Chapter III: Part 3

His first real bark was another dazzling experience. It came in his eleventh week, when he was as heavy as two terriers, though still somewhat shapeless, and gristly, rather than bony, as to his limbs. Colonel Forde walked into the garden one afternoon, followed very sedately by the Lady Desdemona, now sleek and shining, and more aristocratic-looking than ever. Jan was dozing in the front porch, and Finn away somewhere in the orchard. Jan sprang rashly to his feet and, losing his balance, rolled over. Rising again, with more of caution and considerable anger, he took a good look at the visitors, and glared with special severity at Desdemona, who serenely ignored his existence.

Then, bracing himself firmly against the door-jamb, Jan opened his jaws and--barked. But the novelty of the performance, superimposed upon the concussion and the exertion involved, was too much for his stability, and with one prolonged but unsuccessful effort to hold on to his dignity Jan rolled over on the side farthest from the door-jamb. It was not to be denied, however, that he had barked; and the strange sound--it was part bark, part growl, and in part a bloodhound's bay--brought Finn from the near-by orchard, and Betty Murdoch from the morning-room, and the Master from his study, and the Persian cat from her perch on the hall mantelshelf; so Master Black-and-Gray had no lack of audience, and, indeed, received an almost embarrassing amount of congratulation, in the course of which he made shift to get a good sniff at Desdemona's legs and satisfy himself that she was art inoffensive person.

That Desdemona was any relation of his own neither he nor she seemed for one moment to guess, though less than a couple of months had passed since he ceased to derive his sole nutriment and support in life from this same stately hound, at whose golden-brown fore legs and low-hanging dewlap he now sniffed so curiously.

One result of her return to the sheltered life was that Desdemona looked almost twice as big and massive as she had looked in her nursing days. The pendulous dugs were no longer in evidence; but the rich, silky rolls about her neck lay fold in fold; the immensely long ears were veritable buttresses to her massy head. Her black nose gleamed like satin at the end of her long muzzle, above which lay an interminable array of deep wrinkles, radiating out and downward from her high-peaked crown. Just once the noble head was lowered--as that of an ancient Greek philosopher to an inquisitive child--and the crimson-hawed eyes directed downward as, in a calm, aloof spirit of investigation, the Lady Desdemona took note of the fussy movements of her own son.

"I don't think we have been introduced, have we?" she seemed to say. It was difficult to realize that, not many weeks before, hollow of flank, with the mother anxiety in her eyes, the same noble creature had battled and contrived to keep life in herself and in this same lusty pup out there on the open Down, four miles and more away, among the small wild creatures and the débris of her cave home.

Among the dog-folk Nature has arranged matters in this way, wisely and kindly. Separated from her good master, Colonel Forde, for many months, or even years, Desdemona would have recognized him again without hesitation. But like every other canine mother, and like every creature of the wild, her own flesh and blood became utterly strange to her within a very few weeks, when separated from her during its first months of life. And from Nature's standpoint this is a highly necessary ordinance, since, after a few more months, Desdemona, mated elsewhere, might easily find herself called upon to rear an entirely new family in new surroundings. So it is that whilst among her kind, as among the creatures of the wild, there is nothing to prevent mother and son or daughter from becoming friends in the youngster's adult life; yet never, after the first separation, can they meet consciously as mother and offspring.

It was an interesting picture for the Nuthill folk and Colonel Forde to see Finn and Desdemona sedately strolling across the lawn together, tried friends and mates, divided sometimes by the impudent gambols and even by the mock attacks and invitations to play of their own lusty son--the only whelp in existence, probably the only one who ever had lived, to carry in his veins in equal parts the blood of centuries of Irish wolfhound and bloodhound champions.

"Do keep them there!" cried pretty Betty Murdoch. "I simply must have that picture; I'll fetch my camera." And after some skilled manoeuvering to secure the son's collaboration, the promised picture was secured.

XIII

SAPLING DAYS

At the age of six months, Jan, the son of Finn and Desdemona, weighed just ninety-eight and one-half pounds, and by reason of his well-furnished appearance might easily have been mistaken by many people for a grown hound. He was not really anything like fully grown and furnished, of course, nor would be until his second year was far advanced. But the free and healthy life he led, combined with a generous and correctly thought-out diet, had given him remarkably rapid development, and the strength to carry it without strain.

At this time Jan had, in outline, assumed his adult appearance. As time went on he would increase greatly in weight, and to some extent in height and length. His body would thicken, and his frame would harden and set; his coat would improve, and his muscles would develop to more than double their present growth. But in his seventh month one knew what Jan's appearance was to be; his type had declared itself, and so, to a considerable extent, had his personality.

