When the two boys chased him up the alley they had no intention
to cause pain; they had no intention at all. They were no more
cruel than Duke, Penrod's little old dog, who followed his own
instincts, and, making his appearance hastily through a hole in
the back fence, joined the pursuit with sound and fury. A boy
will nearly always run after anything that is running, and his
first impulse is to throw a stone at it. This is a survival of
primeval man, who must take every chance to get his dinner. So,
when Penrod and Sam drove the hapless Whitey up the alley, they
were really responding to an impulse thousands and thousands of
years old--an impulse founded upon the primordial observation
that whatever runs is likely to prove edible. Penrod and Sam were
not "bad"; they were never that. They were something that was not
their fault; they were historic.
At the next corner Whitey turned to the right into the
cross-street; thence, turning to the right again and still
warmly pursued, he zigzagged down a main thoroughfare until he
reached another cross-street, which ran alongside the
Schofields' yard and brought him to the foot of the alley he had
left behind in his flight.
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