place. His tail gives expressive signals of excitement and rage, and, beyond all misunderstanding, indicates his furious desire to get at his foes. It is but slight comfort to the eager creatures that several of their enemies are already stretched on the floor, or that a living rat, half conscious of impending doom, springs and dances at the wires of a trap near his dead brethren--he is at once confined and fortified in bars of iron. A maltster’s shovel, birch broom, old cart-harness, traces of cart-gear, a bottle, and stray wisps of straw, litter the ground and aid the composition. This composition, as regards the dogs, is worthy of admiration. The three entirely visible dogs, may be described as follows: A big white terrier, in whom one fancies the “Brutus” of former pictures, plunges and “scurries” round the hole where the sunken comrade is at work; he grovels with his nose near the floor, and thrusts his head and chest forward in fierce action; his jaws are set, and his breath goes quickly in and out of his nostrils; his ears are thrown to the front as if to listen for squeaks in the region of the rafters; his eyes protrude and glitter with ravenous desire; his fore feet are spread widely apart, and his hind legs thrust far behind. The _chiaro scuro_ is disposed so that the white body of this dog is the chief object; the light falls powerfully on him, so that his colour aids the effect in the manner of the great masters of _chiaro scuro_--which is much more than mere “light and shade” in the common sense of that term. Behind,--with a white mark, like a splash of chalk on the back of his head and between his ears, his figure coming above that of the last-named animal,--squats on his haunches a black dog of less demonstrative but equally excitable temperament; his back is arched in a bow, he quivers, and bends his head over the searching terrier with an eager gaze that is very finely expressed. He seems to whimper now and then; but “Brutus,” if it be he, yelps, snaps, barks, and almost howls in his ardour. One sees that if the hole were big enough to admit the bigger dog he would swiftly pull out the pioneer and go in himself, confident in his own resources, in an emergency like this; but with all this valour he has discretion enough to know that the hole would never admit a bulky carcass like his own, and that the sole chance for him consists in the possibility that a rat may appear at some apparently unguarded crevice, or, delirious with fear, rush between the legs of the half-buried hunter. Farthest off is a smaller and younger terrier, who has the air of an amateur or representative of the “lay-element” of rat-catching.[32] This dog sits in a formal, affected manner, his ears are uncropped and hang like lappels[33] quaintly above his head, with no unapt likeness to the decorations on a cap of a fool of the Middle Ages. This is a younger dog, and as eager as his fellows, although less impressionable. The joys