There was not a brown hair in Jan's coat; not one hair of any other color than black or iron-gray. His saddle and haunches were jetty black, so was the crown of his head. But his muzzle was the right wolfhound steel-gray. So were his chest, belly, and legs, though the black hairs crept fairly low down on the outsides of his thighs and hocks, the inner sides being all hard gray. The gray of his chest extended, like a ruff, right round the upper part of his neck, forming a break of three or four inches between the silky blackness of his head and saddle. And all his coat was thicker, more dense, and longer in the hair than his sire's coat, which, again, was of course much longer than Desdemona's.

Thus, in color and texture of coat Jan was neither all wolfhound nor all bloodhound. For the rest, his bodily appearance and build favored his mother's race more than his father's. The depth and solidity of his head and muzzle, the length and shape of his ears, the rolling elasticity and plenitude of his skin and the deep wrinkles it had already formed about his face, were all features true to bloodhound type, as were also the thickness and solidity of his frame, the downward poise of his head, and his deep-pouched crimson-hawed eyes.

But when one saw Jan extended at the gallop, or in the act of leaping a gate or other obstruction, one was apt to forget the bloodhound in him, and to remember only his kinship with Finn, the fleetest son of a fleet race of hunters. Jan had all the wonderfully springy elasticity of the wolfhound. Already he leaped and ran as a greyhound leaps and runs. Already, too, his accuracy of balance and his agility were remarkable. He could trot quickly across the long drawing-room at Nuthill without sound, and without grazing anything. Occasional tables and the like were perfectly safe in his path. Despite his ninety-eight and a half pounds of weight (still rapidly increasing), he could, on occasion, tread lightly as a cat.

But the bloodhound came out in Jan in other ways besides his appearance. He was for ever trailing, and used his dark hazel eyes far less than any wolfhound uses his. In questing about the place for Betty Murdoch, one noticed that Jan often did not raise his eyes or muzzle from the ground until he almost touched her skirt. Withal, his vision was keener than that of Desdemona's or any other typical bloodhound. His eyes served him well for scanning the Downs; and often he would see a rabbit in the far distance before picking up its trail. Still, once he did pick up a trail, he would follow it as no wolfhound could, with unfailing certitude, and without troubling to use his eyes.

The first notable demonstration of his trailing powers was his tracking down of a missing ewe, across several miles of open Down, to the edge of a remote, disused chalk-pit, into which the foolish creature had fallen and broken its neck.

The trifling episode which served to draw more general attention to Jan's all-round intelligence--which actually was considerably above the average level for a half-grown youngster--concerned Betty Murdoch in particular. It chanced that on a certain gray morning toward the close of the year Betty had a sudden curiosity to see again the hill-side cave beside which she had found Desdemona and Jan six months before. The gray weather, so far from depressing Betty, often moved her to take long walks; and if no other companion happened to be available, she could always be sure of Jan's readiness to bear her company, as he did on this occasion.

The fact that Betty did not appear at luncheon-time roused little comment. She often was late for luncheon, and the only meal over which Nuthill folk made a special point of being punctual was dinner. Still, when three o'clock brought no sign of Betty, and the short day's decline was at hand, the Master and the Mistress did begin to wonder. Then Jan arrived, apparently rather in a hurry, and very talkative. His short barks and little whines left no doubt about his determination to attract attention; and the manner in which he bustled into the hall, hastily nuzzled the Master's hand or coat-sleeve, and bustled, whining, back to the porch, told those concerned, as plainly as words could, that he wanted them to accompany him.

"Why, what's this?" said the Master. "I wonder if Betty is in sight."

Out in the garden nothing could be seen of Betty; but having led his friends so far, Jan became more than ever insistent in demanding their attendance on the path leading to the little orchard gate that opened upon the Downs.

"H'm! Looks to me as though Betty were in a difficulty. I wish you'd send out word to the stable for Curtin to saddle Punch and ride on after me. Or, wait a moment. You stay here with Jan. I'll send the message, and get my brandy--flask. One never knows. I'll be out again in a minute."

But this hardly met with Jan's views. He seemed determined that the Master should not go back. Whining and barking very urgently, he actually laid hold upon the Master's coat with his teeth, dragging with all his strength to prevent a return to the house.

"So, then. All right, good dog. I'll come, Jan."

