18 "LOW LIFE."
nameless little cur, from the fray in which he was engaged,
christened him Prince, with a splendid disregard of the pro-
prieties, on the spot, and prepared to convey him home, tucked
tightly within Jack's ragged jacket.
 Poor little Prince! pugilistic as he had already shown him-
self, and as he was doomed to prove throughout his career,
he responded then, as he always did, in his gruff fashion, to
the scant kindness which was shown him. He did not nestle
to Jack's heart or lick his dirty hand, for he was never a
demonstrative dog, but he cocked the ears-short even then,
before they had undergone the hideous process of cropping-
looked up with his small beads of eyes in his captor's face, as
if acknowledging his master, and then gave one short, stiff
wag of his stump of a tail, as if appending his signature-the
signature of the puppy-father to the dog whose word was
his bond-to the bargain.
 That slightly ungracious, yet expressive wag of the tail
did Jack's business, and rendered him ten times more bent on
retaining the puppy, in spite of sundry obstacles which he
saw looming ahead of the connection, in the prejudices which
might be entertained by his father and mother regarding
their small means-of which Jack, boy as he was, did not fail
to be aware-their limited house accommodation, and the
number of his little brothers and sisters.
 But if Prince the puppy was father to Prince the dog, so
Jack the boy was father to Jack the man. A certain jolly self-
indulgence and ignoring of consequences, so long as they
could be shelved, were from first to last marked features in his
character. When Jack, with his captive, reached the small,
swarming, reeking family-room, in which there was always a