Chapter III: Part 3

In contrast with the bright glare of the cornfield it was dark in the woods, like passing from out of doors into the cool, shaded living room back home. Here and there shafts of sunlight pierced the dense foliage and touched leaves and tree trunks with silver spots. Down the heavy-wooded slope the boy went, but more cautiously now. Suddenly he stopped breathless, Frank beside him with pricked ears. At the same time the two men, both at work on the car down there by the pool, both burly and flushed of face, glanced quickly around.

A moment they stared; then they began to talk, low, excitedly. The woman came around from the other side of the car. She was young, slim, strong; she was in a crimson shirtwaist and on her cheeks were spots of red. She, too, glanced at boy and dog, then joined the talk of the men. "No! No!" she cried. They brushed her aside; she ran quickly back to them; they brushed her aside again. Finally one of them pushed her into the car, pulled the shabby curtains down, and got in himself. The other man came forward, a smirking smile on his heavy red face.

Close to the boy stood Frank, his challenging eyes fastened on that smirking face. But Tommy, looking up with that eagerness to trust common to all young things from children to puppies, answered the man's questions in his clear boy's voice. Many times before, at Tom Belcher's store, at the Hunt Club, at country fairs, strangers had stopped thus to talk to him, had asked him who he was, where he lived, if his dog would bite. Many times before such strangers had smiled down into his upturned face.

"We got lots of things in the car," the man was saying, "apples, peaches, circus things. We been to a circus. Did you see the lady?"

"I did!" said Tommy, breathless, his eyes big.

"Well, you come along with me. The lady wants to show you them circus things."

Just a moment Tommy hesitated. He looked up wistfully into the smiling face and into the narrowed eyes that somehow frightened him. Then he glanced toward the car and smiled in ecstasy. That rolled-up tent strapped on behind was striped red-and-white like tents at the fair: merry-go-round tents, tents with shawled women who held your hand and told you what was going to happen. The woods became suddenly alive with romance, luring him to see. He hesitated no longer. He went with the man, one hand on his hat brim as if the wind were blowing. Close behind, panting, followed old Frank.

The car flecked with spots of light looked big here in the woods like a strayed elephant. The other man, on the front seat, his hand on the wheel, glanced over his shoulder as they approached. In his wide-brimmed hat he looked like the man who stands in front of tents and shouts for people to come in and see. Half concealed by the curtains and by bundles, the woman, her face strangely white except for red spots, sat on the back seat. Valises and suitcases with gaudy things sticking out of them were strapped here and there to the car. Tommy stopped and stared in wonderment at this travelling splendour. Close beside him stood old Frank, fierce-eyed, wise, suffering.

"Get in, son," said the man at the wheel, his voice gruff and husky. "We're goin' to take you to your ma. You ain't got no business down here in the woods alone. Quick now--no fooling!"

But Tommy drew back.

"Is--is F'ank goin'?"

"Sure. Let the dog in, Bill."

The red-faced man slammed the door on boy and dog and clambered heavily into the front seat. The lumbering car lurched and swayed along the unused wood road. It was stifling hot in here with the curtains down, but old Frank, wedged in between bundles and suitcases, was panting with more than heat. And Tommy, into whose face he looked with flattened ears and eyes solemn with devotion, was suddenly pale.

Just ahead, the big road came into sight, shining in the sun. The car stopped. The woman against whose knees boy and dog were pressed in the crowded space was breathing fast. The crimson, sleazy shirtwaist rose and fell. Her face, in spite of the red spots, was pasty, as if she might faint. The men looked up and down the road, nodded grimly at each other, and the car started with a jerk. The scream of Tommy broke the terrible silence.

"That ain't the way! That ain't----!"

The red-faced man whirled around, caught the boy by the back of the neck and pressed the other hand over his mouth. And old Frank, rearing up in the crowded confusion, buried his shining fangs deep in that hand and wrist. The other man sprang out of the car, jerked the door open, and caught him by both hind legs.

"Don't stick him, Bill!" he gasped. "They'll find his body. Let him go home!"

Snarling, writhing, fighting, Frank was dragged out and hurled into the road. A savage kick sent him tumbling backward; the man sprang once more into the front seat. The car darted away, Frank after it, barking hoarsely in his rage and horror, his mouth flecked with bloody foam, the road flying dizzily underneath him.

All that blazing August day he followed the car--followed though at the next patch of woods it stopped and a man jumped out with a shotgun. He was a hunting dog; he knew what that meant. Like a big red fox caught prowling about after daylight, he sprang into the bushes and disappeared from sight. After that he did not show himself again. Where he could, he stayed in the woods, running parallel to the road like a swift, silent outrider. At open places he lagged shrewdly behind; by short cuts through fields, by spurts of speed at the next patch of woods, he caught up again. It was an old trick and a simple one; he had played it often before; but never, as now, with such gnawing anxiety, such bewilderment and rage in his heart.

Once, lumbering old rattletrap though it was, the car left him far behind. Then as he raced frantically along the dusty road under the fierce sun that beat down on his heavy red coat, his eyes were like a mad dog's eyes. But from the top of a long hill over which it had disappeared he glimpsed it again in the distance--glimpsed it just as it turned clumsily out of the highway and pointed its nose toward the distant mountains.