And after all, the Mistress had to go back for the flask, and to send word to the stable, while the Master walked out to the Downs. Jan was overjoyed by his victory; but within a few moments he was urging haste, and expressing obvious dissatisfaction with the Master's slow pace.

"Now you just simmer down, my son, simmer down," said the Master, soothingly. "We haven't all got your turn of speed, so you might as well make up your mind to it. I'll have a horse here directly, and then you shall have your head I promise you. Meantime, just keep your teeth out of this shooting-jacket. It may be old, but I won't have it tattered. So you simmer down, my son."

Jan did his best, but it clearly did seem to him that the Master's pace was maddeningly slow; and so, to make up for this, Jan tried the experiment of covering just six times as much ground himself, apparently with the idea that hurrying ought to be done, and that if he could not make the Master do it the next best thing was to put in a double share himself. So Jan led the way downward in loops. He would gallop on for fifty yards, turn sharply, and canter back to the Master, emitting little whining noises through his nose. Having described a circle about the Master, on he would dash again, with more whines, only to repeat the process a few moments later.

Then Curtin, the groom, overtook them, riding Betty's cob, Punch, and carrying the flask which had been given him by the Mistress, who herself was following on foot. The Master slipped the flask into his coat pocket and mounted Punch.

"Now then, Jan, my son," said he, "I'm with you. Off you go!"

They were soon out of Curtin's sight. Jan perfectly understood the position; and it seemed, too, that he communicated some idea of it to Punch, upon whose velvety nose he administered one hurried lick before starting. Then, with frequent backward glances over one shoulder, Jan lay down to his task, and, followed by Punch and the Master, began to fly over the springy turf with occasional short bays, his powerful tail waving flagwise over his haunches.

Within eighteen or twenty minutes they were a good four miles from Nuthill and nearing the gap in the high ridge through which one looked out over the Sussex weald from Desdemona's cave. In another couple of minutes the Master was on the ground beside Betty, and Punch, with the nonchalance of his kind, was nosing the turf, as though to distract attention from his hard breathing. The gallop had been mostly up-hill.

Betty was genuinely glad to welcome her visitors, for she had already spent several hours in the chalky hollow where she now sat; the evening air was cold, and Betty was in some pain. Clambering on the steep Downside below Desdemona's cave, she had trodden on a loose piece of chalk, her ankle had twisted as the chalk rolled, and Betty had fallen, with a sharp cry of pain, quite unable to put her injured foot to the ground. For a long while neither she nor Jan had thought of any way of obtaining assistance.

"Then I thought of sending a message by Jan," said Betty, in explaining matters to the Master, after she had been given a sip from his flask, which brought some color back to her pale lips. "I told him again and again to go home, waving my arm and trying hard to drive him off on the way. But he would only go backward a few yards, and then return to me. I had almost given it up when the thought came into my head that I ought to have had pencil and paper, and been able to tie a note to his collar. But I thought my handkerchief would do just as well, without any writing. I was on the point of calling Jan to me again, so that I could tie my handkerchief to his collar, when, quite suddenly, he also had a brilliant idea. You could see it plainly in his face. He had suddenly realized what I wanted. He gave one bark, blundered up against my shoulder, tore my hair-net by the hurried lick he gave me, and was off like the wind for Nuthill. It really was most odd the way the inspiration came to him."

The Master nodded agreement. "It was extraordinarily intelligent for an untrained pup of six months. I doubt if either his father or his mother would have had wit enough for that at the same age. Very few dogs would."

After another little sip of brandy Betty was lifted carefully into the saddle and, Jan and the Master pacing beside him, Punch began the homeward journey. Jan was quite sedate again now, but he had fussed about a good deal, upon first arrival at the hollow, in his capacity as guide and messenger. An hour later and Betty was comfortably settled on the big couch beside the hall fire at Nuthill, and very shortly after that Dr. Vaughan was in attendance, so that when tea came to be handed round everybody's mind was at ease again. The doctor was for giving Jan a share of his plum cake as a reward for meritorious conduct. But Betty would have none of this.

"I'm surprised at you, Doctor," said Betty. "Bad habits and an impaired digestion as a reward for heroism! Never! Extra meat, and an extra-choice bone at supper-time, if you like; but no plum cake for my Jan boy, if I know it."

But this sensible decision did not prevent Jan being made much of by the whole household that evening; and partly by way of compliment, and in part because Betty could not go to the stable, he was promoted to grown-up privileges and allowed to take his supper in the porch that night beside his father. Upon showing a casual inclination to investigate his sire's supper-dish, he was firmly but good-humoredly put into his place by the wolfhound. Upon the whole, Jan bore his new honors well during this his first evening spent in a house. No doubt he received useful hints from Finn. In any case, it was decided next morning, by the Master's full consent, that from this time on, subject to his proper behavior, Jan need not again be sent to his bench in the stable.

