Bum

When Joseph Carroll, engineer of a Brooklyn laundry, heard the Negro night watchman tell of a "ghost" he had heard one night last week, he walked into the engine-room and straight to a boarded-up hole in the floor, relic of an unsuccessful well-digging. Stopping his ears, holding a knife in his teeth, he touched the knife to a pipe which went downward. Presently he could hear a distant moaning.

He knew what was in the hole. Early in January he had found and adopted a mongrel puppy. But after a few days the puppy, which he called "Bum," disappeared. The same day, the hole over the excavation had been boarded up securely. The engine's noise must have drowned the dog's cries ever since.

Hastily Engineer Carroll ripped up the boards, descended, brought Bum, a skeletal dog, unable to stand alone, to the surface.

No local veterinary would believe that a dog could have fasted for 14 weeks. Some thought Bum must have lived by rat-catching; some cried: "Impossible!"

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