And as he made that noise he jumped, and over went the counter, marble top and all, with a smash, and jam into the show window he went, with his tail swinging, and me right after him, practically on top of him. It wasn't that I exactly intended to chase him, you understand, but I was rattled on account of that awful noise he had let out, and I wanted to get away from there, and I went the same way he did. So when he bulged through the window glass on to the street I bulged right after him, and as he hit the sidewalk I bit him again. The first time I bit him because I was sore, but the second time I bit him because I was so nervous I didn't know what I was doing, hardly. And at the second bite, without even looking behind him, he jumped clean over the hitch rack and a team of horses in front of the store and landed right in the middle of the road with his tail between his legs. And then I realized for the first time he wasn't a dog at all. He was the circus lion. Mind you, I'm not saying that I would have bit him at all if I'd a-known at the start he was a lion. And I ain't saying I _wouldn't_ 'a' bit him, either. But actions speak louder than words, and records are records, and you can't go back on them, and the fact is I _did_ bite him. I bit him twice. And that second bite, when we came bulging through the window together, the whole town saw. It was getting up telephone poles, and looking out of second-story windows, and crawling under sidewalks and into cellars, and trying to hide behind the town pump; but no matter where it was trying to get to, it had one eye on that lion, and it saw me chasing him out of that store. I don't say I would have chased him if he hadn't been just ahead of me, anyhow, and I don't say I wouldn't have chased him, but the facts are I _did_ chase him. The lion was just as scared as the town--and the town was so scared it didn't know the lion was scared at all--and when his trainer got hold of him in the road he was tickled to death to be led back to his cage, and he lay down in the far corner of it, away from the people, and trembled till he shook the wagon it was on. But if there was any further doubts in any quarter about me being an aristocrat, the way I bit and chased that lion settled 'em forever. That night Freckles and Doc went to the circus, and I marched in along with them. And every kid in town, as they saw Freckles and me marching in, says: “There goes the dog that licked the lion!” And Freckles, every time any one congratulated him on being the boy that belonged to that kind of a dog, would say: “Blood will tell! Spot's an aristocrat, he is.”