After this it was easy. A mongrel cur might have kept up, much less a seasoned thoroughbred. Up and down hill ahead of him the car swayed and wallowed laboriously in an unused, gully-washed road. There was constant shade in which to stop and pant, there were frequent streams in which to lie for a moment, half submerged, and cool his boiling blood. Noon passed without any halt. The sultry afternoon wore slowly away. Still the big setter, his silver-studded collar tinkling slightly like tiny shining castanets, galloped after that disreputable car as if he belonged to it and had been left carelessly behind.

It never entered his head to turn back. Life was a simple thing to him. There were no pros and cons in his philosophy. Yet he watched every turn of that car, always on the alert, always ready to spring aside into the bushes if it stopped. That man had meant murder; to show himself meant death. He was a chauvinist, but he was no fool. The boy needed him alive, not dead.

But the first sight of the boy was almost too much for him. The car had turned out of the road at last. It bumped a while through woods, stopped, and he sank down behind a bush. The sun had just set. Yonder through a gap in the trees rose the dome of a heavy-wooded mountain. Above it a vast pink and white evening cloud boiled motionless into the sky. Beyond this mountain rolled the solid blue undulations of whole ranges. For miles they had not passed a house. The breathless heat of a wilderness hung over this place.

The men, stiff, dusty, hot, got out. The heavy man's hand was bandaged. Then the woman got out; then the boy. A great trembling desire seized the dog to rush forward, to let the boy know he was here. Every muscle quivered; he choked and swallowed; he looked off as if to avoid temptation. But one of the men pulled a shotgun out of the car and the dog bowed his head between his paws in a sort of shame. That was the symbol of his helplessness. That was what stood between his fangs and those men's throats.

He watched them strip the car of its baggage. They unstrapped the tent and dragged it off to the depths of a thicket beyond. Valises, telescopes, all the cheap pageantry of their trade, went the same way. They were staking everything on the prize that had walked into their hands that morning, coming like a little prince from that big white house that sat amidst its trees on the hill surrounded by broad fields rich with corn and tobacco and cotton.

At last the man who had driven the car picked up the gun. The woman, one arm full of bundles, took the boy by the hand. He drew back, looking up at her and holding to his hat. She spoke to him low and huskily, her face white. Then, as he perforce went with her, Frank heard him crying in the woods, heard the convulsive catches of his voice, saw the twinkle, through the trees, of white socks above reluctant, sandalled feet.

Eyes sullen and fierce, he rose and followed. Down the hill, where a creek gurgled, the man with the gun turned. He was hard-jawed, pale-eyed. The boy and woman stopped.

"Shut up!" he said.

The crying stopped; the convulsive sobs went on.

"Shut up!"

A few steps the dog rushed forward, hair risen all the way down his back. Then he sank down on the ground. For the woman had dropped the bundles and was on her knees before the boy, her arm about his heaving shoulders. Frank saw the whiteness of her face as she looked up at the man above her. Her voice rang through the woods, husky and shrill, but suppressed.

"He can't help it, Joe!"

The crying had stopped now. But the sturdy little chest was still rising and falling as the boy stood looking up with quivering face at the man. The woman picked up her bundles, rose, and took his hand once more. Still holding to his hat he went with her, in silence now, taking two little trotting steps to one of hers.

They spent the night in the woods, out of hearing of any chance passer-by along the road. Carefully hidden in the underbrush old Frank watched them. Only once did he leave them. Then he went to the car, found a big chunk of side-meat wrapped in a paper under the back seat, made his meal off his enemies, and came guardedly back, licking his chops. They were gone again before day. The rising sun found the car toiling upward into the echoing depths of the mountains. Just around the last bend in the road followed old Frank.

Sometimes he trotted, sometimes he broke into a gallop. Sometimes he stopped to drink at streams that came slipping down green walls of rock, crossed the road like snakes, and dived into the foliage below. His tongue hung out; he was gaunt, dust-covered, weary-eyed. The few mountaineers he passed looked at him with narrow suspicion, then back up the winding road where that curtained car had disappeared. With just a glance up into their faces, he galloped by.

But when another car, long, black, shining, like the one at home, swung suddenly around the bed just ahead, he stopped short. The weariness left his eyes, the stiffness went out of his muscles, his heart gave a great bound. Four sportsmen, such as he and his master associated with, bobbed comfortably up and down in the capacious seats of that approaching car. Their fishing rods were strapped to the side. He saw the shine of the sun on their ruddy faces, the twinkle in their eyes as they stopped.

"What's up, old man?" they asked.

Maybe he got a bit rattled. Anyway, he failed. He ran up the road in the direction of that other car, wheeled, and ran back. He jumped up on the step with his front paws, he looked up with pleading eyes from one face to another.

"Those folks left him behind," they said.

They assured him that it was a shame to treat a good old scout that way, but he could catch up if he kept plugging. They said if the road were not too narrow they would turn round, give him a lift and his people a piece of their minds. They threw him something to eat, they wished him good luck, and left him standing in the road, looking after them with disconsolate eyes.

