"Yes, sir. I am teaching him to jump over this stick."
"Good dog!" said Mr. Craven, patting him softly.
"Oh, the ould hypocrite!" ejaculated Katy, who had slyly opened the window a trifle and heard what he said. "He tries to p'ison the poor creeter, and thin calls him good dog."
Mr. Craven meanwhile was surveying Pompey curiously.
"I certainly saw him eat the meat," he said to himself, "and I am sure it was tainted with a deadly poison. Yet here the dog is alive and well, after devouring every morsel of it. It is certainly the most curious case I ever heard of."
Mr. Craven went into the house, and turned to the article on strychnine in an encyclopædia, but the statements he there found corroborated his previously formed opinion as to the deadly character and great strength of the poison. Pompey must certainly be an extraordinary dog. Mr. Craven was puzzled.
Meanwhile Katy said to herself:
"Shall I tell Master Frank what Mr. Craven tried to do? Not yit. I'll wait a bit, and while I'm waitin' I'll watch. He don't suspect that Katy O'Grady's eyes are on him, the villain!"
It may not be considered suitable generally for a maid-of-all-work to speak of her employer as a villain; but then Katy had some grounds for her use of this term, and being a lady very decided in her language, it is not singular that such should have been her practice.
Notwithstanding the apparent superiority of Pompey's constitution to the deadliest poison, Mr. Craven's murderous intent was by no means laid aside. He concluded to try another method of getting him out of the way. He had a pistol in his trunk, and he resolved to see if Pompey was bullet-proof as well as poison-proof.