When the first Angus Mackellar left his ancestral Lochbuy moors he brought to America the big, shaggy, broad-headed collie dog he loved—the dog that had helped him herd his employer’s sheep for the past five years.

Man and dog landed at Castle Garden a half century ago. From that time on, as for three hundred years earlier, no member of the Mackellar family was without a collie; the best and wisest to be found.

Evolution narrowed the heads and lightened the stocky frames of these collies, as the decades crawled past.

Evolution changed the successive generations of Mackellars not at all, except to rub smoother their Highland burr and to make them serve America as ardently as ever their forefathers had served Scotland. But not one of them lost his hereditary love for the dog of the moors.

Which brings us by degrees to Jamie Mackellar, grandson 144of the emigrating Angus. Jamie was twenty-eight. His tough little body was so meagrely spare that his big heart and bigger soul were almost indecently exposed. For the rest, his speech still held an occasional word or two of handed-down ancestral dialect. In moments of excitement these inherited phrases came thicker; and with them a tang of Scots accent.

Jamie lived in the cheapest suburb of Midwestburg, and in one of the suburb’s cheapest houses. But the house had a yard. And the yard harboured a glorious old collie, a rare prize winner in his day. The house in front of the yard, by the way, harboured Jamie’s Yorkshire wife and their two children, Elspeth and Donald.

Jamie divided his home time between the house and the open. So—after true Highland fashion—did the collie.

There were long rambles in the forests and the wild half-cleared land beyond the suburb; walks that meant as much to Jamie as to the dog, after the Scot had been driving a contractor’s truck six days of the week for a monthly wage of seventy-five dollars.

Now, on seventy-five dollars a month many a family lives in comfort. But the sum leaves scant margin for the less practical luxuries of life. And in a sheepless and law-abiding region a high-quality collie is a nonpractical luxury. Yet Jamie would almost as soon have thought of selling one of his thick-legged children as of accepting any of the several good offers made him for the beautiful dog which had been his chum for so many years, the dog whose prize ribbons and cups from a score of local shows made gay the trophy corner of the Mackellar kitchen-parlour.

Then, on a late afternoon,—when the grand old collie was galloping delightedly across the street to meet his home-returning master,—a delivery motor car, driven by 145a speed-drunk boy, whizzed around the corner on the wrong side of the way.

The big dog died as he had lived—gallantly and without a whine. Gathering himself up from the muck of the road he walked steadfastly forward to meet the fast-running Mackellar. As Jamie bent down to search the mired body for injuries, the collie licked his master’s dear hand, shivered slightly and fell limp across the man’s feet.

When the magistrate next morning heard that a mouth-foaming little Scot had sprung upon the running board of a delivery car and had hauled therefrom a youth of twice his size and had hammered the said youth into 100 per cent. eligibility for a hospital cot, he listened gravely to the other side of the story and merely fined Jamie one dollar.

The released prisoner returned with bent head and barked knuckles to a house which all at once had been left unto him desolate. For the first time in centuries a Mackellar was without a collie.

During the next week the Midwestburg Kennel Association’s annual dog show was held at the Fourth Regiment Armory. This show was one of the banner events of the year throughout Western dog circles. Its rich cash specials and its prestige even drew breeders from the Atlantic States to exhibit thereat the best their kennels afforded.

Thither, still hot and sore of heart, fared Jamie Mackellar. Always during the three days of the Midwestburg dog show Jamie took a triple holiday and haunted the collie section and the ringside. Here more than once his dead chum had won blue ribbon and cash over the exhibits from larger and richer kennels. And at such times Jamie Mackellar had rejoiced with a joy that was too big for words, and which could express itself only in a furtive hug of his collie’s shaggy ruff.

146To-day, as usual, Jamie entered the barnlike armory among the very first handful of spectators. To his ears the reverberant clangour of a thousand barks was as battle music; as it echoed from the girdered roof and yammered incessantly on the eardrums.

As ever, he made his way at once to the collie section. A famous New York judge was to pass upon this breed. And there was a turnout of nearly sixty collies; including no less than five from the East. Four of these came from New Jersey; which breeds more high-class collies than do any three other states in the union.

It was Jamie’s rule to stroll through the whole section, for a casual glance over the collies, before stopping at any of the benches for a closer appraisal. But to-day he came to a halt, before he had traversed the first row of stalls. His pale-blue eyes were riveted on a single dog.