After he had eaten the food and taken up his solitary pursuit, he heard in the road far below the sound of their car. Even their voices floated up to him between the narrow walls of the echoing gorge.

"I tell you," said one, "it was an S O S! We ought to have followed him. Something queer about that car."

But they were gone for all that, like the friends who, whether we be man or woman or dog, daily pass us by, willing to help if they only understood.

It was dusk when he caught up. The car had reached the flattened top of the lofty range it had been climbing all day. From behind a bush he watched it turn out of the road. Like some mammoth beast astray it bumped and swayed across a desolate field of broomstraw with borders that plunged abruptly off into space. In the middle of the field grew a black thicket of stunted pines, huddled densely together up here under the sky. On the side of the thicket away from the road the car stopped, and Frank crept into the pines and lay down. The men got out, then the woman, then the boy.

He saw Tommy looking all about in bewilderment at this roof of the world on which, a lonely little figure, he stood close to the woman. Again the longing seized the dog to rush forward, to let the boy know he, too, was here. But there were the men close by; and in the car was the gun. Again he bowed his head between his paws; and his eyes in the faint glow from the light that still lingered in the sky were deep with loneliness and trouble.

Suddenly the man who had driven the car turned. He glanced at the woman and the boy, then toward the road. He took his pipe out of his mouth.

"Here, you get back in that car, kid!" he said.

This time Tommy stood his ground sturdily, but his upturned face was white in the dusk, and he held tight to the skirt of the woman.

"Did you hear me?"

"He's dead tired, Joe!" snapped the woman.

The man took a sudden threatening step forward. In the thicket Frank rose quivering to his feet. But with a quick movement the woman had pushed the boy behind her. "Don't you touch him, Joe!" she flashed. A moment she stood facing him, slim, defiant in the dusk. Then she took the boy's hand and they went back to the car.

Suddenly Frank rose on his front legs, ears thrown back, eyes glowing wildly. It seemed to him that the boy had looked straight into the bushes where he lay. Certainly for a moment he had pulled back on the woman's hand. Then he went on with her and they got into the car. But Frank still sat on his haunches, panting and choking and panting again.

At last he crept along the edge of the thicket and lay there close to the car. He was still panting. That glimpse full into the boy's face had almost undone him. He was hungry for food, and hungry for human companionship. He wanted to go to the car, to rear up on the side to scratch at the curtains. But yonder, a hundred feet away, back and forth before a fire they had built, moved the men. And against the box they had taken from the car leaned the gun.

Within the car he heard the voice of the woman, low, confidential, assuring, and his ears flattened with gratitude and trust. The man wouldn't hurt him, she was telling the boy. Sometimes he talked to everybody that way. He was an old grouch, that's what he was. She whispered something.

"To-morrow?" the boy asked eagerly.

"Hush! Sure. That's it--to-morrow!"

"Did F'ank go home, Nita?"

"Sure he went home."

"I saw a dog in the bushes!"

The woman laughed. "You're seeing things, old scout. What about some supper?"

She got out of the car and went quickly to the fire the men had built. Without a word to them she gathered up something to eat and came quickly back. Even in the darkness Frank could see the light in her eyes.

The boy must have gone to sleep soon after that. The moon, big, weird, solemn, rose slowly over yonder parallel range of mountains. The men at the fire talked low and mumbling between long intervals. Presently the heavy man rose, skirted the thicket, and stumbled off across the field toward the road. The smell of him polluted the air no more. Then the woman came quietly out of the car and joined the other man at the fire.

"Where's he gone?" she asked.

"To get the lay of the land."

She sat down opposite him, her knees drawn up, her chin in her hand.

"Joe?"

"Well?"

"The kid's got me, Joe!"

He said nothing and she talked on, her voice low. Still he said nothing. Then she went over to him, sat down beside him, took his hand in hers. "Let's take him home!" she pleaded, her voice rising. "Let's make a clean breast of it. Let's begin all over again. Let's be straight. They'll give us a chance--I know they will. They're like the kid--white. I know they are. Let's turn round right now. I promised him we'd take him home to-morrow. I couldn't help it! Joe, Joe, I'd rather be dead than go on!"

She rose when he rose, clinging to him. He threw her off, she ran to him, and he threw her off again, his face distorted in the moonlight. "I'm tired of this sob stuff!" he cried. "We're in this thing and we're goin' to see it through!"

"You'll wake him!" she gasped.

"Let him wake! The daddy'll come across or I'll wring the brat's neck!"

"Oh!" she screamed.

She stared at him with white face, full of horror and fear and loathing. She turned and stumbled toward the car, the curtains closed upon her. Far in the night Frank heard her sobbing to herself.

His eyes were green with hatred as he followed the car the next day. A few crumbs of bread from the deserted camping place, a taste of potted meat from a can he held fiercely between his paws while he licked the inside, had made his meagre breakfast. There were times that day when, if the men had looked behind, they must have seen him. There were times when he would not have cared if they had. Close around the bends, within sight sometimes where the road straightened, he trotted or loped wearily along, tongue lolling out, collar loose on his neck. So another day wore away and mid-afternoon came. Then the car stopped, and from force of habit, as it were, he turned aside for the last time into the bushes.

