Oil of Dog by Ambrose Bierce

'She removed not only superfluous and unwelcome babes to order, but went out into the highways and byways, gathering in children of a larger growth, and even such adults as she could entice to the oilery. My father, too, enamored of the superior quality of oil produced, purveyed for his vats with diligence and zeal. The conversion of their neighbors into dog-oil became, in short, the one passion of their lives--an absorbing and overwhelming greed took possession of their souls and served them in place of a hope in Heaven--by which, also, they were inspired'

The name is Boffer Bings! A boy who collects dogs for his father's cauldrons and who discards dead babies in the river, a product of his mother's discreet trade of getting rid of unwanted foundlings.

One night, escaping the suspicious police, he enters his father's dog oil premises without having had the chance to discard his load. The idea occurs quite naturally to him - why not throw it into the furnace, no one will ever notice the difference between the tender bones of a dead baby and that of a dog...except the supreme quality of the oil leads him to confess his actions to his parents who thereafter change their course....

A taste of superb style:

Within the cauldron the oil still rolled in indolent ebullition, occasionally pushing to the surface a piece of dog. Seating myself to wait for the constable to go away, I held the naked body of the foundling in my lap and tenderly stroked its short, silken hair. Ah, how beautiful it was!

From early on, the story warns the reader of its fatal ending...the lives of his parents have been ruined..provoked by some action of his:

My father will never know the bones from those of a puppy, and the few deaths which may result from administering another kind of oil for the incomparable _ol. can._ are not important in a population which increases so rapidly." 

'Looking back upon those days, I cannot but regret, at times, that by indirectly bringing my beloved parents to their death I was the author of misfortunes profoundly affecting my future.'

Told in a dry, ambiguous manner, from the point of view of a child, this story draws you in from beginning to end, engaging the reader in the underworld of illegality, hypocrisy, greed as the narrator himself notes and complicity (doctors readily prescribed dog of oil to their patients) and inhumanity. The horror of the actions is told with precision, exactitude and ease and the perplexed reader is left to ponder this little microcosm where the Church and authority are ever present but where the will of men and women triumph, where gain and profit assume godly dimensions and where lives are lived and consumed, leaving a mark and scar in the viewer.