Lying at lazily majestic ease on the straw of a double-size bench was a huge dark-sable collie. Full twenty-six inches high at the shoulder and weighing perhaps seventy-five pounds, this dog gave no hint of coarseness or of oversize. He was moulded as by a super-sculptor. His well-sprung ribs and mighty chest and leonine shoulders were fit complements to the classically exquisite yet splendidly strong head.

His tawny coat was as heavy as a bison’s mane. The outer coat—save where it turned to spun silk, on the head—was harsh and wavy. The under coat was as impenetrably soft as the breast of an eider duck. From gladiator shoulders the gracefully powerful body sloped back to hips which spoke of lightning speed and endurance. The tulip ears had never known weights or pincers. The head was a true wedge, from every viewpoint. The deep-set dark eyes were unbelievably perfect in expression and placment.

147Here was a collie! Here was a dog whose sheer perfection made Jamie Mackellar catch his breath for wonder, and then begin pawing frantically at his show catalogue. He read, half aloud:

729: Lochinvar Kennels. CHAMPION LOCHINVAR KING. Lochinvar Peerless—Lochinvar Queen

Followed the birth date and the words “Breeder owner.”

Jamie Mackellar’s pale eyes opened yet wider and he stared on the collie with tenfold interest; an interest which held in it a splash of reverence. Jamie was a faithful reader of the dog press. And for the past two years Champion Lochinvar King’s many pictures and infinitely more victories had stirred his admiration. He knew the dog, as a million Americans know Man-o’-War.

Now eagerly he scanned the wonder collie. Every detail,—from the level mouth and chiselled, wedge-shaped head and stern eyes with their true “look of eagles,” to the fox brush tail with its sidewise swirl at the tip—Jamie scanned with the delight of an artist who comes for the first time on a Velasquez of which he has read and dreamed. Never in his dog-starred life had the little man beheld so perfect a collie. It was an education to him to study such a marvel.

Two more men came up to the bench. One was wearing a linen duster; and fell to grooming King’s incredibly massive coat with expert hands. The other—a plump giant in exaggeratedly vivid clothes—chirped to the dog and ran careless fingers over the silken head. The collie waved his plumed tail in response to the caress. Recalling how coldly King had ignored his own friendly advances, Jamie Mackellar addressed the plump man in deep respect.

148“Excuse me, sir,” said he humbly, “but might you be Mr. Frayne—Mr. Lucius Frayne?”

The man turned with insolent laziness, eyed the shabby little figure from head to foot, and nodded. Then he went back to his inspection of King.

Not to be rebuffed, Mackellar continued:

“I remember reading about you when you started the Lochinvar Kennels, sir. That’ll be—let’s see—that’ll be the best part of eight years ago. And three years back you showed Lochinvar Peerless out here—this great feller’s sire. I’m proud to meet you, sir.”

Frayne acknowledged this tribute by another nod, this time not even bothering to turn toward his admirer.

Mackellar pattered on:

“Peerless got Americanbred and Limit, that year; and he went to Reserve Winners. If I’d ’a’ been judging, I’d of gave him Winners, over Rivers Pride, that topped him. Pride was a good inch-and-a-half too short in the brush. And the sable grew away too far from his eyes. Gave ’em a roundish, big look. He was just a wee peckle overshot too. And your Peerless outshowed him, besides. But, good as Peerless was, he wasn’t a patch on this son of his you’ve got here to-day. Losh, but it sure looks like you was due to make a killing, Mr. Frayne.”

And now the Eastern breeder deigned to face the man whose words were pattering so meekly into his heedless ears. Frayne realised this little chap was not one of the ignorant bores who pester exhibitors at every big show; but that he spoke, and spoke well, the language of the initiate. No breeder is above catering to intelligent praise of his dog. And Frayne warmed mildly toward the devotee.

“Like him, do you?” he asked, indulgently.

“Like him?” echoed Mackellar. “Like him? Man, he’s 149fifty per cent. the best I’ve set eyes on. And I’ve seen a hantle of ’em.”

“Take him down, Roke,” Frayne bade his linen-dustered kennel man. “Let him move about a bit. You can get a real idea of him when you see his action,” he continued to the dazzled Mackellar. “How about that? Hey?”