XIV

WITH REFERENCE TO DICK VAUGHAN

One might search the English villages through without finding another such medical practitioner as Dr. Vaughan, the man who dressed Betty Murdoch's sprained ankle. For example, he was a Fellow of the Royal Society, and the records of his original-research work won respectful attention in at least four languages. When he inherited Upcroft (the estate which flanks Nuthill to the eastward) and decided to establish himself there, it certainly was not with any idea of playing the general practitioner. But, as the event proved, he was given small choice. For Sussex this district is curiously remote. It contains a few scattered large houses, and outside these the population is made up of small farmers and shepherds, very good fellows, most of them, but not at all typical of home-county residents, and having more than a little in common with the dalesmen of the north country. Their nearest resident medical practitioner, before Dr. Vaughan came, was eight miles away, in Lewes.

Dr. Vaughan used to say that his only son, Dick, should relieve him by forming a practice in the district. But that was before Dick was sent down from Oxford for ducking his tutor in the basin of a fountain and then trying to revive that unfortunate gentleman by plastering his head and face in chocolate meringues. It was prior also to Dick's unfortunate expulsion from Guy's as the result of a stand-up fight with a house-surgeon, and to his final withdrawal from the study of medicine as a profession he was adjudged unworthy to adorn. The judgment was emphatically indorsed by the young man himself, and so could not be called over-severe.

When it became apparent that Dick was never to be a G.P., Dr. Vaughan obtained the services of Edward Hatherley, a young doctor in search of a practice, and specially altered and enlarged for his occupancy one of the Upcroft cottages. This enabled Dr. Vaughan to decline the work of a general practitioner without hurt to his naturally sensitive conscience. But there still were people in the district whom he visited upon occasion as a doctor, and his friends at Nuthill were among the favored few. Such visits, however, did not in any way affect his income, which, as the result of an unexpected legacy some twelve or fourteen years before this time, was a substantial one, even apart from professional earnings or the rents of Upcroft.

Riding, shooting, fishing, coursing, breaking in young horses and dogs, and playing polo when opportunity offered--these, with occasional rather wild doings in London and Brighton, made up the sum of Dick Vaughan's contribution to the world's work so far, since the period of what he euphemistically called his retirement from the practice of pill-making. And it must be confessed that, until some time after the establishment of the Nuthill household in that locality, Dick Vaughan had shown no symptom of dissatisfaction with his lot, or of desire to tackle any more serious sort of occupation.

What was generally regarded as Dick's idleness, and, by the more rigid moralists, as his worthlessness, was a source of some anxiety and much disappointment to that distinguished man, his father. From the doctor's standpoint a life given to sport meant a life wasted; and, gifted man of science that he was, it puzzled him completely that a son of his should have no ability as a student. Withal, he had never brought himself to show any harshness to Dick; for, "wild" as the young man undoubtedly had been, he was a lovable fellow, and for the doctor his fair face was a reflection of the face of the woman Dick had never really known; of the mother he had lost while still a child; the wife whose loss had withdrawn Dr. Vaughan from the world of successful men and women and prematurely whitened his hair and lined his lofty brow.

Yet in one respect the doctor had shown a certain sternness. He had told his son, with some emphasis, that, until he accomplished some creditable work in the world, he must never expect one penny more than his present allowance of £150 a year. There were good horses and dogs at Upcroft, however, and a very comfortable home. The farmers' sons of the district, like their social superiors, mostly liked Dick Vaughan well. He need never lack a companion in his sporting enterprises, and so far had never felt very urgently the need of money. Indeed, the bulk of his allowance was wasted during the trips he made to town after quarter-days. Money was not very necessary to him at Upcroft, where most people were quite content to "put it down to the Doctor," and all were ready to oblige "young Mr. Vaughan."

And then had come Betty Murdoch, and a certain all-round modification of Dick Vaughan's outlook upon life.

It happened that one reason why Betty had no other companion than Jan on the day of her accident was the fact that the Master had an appointment at Upcroft that morning with Dick. The Master was very good-natured in his talk with Dick, but he was also quite firm and straightforward. Dick rather shamefacedly pleaded guilty to having paid pointed attentions to Betty, and admitted that he was in love with her.

