He managed, among other things, to take in the figure of an upright old gentleman with a heavy gray mustache, who was clipping and trimming with a pair of scissors in one of the gardens. Comethup had just stopped, out of the politest curiosity, to watch him, when the old gentleman swung round and marched toward the gate, and cried violently, pointing a finger at the child, "What the devil are you doing with my dog, boy?" Poor Comethup had never been spoken to in that fashion before; he began to see in the old gentleman retributive justice sweeping down upon him for having left his father's garden--above all, for having left the gate open, an unpardonable thing. He would have liked to drop the puppy, but remembered in time that he might hurt it; so he lowered it gently to the ground, where it at once commenced tugging at his shoestrings. With as much dignity as he could command under the circumstances, Comethup tremblingly began to explain that he had found it. Before he had finished a half-dozen words, however, the little old gentleman, with an exclamation, had pulled the gate open, and had come out upon the pavement. Comethup began to tremble very much indeed, but the old gentleman took him--not unkindly--by the chin, and turned his face up so that he might look at it. Comethup must have looked very appealing indeed, for the old gentleman suddenly smiled, and exclaimed, "Why, it's little Comethup!" "Yes," said Comethup humbly. The captain, without a word, picked up the puppy with one hand and offered the other to the child. They went up the garden path together, into a quaint little room, where everything was very bright and very straight and very orderly; very poor, too, if Comethup had but known. There the old gentleman lifted him into a chair, and rang the bell. Then he turned round, in his abrupt fashion, and held out the struggling puppy with one hand toward Comethup. "You like this dog?" he asked. Comethup faintly admitted that he did. The old gentleman thrust it into his arms. "Take it," he said. "Be good to it, and feed it well." Comethup tried to thank him, but at that moment the puppy had taken him at a mean disadvantage, and was dancing about frantically in his arms, and dabbing a tongue much too large for it against his face, so that speech was difficult. And just then a man came in, taller than the old gentleman, and much more erect; and put the back of his hand quite suddenly up to his forehead, and held it there for a moment, and then brought the hand down smartly with a smack against the side of his leg.