Suddenly his panting ceased, he raised his head, and pricked his ears. From the valley below had come the smell of human habitations mingled with the faint tinkle of a cowbell and the sound of a hammer. Eyes bright in an instant, he watched the man climb stiffly out of the car ahead. The other and bulkier man clambered from between the curtains of the rear where he had ridden all that day. They talked for a while low and guardedly. They glanced suspiciously up and down the rough road they had been following, then down a shaded road that led pleasantly to the valley below.

"There ain't an inch of gas left," said the man who had driven the car. "It's the last chance for fifty miles."

"Have you looked in the can?" asked the heavy man, his face worried.

"You saw me empty it last night, didn't you?" sneered the other.

He pulled a big can out of the car, then he parted the curtains.

"See here, kid, you want to keep damn quiet--hear?"

No sound came from within.

"Did you hear me?"

The voice sounded muffled in a sort of sob.

"Yes, sir!"

"All right. Remember! I'm comin' back."

He fastened the curtains together. He muttered directions to his uneasy companion. "You drive up to them bushes and wait." He put in his hip pocket something that flashed brilliantly, even pleasantly, in the sun, he put on his coat, picked up the can, and started down the shaded road. And old Frank, fierce eyes shrewd, hair risen all the way down his gaunt back, rose guardedly, crept through the bushes, came out in the road behind and followed.

Old Frank had been a companion of men all his days. He had hunted with them, shared their food and fire, looked up with steady, open eyes into their faces. He had never had a human enemy before. But now he stalked this man as his ancestors had stalked big game--muscles tense, head low between gaunt shoulder blades, eyes hard and bloodshot. When the man turned he would rush forward and spring at his throat.

But the man hurried on, and looked neither to the right nor left, nor behind him. Thus they came suddenly out of a wilderness into a village that straggled up the sides of mountains. There were glimpses of white cottages clinging to abrupt hillsides, or rambling steps leading to green summer lawns, or swings in the shade, or white-clad, romping children--children like Tommy Earle.

Yonder down the street glass knobs of telephone poles glistened in the sun. At the end of the street rose the white columns of a long building with a big, black, dust-covered car in front. Women in white, children with nurses, sallow mountain folk, were abroad in the first coolness of the afternoon. It was the busy season, when the heat of cities drives people to the fresh air of the mountains and a hundred such villages spring into life and laughter.

Through this holiday crowd went the red-faced, dusty man. Twenty paces behind followed the gaunt Irish setter. People stopped in the street to look back at him. Children pulled on their nurses' hands, thrilling to make friends with such a big dog, then pulled back, distrustful of the look in his eyes. Man, then dog, passed the drug store where behind plate-glass windows cool-dressed men and women sat at slender tables. Next to the drug store was a brick garage with a gasolene meter in front. About the entrance loitered a group of men watching. One was bigger than the rest and wore a wide-brimmed hat.

Through this group pushed the man with the ten-gallon can. Close behind now followed the gaunt Irish setter. It happened quickly, like one of those mountain tragedies that brood over such places, remnants of feuds that hang on to the skirts of civilization. Two muffled pistol shots broke the peace and security of the village and brought men running to the garage. For the man with the ten-gallon can had turned at last, and Frank had sprung straight at his throat.

From the confusion of crowding men came the hoarse shout,

"Turn me loose! Let me kill that dog! Can't you see? He's mad as hell!"

"I've got the dog all right!" cried the big man in the broad-brimmed hat. "If he's mad I'll 'tend to him!"

Plunging, barking, begging to be turned loose, old Frank was dragged backward across the cement floor. In the door of a glass-enclosed office the big man, holding tight to his collar, turned.

"Here--you--Sam!" he panted. "Run to the hotel. Tell Mr. Earle--the gentleman that just came with his wife--we got a man down here and a red Irish setter. Quick! Catch him before he leaves!"

Then they were in the office, and the door was shut. The big man had sunk breathless into a chair still holding to the dog's collar. He was quiet now. But the blood that dripped slowly on the floor was no redder than his eyes. The door opened and he plunged forward. But it was a stranger--a young man with a star on his coat.

"Sam got 'em, Sheriff," he said, "they're comin' now. Must I bring the man in here?"

"No. Keep him out there. This fellow's still seein' red."

"Hit?"

"Ear. That's all."

"Well, he left his mark on that devil, all right!"

The young man went out. Still the sheriff held the dog's collar. Still through the glass windows the crowd stared in. But suddenly it parted and then Frank saw them.

"Hold on!" panted the sheriff. "No use to tear the house down. They'll be in here in a minute!"

The door opened, they were in the office, the sheriff had turned him loose. He was jumping up against his tall master, long ears thrown back, upraised eyes aglow, heart pounding against his lean ribs. But it was the look in his young mistress's eyes that brought him down to the floor before her in sudden recollection that went straight to his heart, that set him all atremble with choking eagerness.