"Well, there's nothing to be ashamed of in that, old chap. I'm in love with her myself, if you come to that," said the Master, with a smile. "If you'd said you meant nothing and were not in love with her, I--well, I should be taking a rather different tone, perhaps. But you are, and I knew it."

Dick's characteristic smile, the sunny, affectionate smile that won him friends wherever he went and had given him a champion even in the tutor he ducked, broke momentarily through the rueful expression of his face, as he said: "Oh, there's no sort of doubt about that, sir."

"Exactly. Well, now, my friend, what I have to point out to you is this: Betty is not only very dear to me; she is also my heir and my ward. I'm speaking to you about it earlier than some men might have spoken, because I don't want to cure heartaches--I want to prevent 'em. I'm pretty certain there's no harm done as yet."

The Master managed to keep a straight face when Dick absently intimated that he was afraid there was no harm done as yet.

"It would make Betty miserable to go against my wishes, I think," continued the Master, "and I don't want her to be made miserable. That's why I'm talking to you now. She could not possibly become engaged, except against my very strongest wishes, to a man who had never earned his own living or done any work at all in the world. And that--well, that--"

"That's me, of course," said the rueful Dick, cutting at his gaiters with a crop.

"Well, so far it does rather seem to fit, doesn't it?" continued the Master. "But, mind you, Dick, don't you run away with the idea that I have any down on you or want to put any obstacles in your way. Not a bit of it. God knows I'm no Puritan, neither have I any quarrel with a man's love of sport and animals; not much. But there's got to be something else in a real man's life, you know, Dick. Beer and skittles are all very well--an excellent institution, especially combined with the sort of admirable knowledge of horses and dogs, and the sort of seat in the saddle that you have, my friend. But over and above all that, you know, I want something else from the man who is to marry our Betty. I don't ask you to become an F.R.S., but, begad! Dick, I do ask you to prove that you can play a man's part in the world, outside sport as well as in it; and that, if you're put to it, you can earn your own living and enough to give a wife bread and butter. And if you'll just think of it for a minute, I believe you'll see that it's not too much to ask, either. It's what I'd ask of a man before I'd trust him to carry out a piece of business for me; and Betty--well, she's more than any other piece of business I can think of to me."

Dick Vaughan saw it all very clearly. He quite frankly admitted the justification for the Master's remarks.

"And so," he added, rather despondently--"so this is my notice to quit, eh?"

"If you took it as that, and acted on it permanently, I should think I had greatly overrated you, my friend," replied the Master, with warmth. "No; but, as between men, it's my notice to you that I appeal to your sense of honor to say nothing to Betty, to go no farther in the matter, until--until you've proved yourself as well in other ways as you've already proved yourself over the hurdles."

"Oh, that! But, of course, I love riding, and--"

"You'll find you'll love some other things, too, once you've mastered them, as you have horses and dogs. I can tell you there's just as much fun in mastering men as there is in handling horses. I used to think the only thing I could do, besides breeding wolfhounds, was to write. And I suppose I didn't do the writing very well. Anyway, it didn't bring in money enough for the wolfhounds and--and some other matters. So I went out to Australia and did something else. Now I can do the writing when I like, and--well, old Finn there is in no danger of being sold to pay the butcher."

"Ah yes, in Australia. I wanted the governor to let me go there when I left Rugby, boundary-riding, and that. But of course he was dead set on the pill-making for me, then. And now--"

"Now there's been a rather empty interval of seven years. Yes, I know. Well, you think it over, old chap. I lay down no embargoes, not I. But I do trust to your honor in this matter--for Betty's sake--and I'm sure I'm safe. You think it over, and come and talk to me any time you feel like it. Be sure I'll be delighted to give any help I can. Look here! there's a friend of mine staying at the White Hart in Lewes: Captain Arnutt, of the Royal North-west Mounted Police. Go and look him up and have a yarn with him about how he made his start. He nearly broke his heart trying to pass into Sandhurst without getting the necessary stuff into his hard head. But, begad! there isn't a finer man in the North-west to-day than Will Arnutt. I'll write him a letter if you'll go. Will you?"

Dick agreed readily, and as a matter of fact he lunched in Lewes with Captain Arnutt that very day, thereby missing all the excitement over Betty Murdoch's sprained ankle and Jan's clever rescue-work, but gaining quite a good deal in other ways.

XV

JAN'S FIRST FIGHT

Dick Vaughan was away from home a good deal during the next few weeks, and Jan and Finn often missed him, for his frequent visits to Nuthill had been full of interest for them. It may be, too, that Jan's mistress missed Dick Vaughan; but according to the Master, the young man was well employed and by no means wasting his time. And Jan did have at least one useful lesson in the week following Betty's accident on the Downs; and it was a lesson which he never entirely forgot.