At the unfastening of his chain, Lochinvar King stepped majestically to the floor and for an instant stood gazing up at his master. He stood as might an idealised statue of a collie. Mackellar caught his breath and stared. Then with expert eyes he watched the dog’s perfect action as the kennel man led him up and down for half a dozen steps.

“He’s—he’s better even than I thought he could be,” sighed Jamie. “He looked too good to be true. Lord, it does tickle a man’s heartstrings to see such a dog! I—I lost a mighty fine collie a few days back,” he went on confidingly. “Not in King’s class, of course, sir. But a grand old dog. And—and he was my chum, too. I’m fair sick with greeting over him. It kind of crumples a feller, don’t it, to lose a chum collie? One reason I wanted to come here early to-day was to look around and see were any of the for-sale ones inside my means. I’ve never been without a collie before. And I want to get me one—a reg’lar first-rater, like the old dog—as quick as I can. It’s lonesome-like not to have a collie laying at my feet, evening times; or running out to meet me.”

Lucius Frayne listened now with real interest to the little man’s timid plaint.

As Mackellar paused, shamefaced at his own non-Scottish show of feeling, the owner of the Lochinvar Kennels asked suavely:

“What were you counting on paying for a new dog? Or hadn’t you made up your mind?”

150“Once in a blue moon,” replied Mackellar, “a pretty good one is for sale cheap. Either before the judging or if the judge don’t happen to fancy his type. I—well, if I had to, I was willing to spend a hundred—if I could get the right dog. But I tholed maybe I could get one for less.”

Still more interestedly did Frayne beam down on the earnest little Mackellar.

“It’s a pity you can’t go higher,” said he with elaborate nonconcern. “Especially since King here has caught your fancy. You see, I’ve got a four-month pup of King’s, back home. Out of my winning Lochinvar Lassie, at that. I sold all the other six in the litter. Sold ’em at gilt-edge prices; on account of their breeding. This little four-monther I’m speaking about—he was so much the best of the lot that I was planning to keep him. He’s the dead image of what King was at his age. He’s got ‘future champion’ written all over him. But—well, since you’ve lost your chum dog and since you know enough of collies to treat him right—well, if you were back East where you could look him over, I’d—well, I’d listen to your offer for him.”

He turned toward his kennel man as if ending the talk. Like a well-oiled phonograph, the linen dustered functionary spoke up.

“Oh, Mr. Frayne!” he blithered, ceasing to groom King’s wondrous coat and clasping both dirty hands together. “You wouldn’t ever go and sell the little ’un? Not Lochinvar Bobby, sir? Not the best pup we ever bred? Why, he’s 20 per cent. better than what King, here, was at his age. You’ll make a champion of him by the time he’s ten months old. Just like Doc Burrows did with his Queen Betty. He’s a second Howgill Rival, that pup 151is;—a second Sunnybank Sigurd! You sure wouldn’t go selling him? Not Bobby?”

"There’ll be other Lochinvar King pups along in a few weeks, Roke," argued Frayne conciliatingly. “And this man has just lost his only dog. If—What a pair of fools we are!” he broke off, laughing loudly. “Here we go gabbling about selling Bobby, and our friend, here, isn’t willing to go above a hundred dollars for a dog!”

The kennel man, visibly relieved, resumed operations on King with dandy-brush and cloth. But Mackellar stood looking up at Frayne as a hungry pup might plead dumbly with some human who had just taken from him his dinner bone.

“If—if he’s due to be a second Lochinvar King,” faltered Jamie, “I—I s’pose he’d be way beyond me. I’m a truck driver, you see, sir. And I’ve got a wife and a couple of kids. So I wouldn’t have any right to spend too much, just for a dog—even if I had the cash. But—gee, but it’s a chance!”

Sighing softly in renunciation, he took another long and admiring gaze at the glorious Lochinvar King; and then made as though to move away. But Lucius Frayne’s dog-loving heart evidently was touched by Jamie’s admiration for the champion and by the hinted tale of his chum dog’s death. He stopped the sadly departing Mackellar.

“Tell me more about that collie you lost,” he urged. “How’d he die? What was his breeding? Ever show him?”