"Take us to him, Frank!" she gasped, her hands clenched tight against her breast.

He led them--master and mistress and strange officers, neighbours from back home, old Squire Kirby, Bob Kelley, John Davis--led them out of the town, up the shaded road across which slanting sunbeams gently sifted. He led them to that car he had followed secretly through the days and watched without sleep through the nights. Only his master's low-voiced command held him back with them.

"Steady, Frank! Steady, old man!"

But they must have made some noise, quiet as they tried to be. For before they reached the car the heavy man scrambled out, stared for a moment in stupid bewilderment, then threw both hands high up over his head.

"Don't shoot!" he pleaded hoarsely, his heavy face aquiver. "We ain't done the kid no harm!"

Then it was that Frank broke away and rushed at last to that curtained car. With shining eyes he sprang into the front, over the seat, into the rear. Tommy's arms were about his neck, Tommy was crying over and over to the woman, all out of breath:

"It's F'ank, Nita! He didn't go home. I saw him in the bushes!"

"It's your mother, too," she said. "Come after you." She tried to smile. "I told you it would be to-day--didn't I?" She snatched him to her and kissed him fiercely. She opened the door. "Good-bye, old scout," she whispered. Then she turned to Frank. "Go!" she panted and her lips trembled. "Go!"

Outside the car Frank stood by, quivering with pride while the boy passed from the mother's high up into the father's arms. He saw the light in their faces, the flash of the sun on the boy's curls, the smiles of the men who looked on. Then the shadow of terrible days and nights fell across his happiness and for the second time that day he saw red. For the woman had stepped out of the car, and the big sheriff had caught her by the arm.

The dog glanced up, bewildered, into the faces about him. But none of them had seen. He ran to the woman; he took his stand beside her, looking up at the sheriff with fierce, pleading eyes. But the sheriff still held her arm, and the dog growled, partly in anger, partly in trouble. Then Tommy saw, too. He wriggled loose from his father; he came running to their help.

"Let go of her!" he screamed, and caught the woman's skirt with both hands, "Papa, make him let her go!"

But it was his mistress who understood, who came to them with shining face and caught the woman by both hands. He knew it was all right now, even when the woman sank down on the car step and sobbed brokenly, her face buried in her hands. For the sheriff had stepped back, and his mistress was at her side, an arm about her shoulder.

"No, Sheriff," she said, looking up at him, and the sun sparkled in her eyes.

"We won't say anything about this, gentlemen," Earle said quietly to the men.

That night Frank lay in the crowded lobby of the hotel, ears pricked toward the wide-screened dining-room door. He had already had his supper, out in the rear courtyard near the kitchen where many dishes rattled.

"Two porterhouse steaks--raw," Steve Earle had said.

"And a big dish of ice cream," Marian Earle had added with a smile, for old Frank was an epicure in his way.

And now the sheriff was telling the crowd about him.

"He followed that car for two hundred miles. That was nothin'--been huntin' all his life. But he kept out of sight--that's the thing! They never saw him, and he never left them. That's what put us on the trail. That's the reason the boy's eatin' supper with his father and mother in there instead of bein' out in the woods with them brutes."

He puffed at his cigar.

"Some men fishing in the mountains passed him. He tried to flag 'em. Yes, sir--that's what he tried to do. But they didn't catch on. Might have, but didn't. Next day they read in the papers about a boy and Irish setter being lost. Then they caught on and telephoned Mr. Earle."

"The woman that came in with the mother and went upstairs with her," asked a man, "who's she?"

The big sheriff took the cigar out of his mouth and looked at the questioner with narrow, disapproving eyes.

"She didn't have a thing to do with it, sir!" he declared.

From the dining room came the sound of chairs pushed back, and Frank rose to his feet. He met them at the door, he stood beside the boy while the people gathered around, he went upstairs with them, the boy holding tight to his heavy red mane.

"That old Joe!" Tommy was saying breathlessly, as they went down the carpeted hall. "He can't get us any more. The sheriff he locked him up in a jail. He can't get Nita, either. Mama's goin' to take care of her. Mama says so!"

He was still talking, his eyes big, when they went into a brightly lighted room where a little bed set beside a big one. He was still talking while his mother undressed him. Then before he got into bed a spasm of virtuous reaction seized him. He and F'ank were never going to leave the yard any more, he declared. They never were going to get in any more automobiles with people!

"No," smiled Earle from his great height down at the little figure in borrowed pyjamas, "I guess you're cured, old man!"

The rug beside Tommy's bed was very soft, and Frank was very tired. But sometime in the silent darkness of that night he barked hoarsely in the agony of a dream. For they were on top of a mountain, and a weird moon had risen, and a woman had screamed.

V

AN ACT OF GOD

There must have been something prophetic in Mac's fear of thunder when he was a puppy. For, though all puppies are afraid of it, and most grown dogs for that matter, still, Mac's fear, according to Tom Jennings, his master, was more than that of the ordinary dog. That is, until the blow came. After that it was different with Mac.

