew himself to be unable to run down Floppart. He saw his schemes thwarted. He adopted a mean device, shouted "Mad dog!" and rushed after it. A small errand-boy shrieked with glee, flung his basket at it, and followed up the chase. Floppart took round by St. Paul's Churchyard. However sane she might have been at starting, it is certain that she was mad with terror in five minutes. She threaded her way among wheels and legs at full speed in perfect safety. It was afterwards estimated that seventeen cabmen, four gentlemen, two apple-women, three-and-twenty errand-boys--more or less,--and one policeman, flung umbrellas, sticks, baskets, and various missiles at her, with the effect of damaging innumerable shins and overturning many individuals, but without hurting a hair of Floppart's body during her wild but brief career. Bones did not wish to recapture her. He wished her dead, and for that end loudly reiterated the calumny as to madness. Floppart circled round the grand cathedral erected by Wren and got into Cheapside. Here, doubling like a hare, she careered round the statue of Peel and went blindly back to St. Martin's-le-Grand, as if to add yet another link to the chain of fate which bound her arch-pursuer to the General Post-Office. By way of completing the chain, she turned in at the gate, rushed to the rear of the building, dashed in at an open door, and scurried along a passage. Here the crowd was stayed, but the policeman followed heroically. The passage was cut short by a glass door, but a narrow staircase descended to the left. "Any port in a storm" is a proverb as well known among dogs as men. Down went Floppart to the basement of the building, invading the sanctity of the letter-carriers' kitchen or _salle-a-manger_. A dozen