Now perhaps there breathes some collie man who can resist one of those three questions about his favourite dog. Assuredly none lives who can resist all three. Mackellar, in a brace of seconds, found himself prattling eagerly to this sympathetic giant; telling of his dog’s points and wisdom 152and lovableness, and of the prizes he had won; and, last of all, the tale of his ending.

Frayne listened avidly, nodding his head and grunting consolation from time to time. At last he burst forth, on impulse:

“Look here! You know dogs. You know collies. I see that. I’d rather have a Lochinvar pup go to a man who can appreciate him, as you would, and who’d give him the sort of home you’d give him, than to sell him for three times as much, to some mucker. I’m in this game for love of the breed, not to skin my neighbours. Lochinvar Bobby is yours, friend, for a hundred and fifty dollars. I hope you’ll say no,” he added with his loud laugh, “because I’d rather part with one of my back teeth. But anyhow I feel decenter for making the offer.”

Pop-eyed and scarlet and breathing fast, Jamie Mackellar did some mental arithmetic. One hundred and fifty dollars was a breath-taking sum. Nobody knew it better than did he. But—oh, there stood Lochinvar King! And King’s best pup could be Jamie’s for that amount.

Then Mackellar bethought him of an extra job that was afloat just now in Midwestburg—a job at trucking explosives by night from the tesladite factory, over on the heights, to the railroad. It was a job few people cared for. The roads were joggly. And tesladite was a ticklish explosive. Even the company’s offer of fifty dollars a week, at short hours, had not brought forth many volunteer chauffeurs.

Yet Jamie was a careful driver. He knew he could minimise the risk. And by working three hours a night for three weeks he could clean up the price of the wonderful pup without going down into the family’s slim funds.

“You’re—you’re on!” he babbled, shaking all over with pure happiness. “In three weeks I’ll send you a money 153order. Here’s—here’s—let’s see—here’s twenty-seven dollars to bind the bargain.”

“Roke,” said Frayne, ignoring his kennel man’s almost weeping protests, “scribble out a bill of sale for Lochinvar Bobby. And see he’s shipped here the day we get this gentleman’s money order for the balance of $150. And don’t forget to send him Bobby’s papers at the same time. Seeing it’s such a golden bargain for him, he’ll not grudge paying the expressage, too. I suppose I’m a wall-eyed fool, but—say! Hasn’t a man got to do a generous action once in a while? Besides, it’s all for the good of the breed.”

Ten minutes later Mackellar tore away his ardent eyes from inspection of the grand dog whose best pup he was so soon to earn, and pattered on down the collie section.

Then and then only did Lucius Frayne and Roke look at each other. Long and earnestly they looked. And Frayne reached out his thick hand and shook his kennel man’s soiled fingers. He shook them with much heartiness. He was a democratic sportsman, this owner of the famed Lochinvar Kennels. He did not disdain to grasp the toil-hardened hand of his honest servitor; especially at a time like this.

Lochinvar King that day clove his path straight through “Open, Sable-and-White” and “Open, any Colour,” to “Winners”; in a division of fifty-eight collies. Then be annexed the cup and the forty dollars in cash awards for Best of Breed; also four other cash specials. And in the classic special for Best Dog in Show he came as near to winning as ever a present-day collie can hope to at so large a show. Jamie Mackellar, with a vibrating pride and a sense of personal importance, watched and applauded every win of his pup’s matchless sire.

“In another year,” he mused raptly, “I’ll be scooping 154up them same specials with King’s gorgeous little son. This man Frayne is sure one of the fellers that God made.”

Four weeks and two days later, a past-worthy slatted crate, labelled “Lochinvar Collie Kennels,” was delivered at Jamie’s door. It arrived a bare ten minutes after Mackellar came home from work. All the family gathered around it in the kitchen; while, with hands that would not stay steady, the head of the house proceeded to unfasten the clamps which held down its top.

It was Jamie Mackellar’ s great moment, and his wife and children were infected almost to hysteria by his long-sustained excitement.

Back went the crate lid. Out onto the kitchen floor shambled a dog.

For a long minute, as the new-arrived collie stood blinking and trembling in the light, everybody peered at him without word or motion. Jamie’s jaw had gone slack, at first sight of him. And it still hung supine; making the man’s mouth look like a frog penny bank’s.

