There might be something in the way in which his attention was first aroused to look at the dog. He had just entered this by-street, and was so much absorbed in reflecting on his own increasingly perilous circumstances, that he had not even noticed the name of the street (though this was a practice he usually attended to so punctually, that he grew quite familiar with numerous localities during the six months):--he merely saw that it was a street of some length, with a ground-story room to every house on the right hand, what would be termed a cellar in the country,--fenced off by neat palisades from the flagged pavement. His reverie was broken suddenly, by the shrill, and peculiarly disagreeable, and well-known cry "Cat's m-e-a-t!" and the man jumped from his vehicle, the dog stood stock still, and almost along the whole line of the street, cats white, and black, and tabby, and tortoiseshell, were suddenly at the palisades, of the houses, setting up their backs and tails, and uttering a shrill "mew!" Ingram was a little struck with this; but still more with a fine large black tom-cat, that leaped from the palisade of the house where the cart was standing, and ran under the old dog's head. Setting up his back and tail, he passed under the head of the dog again and again, so coaxingly and soothingly, and uttered so kindly sympathetic a "purr," every time that he passed backward and forward, and the poor aged dog arched his neck, and hung his ears forward, and bent down to receive the soft rub of the cat's back under his chin, and looked so grateful, that Ingram stood still, and pondered curiously on this display of sympathy between brute creatures--a quality that he began to think scarce among human beings. The poor old dog looked almost like a bag of leather, with a collection of old bones in it: he was so gaunt and worn, and the hair was so much chafed off, in sundry places with his harness; and, moreover, his back and limbs were so crooked and bent, that Ingram felt sure the dog had known no slight portion of slavery in his day. And, perhaps, he had a hard master, and no one sympathised with him but this black tom-cat, thought the poverty-stricken philosopher--but who sympathises with me? That was his only sour thought, but it did not abide with him. The man returned to the cart, said, "Go on!" and the dog went on; but none of the other cats came to rub under the old dog's head. Ingram felt he was attracting the man's frowning notice, by standing to look at the dog, and so he walked on to think.