Maybe he thought, having smitten him once, that lightning would smite him no more. Maybe some change had taken place in his nature which we humans cannot analyze or understand. Let this be as it may, the fact is that Mac, after his second year, feared thunder no more.

In law a stroke of lightning is known as an Act of God. If such is the case, it seems strange that this stroke should have fallen on Sunday night and in a God-fearing and God-serving household. As a matter of fact, Tom Jennings, his wife and three children had just driven home from church at Breton Junction and Tom, assisted by Frank, his boy of sixteen, had put up the horses. Then, as the cloud was an unusually threatening one, they all gathered in the parlour.

It was the ordinary parlour of country people who are self-respecting but neither well-to-do nor educated. There was a fancy organ, a flowered carpet; there were gaudy vases and solemn-looking enlarged crayon portraits. Near a stiffly curtained window was a sort of family altar--a table on which lay a family Bible. This Bible, a ponderous embossed volume with brass guards and clasps, reposed on a blue-velvet table cover that almost reached the floor. On the cover was worked a cross and a crown with the legend: "He Must Bear a Cross Who Would Wear a Crown."

When, the storm having burst on this household, Mac scratched at the door, Tom Jennings himself, a tall, raw-boned, sunburnt man, rose and let him in with some good-humoured remark. Mac was a young setter, with white, silken, curly coat and black, silken, curly ears. He looked self-consciously into the faces of the family, who were smiling at his fears; then, with a queer expression on his face, as if he, too, knew it was funny, he went to the family altar, pushed aside the embossed velvet cover, and lay down under the table. The children laughed, Tom Jennings and Frank, a lanky, handsome, serious-faced lad smiled. Mac always did this in a thunderstorm.

Just before the blow came, they heard him, as if he were still reflecting humorously upon his fears, tap the floor with his tail. Immediately there was the shiver of broken glass, a crash, a child's suppressed scream, and for a moment, as the lamp went out, blackness. But only for a moment; for next, above the shining brass trimmings of the Bible, there glowed for several vivid seconds blue-and-white flames like a halo.

There was no very clear recollection of what happened afterward. Having assured himself that wife and children were safe, Tom Jennings, followed by the boy Frank, ran out into the yard by the side door which they left open, and looked at the roof of the house. If any fire had started it had been drowned at once by deluges of rain. When father and son returned, Mrs. Jennings had lit another lamp. Here they all were, with white faces. Only Mac was gone.

For the better part of three days they searched for him, in the attic, in the cellar, in the barns and outhouses, in the woods near by. On the afternoon of the third day, Jennings stooped down and peered underneath the corn crib. It was set low to the ground, and two sides were boarded up. On the unboarded side weeds had grown. It was quite dark underneath.

At first he could not be sure what that dim suggestion of white he made out could be. Then he pushed aside the weeds and peered more closely, his eyes the while growing more accustomed to the dark. Finally he straightened up and called loudly:

"Here he is, folks!"

They all came running, Mrs. Jennings leaving her supper to burn if need be, Frank dropping his ax at the woodpile. When they reached him, Tom Jennings was stooping down and pleading:

"Come, Mac! Come, old man! We are all here."

But the white figure did not stir.

At last Frank wormed his long, adolescent body underneath the sleepers of the crib, caught hold of the front paws, and pulled the setter gently forth. They examined him all over, but at first they could find no sign of injury. It was Frank who saw and understood. Frank had always had a way of knowing what was the matter with animals.

"He's blind," said the youth.

Some of the neighbours, when they heard, said Jennings ought to put him out of his misery. But no such thought ever entered the head of any member of the Jennings family. They built him a kennel underneath the bedroom window. They taught him where to find his plate of food on the kitchen steps. Soon he learned to find his way about the yard.

At first he ran into things--into the corner of the house, into the woodpile, or into the chicken coops. He never whimpered when he did so, but looked humbled and ashamed. At last he located each object, calculated respective distances, and before the summer was over he avoided obstacles as if he had had eyes.

You would not have known he was blind but for the fact that when he drew near the steps or near a door--he learned to open screen doors with his paws--he would raise his front foot, and feel about like a blind man with a stick.

One day at dinner Jennings spoke to his family. "I don't want any of you children ever to leave anything about the yard that he can stumble over. Mother, whenever you move a chicken coop, call him and show him where it is, hear?"

They all agreed.

Then Mac began to follow his master to the field and to Tom Belcher's store up the road. Neighbours grinned and said they had often heard of a blind man led by a dog, but never before of a blind dog led by a man. They never said this, though, in Tom Jennings's presence.

As summer waned and hunting season approached, Tom Jennings, a great hunter, bought a pointer to take the place of Mac in the field, and in order that there might be no jealousy and no quarrelling, he bought a female.

It was hard to have to leave Mac at home on the first day of the winter's hunting. Though Tom had tried to keep the matter of his going a secret, the blind dog had sensed the preparations. He had smelled the oiling of boots. He had heard the click of shells dropped into hunting-coat pockets. And at the end, the frantic barkings of the pointer, whom Tom had tried in vain to keep silent, told him as plainly as a shout. Mac tried to follow and they had to chain him up.