The puppy was undersized. He was scrawny and angular and all but shapeless. At a glance, he might have belonged to any breed or to many breeds or to none. His coat was sparse and short and kinky; and through it glared patches of lately-healed eczema. The coat’s colour was indeterminate, what there was of it. Nor had four days in a tight crate improved its looks.

The puppy’s chest was pitifully narrow. The sprawly legs were out at elbow and cow-hocked. The shoulders were noteworthy by the absence of any visible sign of them. The brush was an almost hairless rat-tail. The spine was sagged and slightly awry.

But the head was the most direful part of the newcomer. Its expressionless eyes were sore and dull. Its ears hung limp as a setter’s. The nose and foreface were as snubbily 155broad as a Saint Bernard’s. The slack jaw was badly overshot. The jowls showed a marked tendency to cheekiness and the skull seemed to be developing an apple-shaped dome in place of the semi-platform which the top of a collie’s head ought to present.

Breed dogs as carefully and as scientifically as you will; once in a way some such specimen will be born into even the most blue-blooded litter;—a specimen whose looks defy all laws of clean heredity; a specimen which it would be gross flattery to call a mutt.

One of three courses at such times can be followed by the luckless breeder: To kill the unfortunate misfit; to give it away to some child who may or may not maul it to death; or to swindle a buyer into paying a respectable price for it.

Thriftily, Lucius Frayne had chosen the third course. And no law could touch him for the deal. He had played as safe, in his dirty trade, as does any vivisector.

Mackellar had bought the dog, sight unseen. Frayne had guaranteed nothing save the pedigree, which was flawless. He had said the creature was the image of King at the same age. But he had said it in the presence of no witness save his own kennel man. And the statement, in any event, was hard of refutal by law.

No; Frayne, like many another shrewd professional dog breeder, had played safe. And he had annexed one hundred and fifty dollars, in peril-earned hoardings, for a beast whose true cash value was less than eight cents to any one. He had not even bothered to give the cur a high-sounding pedigree name.

There stood, or crouched, the trembling and whimpering wisp of worthlessness; while the Mackellar family looked on in dumb horror. To add to the pup’s ludicrous aspect, an enormous collar hung dangling from his neck. 156Frayne had been thrifty, in even this minor detail. Following the letter of the transportation rules, he had “equipped the dog with suitable collar and chain.” But the chain, which Jamie had unclasped in releasing the pup from the crate, had been a thing of rust and flimsiness. The collar had been outworn by some grown dog. To keep it from slipping off over the puppy’s head Roke had fastened to it a twist of wire, whose other end was enmeshed in the scattering short hairs of the youngster’s neck. From this collar’s ring still swung the last year’s license tag of its former wearer.

It was little Elspeth who broke the awful spell of silence.

"Looks—looks kind of—of measly, don’t he?“ she volunteered.

”Jamie Mackellar!" shrilled her mother, finding voice and wrath in one swift gasp. “You—you went and gambled with your life on them explosion trucks—and never told me a word about it till it was over—just to earn money to buy—to buy—that!”

Then Jamie spoke. And at his first luridly sputtered sentence his wife shooed the children out of the room in scandalised haste. But from the cottage’s farthest end she could hear her spouse’s light voice still raised to shrill falsetto. He seemed to be in earnest converse with his Maker, and the absence of his wife and children from the room lent lustre and scope to his vocabulary.

Outside, the night was settling down bitterly chill. A drifting snow was sifting over the frozen earth. The winter’s worst cold spell was beginning. But in the firelit kitchen a hope-blasted and swindled man was gripped by a boiling rage that all the frigid outer world could not have cooled.

Presently, through his sputtering soliloquy, Mackellar 157found time and justice to note that Lochinvar Bobby was still shaking with the cold of his long wagon ride through the snow from the station. And sullenly the man went out to the refrigerator in the back areaway for milk to warm for the sufferer.

He left the door open behind him. Into the kitchen seeped the deadly chill of night. It struck the miserable Bobby and roused him from the apathy of fright into which his advent to the bright room had immersed him.

The fright remained, but the impotence to move was gone. Fear had been born in his cringing soul, from the harsh treatment meted out to him in the place of his birth by kennel men who scoffed at his worthlessness. Fear had increased fifty fold by his long and clangorous journey across half the continent. Now, fear came to a climax.