Jan was busily doing nothing in particular--"mucking about" as the school-boys elegantly put it--in the little lane which forms a right-of-way across the Downs, between the Nuthill orchard and the westernmost of the Upcroft fields. Betty Murdoch was still nursing her ankle; and, fast asleep in the hall beside her couch, Finn, the wolfhound, was dreaming of a great kangaroo-hunt in which he and the dingo bitch Warrigal were engaged in replenishing their Mount Desolation larder. Suddenly Jan looked up, sniffing, from his idle play, and saw against the sky-line, where the narrow lane rises sharply toward the Downs, a gray-clad man in gaiters, with a long ash staff in his hand and a big sheep-dog of sorts, descending together from the heights.

The man was David Crumplin, the sheep-dealer, and the dog was Grip, whose reputation, all unknown though it was to Jan, reached from the Romney marshes to the Solent; even as his sire's had carried weight from York to the Border. Grip's dam, so the story went, had been a gipsy's lurcher with Airedale blood in her. If so, his size and weight were rather surprising; but his militant disposition may, to some extent, have been explained. At all events, there was no sheep-dog of experience between Winchelsea and Lewes who would have dreamed of treating Grip with anything save the most careful respect and deference, since, while hardly to be called either quarrelsome or aggressive, he was a noted killer, a most formidable fighter when roused. He was also a past-master in the driving of sheep, his coat was of the density of several door-mats, and he had china-blue eyes with plenty of fire in them, but no tenderness.

These things would, of course, have been ample in the shape of credentials and introduction for any dog of ripe experience. For puppy Jan (despite his hundred pounds of weight) they all went for nothing at all. His salutation was a joyous, if slightly cracked, bark; a sort of--

"Hullo! a stranger! Come on! What larks!"

And he went prancing like a rocking-horse up the lane to meet Grip, prepared to make a new friend, to romp, or do any other kind of thing that was not serious. But, as it happened, the dour Grip was far more than usually serious that morning. By over-severity in driving he had lost a lamb that day in rounding up a flock across the Downs. The little beast had slipped, under the pressure of the drive, and broken both fore legs at the bottom of a deep pit. Grip had not made three such blunders in his life, and the lambasting he had received for this one had bruised every bone in his body. But for all this, he might have shown a shade more tolerance toward Jan, since ninety-nine dogs in a hundred, even among the fighters, will show patience and good humor where puppies are concerned.

Jan's actual greeting of the sheep-dog was exceedingly clumsy and awkward.

"Hullo, old hayseed!" he seemed to say as he bumped awkwardly into Grip's right shoulder. "Come and have a game!"

That shoulder ought to have warned him. Its wiry mat of coat stood out like quills upon the fretful porcupine. But the rollicking, galumphing Jan was just then impervious to any such comparatively subtle indication as this.

Grip spake no single word; but his wall-eyes flashed white firelight and his long jaws snapped like a spring trap as Jan rebounded from the bump against his buttress of a shoulder. When those same steel jaws parted again, as they did a moment later, an appreciable piece of Jan's left ear fell from them to the ground. Jan let out a cry, an exclamation of mingled anger, pain, bewilderment, and wrath. He turned, leaning forward, as though to ask the meaning of this outrage. On the instant, and again without a sound, the white-toothed trap opened and closed once more; this time leaving a bloody groove all down the black-and-gray side of Jan's left shoulder.

At that point the sheep-dealer spoke, just a little too late.

"Get out o' that!" he said, with a thrust of his staff at Jan. And--"Come in here, Grip," he added to his own dog. But his orders came too late.

For his part, Jan had lost blood and realized that he was attacked in fierce earnest. As for Grip, he had tasted blood, and found it as balm to his aching ribs. This big blundering black-and-gray thing was no sheep, at all events. Then let it keep away from him, or take the consequences. Life was no game for Grip; but rather a serious routine of work, of fighting to kill, of getting food, of resting when he might, and of avoiding his master's ashen staff. Nothing could be more different from Jan's gaily irresponsible and joyously immature conception of life.