In the middle of the afternoon Mrs. Jennings turned him loose. He stayed close to her skirts for a while, following her in and out of the kitchen and about the yard. But as the time drew near for the return of the hunters, he began to sniff the air in every direction, his nose held high.

At last he smelled them coming across the fields and made his way eagerly through the yard and toward them. And now it was, as he saw the blind dog coming, that a happy thought struck Tom Jennings. Instead of coming to the house he waited at the edge of the yard; and when Mac reached him, he took out of his hunting coat a quail and handed it to the dog.

"Take it to the missus," he said.

Straight to the kitchen wing and up the steps the dog went, happy and proud. Mrs. Jennings opened the door, face beaming. The children all ran out to see. And though it consumed time Tom remained where he was and handed the blind dog bird after bird. After that, this procedure came to be a regular part of Tom Jennings's hunts.

Soon Mac learned to rear gently up on the kitchen table and place the birds on the top. Each bird he placed near the preceding one, rooting them gently with his nose into a conical pile. "Mac's pile" it came to be called by the children, returning from school and hurrying into the kitchen. And while they talked to him and bragged about what a nice regular pile he had made, he would stand with wagging tail, his sightless eyes raised to their faces as if he saw.

Another summer passed, a summer of other thunderstorms, of which he was afraid no more. Another bird season rolled around. And then, one day, he begged so hard with his unseeing eyes that Tom let him go. After that Tom always let him go. For a wonderful thing had happened. Blind Mac was no longer useless! He could hunt birds!

First he seemed to be backstanding Nell, the pointer; that is, when she set, he advanced slightly in front of Tom and set, too. But since he could not see, it was plain that it was the birds themselves he was setting and not Nell. Then, a little later in the same day, and while Nell was nowhere in sight, he suddenly trotted ahead and came to a beautiful stand. All excited, Tom advanced, and a covey of birds rose. The gun barked twice and two birds tumbled. "Fetch, Mac!" cried Tom. And straight to the dead birds the unerring nose took him, and he retrieved them both, trembling with joy.

From this time he was an object of charity no more. Had Tom Jennings not been a man of tender heart, but only a hunter out after meat, he still would have taken Mac along. Just as in people when one sense is destroyed others grow more than normally keen, so with Mac. Never, declared Tom, could a dog smell birds so far; never did bird dog have a nose that told him so exactly where they were.

Fortunately, the route over which Tom hunted lay in extensive river bottoms, cultivated in corn. There were few fences and Mac soon learned where they were. There were no woods, and only an occasional thicket that Mac could circle with a fair degree of safety. The pointer did all the wide ranging.

Now and then Mac fell into a ditch or creek. It was always pitiful to Tom Jennings to see this. But each time the blind dog found his way out and went on undaunted, head high, tail wagging as if with a perpetual and inward joy.

"I've seen some blind folks," said Tom once to his wife, "that looked happier than folks with eyes. Mac looks happier to me than dogs that can see. It's funny."

So the years passed, and blind Mac came to be a familiar figure, and the children grew, and Tom Jennings worked hard on his farm to give them an education.

First Frank, the lad, outgrew the country schools, just as he outgrew his clothes. He was a hardworking, serious-minded, intelligent boy. Then the girls, both bright, reached the next to the last grade in the country school. And Tom Jennings and Martha Jennings his wife determined that each of them should have a college education. So Tom worked very hard and Martha saved very closely. And the fall day came when Frank left home to go to college in Greenville; then another day, the fall following, when the girls left, also. Thus Martha and Tom and Mac were left alone on the farm.

"You know," said Tom once (he was a simple, religious man), "I sometimes think it's a strange thing, Mother, that that poor dog should have been struck while he was takin' shelter under the Word of God. I know he ain't nothin' but a dog, but I reckon God made him. I don't see why God struck him."

"Maybe there was purpose in it, Tom," said his wife.

Then hard luck came to Tom Jennings just at the time when the bills for the children's second matriculation were due. First, the river rose and drowned some of his cattle and ruined a good deal of corn that had not been gathered. He worked hard, even desperately, to save what he could and not let the children know. Then Tom himself was taken with a queer feeling in the chest, a feeling of tightness and dull pain and shortness of breath. Martha pleaded with him a long time to consult a doctor in Greenville before he consented to do so.

The doctor listened with a stethoscope placed on the farmer's chest. "Sit down, Jennings," he said at last. "Jennings, your heart leaks. You've overstrained it. You must never do any more hard manual work."

"But, Doctor----" Tom began.

"No buts about it. You are too good a man to drop off. You must go slow. You mustn't even walk fast. You must never run, and you must not lift heavy weights. Why don't you sell your farm and move to town?"

"But the children, Doctor. I'm trying to give 'em a better chance than I had or their mother."

"That's all right, Jennings. But we have to trim our sails to meet life as it is. Your heart leaks, man! You've done what you could for your children. They'll just have to shift for themselves."

Tom Jennings drove slowly home. Martha, not knowing the purpose of his visit to town that day, had gone to see Mrs. Taylor, a neighbour. Even Mac was not in the yard to welcome him. He put up his horse, then sat down on the back steps to do the hardest thinking he had ever done.