He had cowered in helpless terror before these strangers, here in the closed room. He had sensed their hostility. But now for an instant the strangers had left him. Yes, and the back door was standing ajar—the door to possible escape from the unknown dangers which beset him on all sides.

Tucking his ratlike tail between his cow-hocks, Bobby put down his head and bolted. Through the doorway he scurried, dodging behind the legs of Jamie Mackellar as he fled through the refrigerator-blocked areaway. Jamie heard the scrambling footfalls, and turned in time to make a belated grab for the fleeing dog.

He missed Bobby by an inch; and the man’s gesture seemed to the pup a new menace. Thus had Roke and the other kennel men struck at him in early days; or had seized him by tail or hind leg as he fled in terror from their beatings.

Out into the unfenced yard galloped the panic-driven 158Bobby. And through the pitch blackness Mackellar stumbled in utterly futile pursuit. The sound of Jamie’s following feet lent new speed to the cowed youngster. Instead of stopping, after a few moments, he galloped on, with his ridiculous wavering and sidewise gait.

Mackellar lived on the outskirts of the suburb, which, in turn, was on the outskirts of the city. By chance or by instinct Bobby struck ahead for the rocky ridge which divided denser civilisation from the uncleared wilderness and the patches of farm country to the north. Nor did the puppy cease to run until he had topped, puffingly, the ridge’s summit. There he came to a shambling halt and peered fearfully around him.

On the ridge-crest, the wind was blowing with razor sharpness. It cut like a billion waxed whiplashes, through the sparse coat and against the sagging ribs of the pup. It drove the snow needles into his watering eyes, and it stung the blown-back insides of his sensitive ears. He cowered under its pitiless might, as under a thrashing; and again he began to whimper and to sob.

Below him, from the direction whence he had wormed his slippery way up the ridge, lay the squalidly flat bit of plain with its sprinkle of mean houses; behind it, the straggling suburb whence he had escaped; and behind that, the far-reaching tangle of glare and blackness which was Midwestburg, with miles of lurid light reflection on the low-hanging clouds.

Turning, the puppy looked down the farther slope of his ridge to the rolling miles of forest and clearing, with wide-scattered farmsteads and cottages. The wilds seemed less actively and noisily terrifying than the glare and muffled roar of the city behind him. And, as anything was better than to cower freezing there in the wind’s 159full path, Bobby slunk down the ridge’s northern flank and toward the naked black woodlands beyond its base.

The rock edges and the ice cut his uncalloused splay feet. Even out of the wind, the chill gnawed through coat and skin. The world was a miserable place to do one’s living in. Moreover, Bobby had not eaten in more than twenty-four hours; although a pup of his age is supposed to be fed not less than four times a day.

The rock-strewn ridge having been passed, the going became easier. Here, on the more level ground, a snow carpet made it softer, if colder. No longer running, but at a loose-jointed wolf trot, Bobby entered the woods. A quarter mile farther on, he stopped again; at sight of something which loomed up at a height of perhaps three feet above the half-acre of cleared ground about it.

He had strayed into the once-popular Blake’s Woods Picnic Grove, and the thing which arrested his sick glance was the dancing platform which had been erected at the grove’s painfully geometrical centre.

Years agone, Blake’s Woods had been a favourite outing ground for Midwestburg’s workers. The coming of the interurban trolley, which brought Boone Lake Beach within half an hour of the city, had turned these woods into a dead loss as far as local pleasure seekers were concerned. The benches had been split up or stolen or had rotted. The trim central patch of green sward had been left to grow successive unmown harvests of ragweed.

The dancing platform, with its once-smooth floor and the bright-painted lattice which ran around its base, was sharing the fate of the rest of the grove. The floor was sunken and holey. The laths of the lattice had fallen away in one or two places, and everywhere they had been washed free of their former gay paint.

Bobby’s aimless course took him past one end of the 160platform, as soon as he discovered it was harmless and deserted. A furtive sidelong glance, midway of the latticed stretch, showed him a weed-masked hole some two feet square, where the laths had been ripped away or had been kicked in. The sight awoke vague submemories, centuries old, in the artificially reared pup. Thus had his wolf forbears seen, and explored for den purposes, gaps between rocks or under windfalls. Bobby, moving with scared caution, crept up to the opening, sniffed its musty interior; and, step by step, ventured in under the platform.