However, Jan was in earnest now; more so than he had ever been since, more than five months earlier, he had flung his gristly bulk upon the vixen fox who slew his sister in the cave. Some breath he wasted in a second cry--all challenge and fury, and no questioning wonder this time--and then, like a Clydesdale colt attacking a leopard, he flung himself upon the sheep-dog, roaring and grappling for a hold. It seemed that Grip was made of steel springs and india-rubber. The shock of Jan's assault was doubtless something of a blow; for Jan weighed more than the sheep-dog; but he tossed it from him with a twist of his densely clad shoulders, and again as the youngster blundered past him he took toll (this time of the loose skin on the right side of the hound's neck) in his precisely worked jaws.

All unlearned though he was in these wolf-like (or any other) fighting tactics, Jan presented an imposing picture of rampant fury as he wheeled again to face his calmly resourceful enemy. David Crumplin had now recognized the young hound as an animal of value and consequence in the world, and in all sincerity was doing his best to separate the pair. But the fight had gone too far now for verbal remonstrances to have any effect, even with disciplined Grip; and as for Jan, he was merely unconscious, alike in the matter of David's adjurations and the thrusts and thwacks of his stave.

In the pages of a correctly conceived romance, one man (providing, of course, that he is a hero) is always able without much difficulty to separate two fighting dogs, even though he be innocent of doggy lore and attired blamelessly, as judged by the illustrator's standards for walking out with the heroine. But in real life the thing is somehow different. Not only are two pairs of strong hands needed, but it is necessary that the possessors of those hands should approach the fray from opposite sides, and be nimble and strong enough to get clear away, one from the other, when each pair has grabbed its dog. No single pair of hands can manage it in the case of big dogs, and a man's feet are not far enough removed from his hands to make them an adequate substitute for a second pair of hands.

David Crumplin, having speedily given up persuasion, yelled for help, and cursed and swore vehemently at the dogs, banging and thrusting at each in turn, without prejudice and without effect. Much they cared for his curses, or his ashen staff. Jan was bleeding now from half a dozen gaping wounds; and Grip, the famous killer, was in an icy fury of wrath, for the reason that this blundering young elephant of a puppy was actually pressing and hurting him--the best feared dog in that countryside. For, be it said, Jan learned with surprising quickness. He could not acquire in a minute or in a month the sort of fighting craft that made Grip terrible; but he did learn in one minute that he could not afford to repeat the blundering rushes which had lost him his first blood.

At first he strove hard to bowl the sheep-dog over by sheer weight and strength. Then he struggled bravely to get his teeth through Grip's coat of mail at the neck. And if all the time he was getting punishment, he also was getting learning; as was proved by the fact that immediately after his own third wound he tore one of Grip's ears in sunder, and, a minute later, got home on the sheep-dog's right fore leg (where the coat of mail was thin) with a bite which would surely mean a week of limping for Grip. It was this last thrust that placed Grip definitely outside his master's reach, by fanning into white flame the smoldering fire of his nature. Indeed, for a minute or two it even made the sheep-dog forgetful of his cunning, so angry was he; with the result that he lost a section from his sound ear and came near to being overturned by the impetuosity of Jan's onslaught.

And then suddenly the sheep-dog completely changed, as though by magic. His flame died down to still, white fire; his jaws ceased to clash; his ferocious snarl died away into deadly silence; he crouched like a lynx at bay. At that moment Jan's number was very nearly up, for Grip had coldly determined to kill. He had practically ceased fighting. He was merely sparring defensively now, with bloody murder in his blue eyes, watching grimly for his opening--the opening through which he was wont to end his serious fights, the opening which would yield him the death-hold.

Jan, who knew naught of death-holds, and was at this moment blind to every consideration in life save that of combat, would assuredly yield the fatal opening within a very few seconds; and that being so, it was a small matter to Grip that in the mean time the youngster should rob him of a little fur and blood and skin. No orders, no suasion, could touch Grip now; neither could any form of attack move his anger. He was about to kill; and, for him, that fact filled the universe.

At last the moment arrived. When the breath was out of Jan's body after a missed rush, he stumbled badly in wheeling, and almost choked as the spume of blood and froth and fur flew from his aching jaws. At that psychological moment Grip, balanced to the perfection of a hair-spring, and calmly calculating, leaped upon him from the side, and brought the youngster's four feet into the air at one time. That was the opening, and, in the same second, Grip's jaws sprang apart to profit by it and to inclose Jan's throat in a final and sufficing hold.