At first it seemed to him like providence that just recently Tom Belcher had offered to buy the farm. In fact, he was calling him up every day about it. He could sell it to-morrow and then he could move to Greenville. The children were paying part of their expenses. But without his help, two of them at least would have to leave college. What was more, they would have to go to work to help him now. The interest from what he could get for the farm would not keep him going--and farming was the only thing he knew how to do.

But why shouldn't they help him? He had already done for them more than any neighbour had done for his children. True, his greatest ambition would be unrealized. But, as the doctor said, you had to trim your sails in this life. Why should he carry on a fight when he had been stricken? God did not expect a crippled man to run a race.

Also, he was frightened for his life. He carried within his body an enemy that might strike him down at any moment. Then, rather pleasantly, he forecast his life in town. He had fought hard, and now he could lay his armour down, and no one would think any the less of him.

And so he sat pondering, thinking first of his children, for whom he had had such high ambitions, then of himself, who would like to live his allotted span, when across the pasture he saw blind Mac coming. It was a hot September afternoon, and he had evidently been to the creek to cool off and to get away from flies. He came steadily along, and though nobody was near his tail was gently wagging.

The rear lot gate had been left open so the cattle could go to pasture, and the dog came through the gate and across the barn lot. This brought him to the fence that separated the lot from the yard, and before this fence he stopped and felt about with his foot, tail still wagging. Tom Jennings did not speak but watched him with queer emotions.

Having located the fence the blind dog backed off, looked up as if trying to see, started to spring, hesitated, started again, and finally leaped. His front paws hooked over the top plank, and he pulled himself up, remained balanced another moment, then jumped into the yard. It was as neatly done as if he were not blind. Tail still wagging, he came across the yard.

But Martha had forgotten at last: in the middle of the yard was a chicken coop she had recently moved there. Tom started to call out a warning, then for some queer reason did not. Over the unexpected obstacle the dog stumbled and came near falling. He let out no cry. He simply went to the coop, felt it, as if to locate it for the future, then came on toward the house. His head was bowed, though, as if with that shame he seemed always to feel when because of his affliction he happened to have an accident. But his tail was still wagging.

"Mac!" It broke from the man.

The blind dog raised his head and whiffed the air. Then he located his master and came toward him. He laid his head on Tom Jennings's knee, and Tom Jennings laid his big hard hand on the blind dog's head.

"God struck you!" he said hoarsely, "an' you never give up. God put out yo' eyes, and still you do your work. An' you're only a dumb brute, an' I was made in the image of God!"

The rural telephone in the hall suddenly gave his ring, and he rose and went into the house.

"Yes--I've decided, Tom," he said. "I ain't goin' to sell the farm."

After that there came, perforce, a change in Jennings's method of farming. Years ago Frank had besought him to diversify his crops, to study his soil, to take advantage of the information the agricultural college and the Government were so glad to send.

But to the older Jennings thinking had always been harder than physical toil. Brought up right after the Civil War in a section left poverty-stricken, he could just read and write--that was all; for when he was twelve his service between the plough handles had begun, and there he had served ever since.

Now, from necessity, he began to think and plan. He asked the agricultural college for information, and they sent not only pamphlets but a representative from an experiment station to consult with him and advise him. He sold a bit of land and bought farm machinery. He built a tenant house and installed help. And all the time Frank (who did not know of the leaking heart) also advised him by letters, and when he came home in the summer, helped wonderfully--both by hard work and by mental initiative.

No great prosperity followed. But Tom Jennings did a shade better than he had done before, and the children stayed at college. Not even Martha knew the extent of what the doctor had told him that day. Only to Mac did he talk freely.

"When yo' eyes was put out, ol' codger, you whetted yo' nose," he would say; "and when my muscles lost their engine power I whetted my ol' rusty brain."

His children all did well at college. Frank finished an academic course (Tom and Martha saw him graduate), then went off to a medical college. Mary, the older girl, was studying library work; the younger girl had come to no conclusion yet. The three of them came home in summer for at least part of the season, and always came at Christmas. They brought with them a different atmosphere--the atmosphere of a wider world. But the girls helped the mother in the kitchen and Frank advised with the father about the farm. There was no feeling of shame on one side, or of apology on the other. It was the kind of thing that has happened on thousands of American farms.

Sometimes at night Tom spoke of his children to Martha: "They are goin' to pass us by, Mother. They are goin' to amount to more than we have."

And then he would go to the window and raise the sash.

"Old man?" he would say.

And from the kennel would come a tap-tap that told he was heard.

And Tom continued to hunt with Mac, alone now, for Nell had died of pneumonia. It was a good combination, the man with the damaged heart and the dog with the sightless eyes. Tom had to go slow; so did Mac.

Gradually Tom worked out a series of signals which the dog understood. If there were a ditch ahead Tom would blow once very sharp on his whistle; if the dog was to turn to the right, he would blow twice, to the left, three times. Sometimes, of course, the signals got crossed, and Mac tumbled into a ditch or ran into a tree. Then there would be a choke in Tom's throat. But these things didn't happen often.