Here it was still bitter cold; yet it was sensibly warmer than in the open. And, year after year, dead leaves had been wind-drifted through the gap. Riffles of them lay ankle deep near the entrance. Down into the thickest of the riffles the wretched puppy wiggled his shivering way. There he lay, still shaking, but gaining what scant comfort he might from the warmth of the leaves beneath and around him.

Presently from sheer nervous fatigue he snoozed.

It was past midnight when Bobby awoke. He was awakened less by cold than by ravening hunger. His was not the normal increase of appetite that had come upon him at such times as the Lochinvar kennel men had been an hour or so late with his dinner. This was the first phase of famine.

Fear and discomfort had robbed him of hunger throughout the train journey. But now he was safe away from the strangers who had seemed to menace his every move; and he had had a few hours of sleep to knit his frayed nerves. He was more than hungry. He was famished. All his nature cried out for food.

Now, never in his brief life had Lochinvar Bobby found his own meals. Never had he so much as caught a mouse 161or rifled a garbage pail. In sanitary man-made kennel run and hutch had he passed all his time. Not his had been the human companionship which sharpens a collie’s brain as much as does stark need. And he had no experience of food, save that which had been served him in a tin dish. He did not know that food grows in any other form or place.

But here was no tin dish heaped with scientifically balanced, if uninspired, rations. Here was no manner of food at all. Bobby nosed about among the dead leaves and the mould of his new-found den. Nothing was there which his sense of smell recognised as edible. And goaded by the scourge of hunger he ventured out again into the night. The wind had dropped. But the cold had only intensified; and a light snow was still sifting down.

Bobby stood and sniffed. Far off, his sensitive nostrils told him, was human habitation. Presumably that meant food was there, too. Humans and food, in Bobby’s experience, always went together. The pup followed the command of his scent and trotted dubiously toward the distant man-reek.

In another quarter-hour the starving pup was sniffing about the locked kitchen door of a farmhouse. Within, he could smell milk and meat and bread. But that was all the good it did him. Timidly he skirted the house for ingress. Almost had he completed the round when a stronger odour smote his senses. It was a smell which, of old he would have disregarded. But, with the primal impulse of famine, other atavistic traits were stirring in the back of his necessity-sharpened brain.

His new scent was not of prepared food, but of hot and living prey. Bobby paused by the unlatched door of the farm chicken coop. Tentatively he scratched at the white-washed panel. Under the pressure the door swung inward. 162Out gushed a pleasant warmth and a monstrously augmented repetition of the whiff which had drawn him to the henhouse.

Just above him, well within reach, perched fifteen or twenty feathery balls of varicoloured fluff. And famine did the rest.

Acting on some impulse wholly beyond his ken, Bobby sprang aloft and drove his white milk teeth deep into the breast of a Plymouth Rock hen.

Instantly, his ears were assailed by a most ungodly racket. The quiet hencoop was hideous with eldritch squawks and was alive with feathers. All Bobby’s natural fear urged him to drop this flapping and squawking hen and to run for his life.

But something infinitely more potent than fear had taken hold upon him. Through his fright surged a sensation of mad rapture. He had set teeth in live prey. Blood was hot in his nostrils. Quivering flesh was twisting and struggling between his tense jaws. For the moment he was a primitive forest beast.

Still gripping his noisy five-pound burden, he galloped out of the hencoop and across the barnyard; heading instinctively for the lair in which he had found a soft bed and safety from human intruders. As he fled, he heard a man’s bellowing voice. A light showed in an upper window of the house. Bobby ran the faster.

The hen was heavy, for so spindling a killer. But Bobby’s overshot jaws held firm. He dared not pause to eat his kill, until he should be safe away from the shouting man.

Stumbling into his platform den, half dead with hunger and fatigue, the dog sought his bed of leaves. And there he feasted, rather than ate. For never before had he known such a meal. And when the last edible morsel of 163it was gorged, he snuggled happily down in his nest and slept.

Poultry bones are the worst and most dangerous fare for any domesticated dog. Their slivers tear murderously at throat and stomach and intestines; and have claimed their slain victims by the hundred. Yet, since the beginning of time, wild animals, as foxes and wolves, have fed with impunity on such bones. No naturalist knows just why. And for some reason Bobby ............