And then, as a medieval observer might have said, the heavens opened and a whirling vision of gray-clad muscle and gleaming fangs descended from the high hedge-top, landing fairly and squarely athwart Grip's back. For a moment the sheep-dog sprawled, paralyzed by this inexplicable event. In that moment his last chance was lost. The new arrival had whirled his huge body clear and gripped the sheep-dog's neck in jaws longer and more powerful than those of any other dog in Sussex. Grip weighed close upon ninety pounds; but he was shaken and battered now from side to side, very much as a rat is shaken by a terrier. And, finally, with one tremendous lift of the greatest neck the hound world has known, Grip was flung clear to the far side of the lane, at the very feet of his master, who promptly grabbed him by the collar and, as though to complete Finn's prescription, hammered him repeatedly upon the nose with his clenched fist.

"I'll larn'ee to answer me--by cripes, I will!" quoth David.

By this time the sorely trounced Jan was on his feet and Finn had begun to lick his son's streaming ears. From the inside of the high hedge came hurrying footsteps; and in another moment the Master appeared at the white gate, twenty paces lower down the lane. David Crumplin was offered the hospitality of the scullery for the examination of his dog, but preferred to get Grip away with him after an admission that--

"Your puppy there will do some killin' in his day, sir, if he lives to see it. But as for this other fellow"--pointing to Finn--"he could down any dog this side o' Gretna Green, an' you can say as I said so. I know most of 'em."

That was how Jan learned his first big lesson, and the good of it never left him, and often saved his life; just as surely as his father's great speed and strength saved it on this morning, in the very breathless nick of time when his throat had been bared to the knife that was between Grip's killing jaws.

In the beginning of Jan's first fight Finn had been dreaming of a hunt in the Australian bush. Once or twice, as David Crumplin cursed and ranted in the lane, Finn's dark ears had twitched as though in semi-consciousness of the trouble. Later, as Jan had snarlingly roared in his fourth or fifth attack, his sire's brown eyes had opened wide and he had lain a moment with ears pricked and head well up, at Betty's feet. And then with a long, formidable growl he had leaped for the porch. Half a dozen great bounds took him through the garden. A leap which hardly broke his stride carried him across the iron fence into the orchard, and a score of strides from there brought him to the hedge-side. The hedge was six feet high here. In the lane, which lay low, it was ten feet high. There was a gate twenty yards away. Finn scorned this and went soaring through the bramble-ends at the top of the hedge, and thence, a bolt of fire from the blue, to Grip's shoulders.

There was that in Finn's preliminary growl which told Betty serious things were toward. She dared not try to walk; but she shouted to the Master, and he very speedily was in the orchard upon Finn's trail.

A Fellow of the Royal Society, with a score of letters after his name and a reputation in two hemispheres, stitched the worst of Jan's wounds that morning, on the couch in the Master's study. Even Dr. Vaughan could not replace the missing section of Jan's right ear; but, short of that, he made a most masterly job of the repairs. And all the while wise, gray old Finn sat erect on his haunches beside the writing-table, looking on approvingly, and reflecting, no doubt, upon the prowess of the youngster who had caused all this pother.

XVI

GOOD-BY TO DICK

On a day in February, Dr. Vaughan and his son Dick ate their dinner at Nuthill, and spent most of the evening there, around the hall fire. On the flanks of the big recessed fireplace, one on either side, Finn and Jan lay stretched, dozing happily. Jan's wounds were long since healed now, and the rapid growth of his thick coat had already gone far toward hiding the scars, though it could not quite mask the fact that a piece of his right ear was missing. Jan was more than eight months old now, and scaled just over a hundred and twenty pounds.

Late in the evening Dick Vaughan (who had honorably held to his pact with the Master where Betty Murdoch was concerned) had a little chat with Jan, whose ears he pulled affectionately, while the youngster sat with muzzle resting on Dick's knee.

"Don't much like saying good-by to you, Jan, boy," said Dick Vaughan.

"Ah, well, there need not be any good-bys to-night, Dick," said the Master. "We'll all be at the station in the morning, Finn and Jan as well."

"Ha! that's good of you," said Dick. "But you'll never let that youngster run five miles behind a carriage, will you? Isn't he too gristly in the legs yet, for the weight he carries?"

The Master smiled. "Trust me for that, Dick. I've reared too many big wolfhound pups to make that mistake. A few such road trips as that, and Master Jan would never again show a real gun-barrel fore leg. Why, he weighs a hundred and twenty pounds! No; old Finn will lope alongside of us, but Master Jan can have a seat inside. I have seen some of the best and biggest hounds ever bred spoiled for life by being allowed to follow horses on the road in their first year. There was Donovan, by Champion Kerry, you know. He might have beaten Finn, I believe, if they hadn't ruined him in his sixth month, trying to harden his feet behind a dog-cart on the great north road. The result was, when he was shown at the Palace in his eleventh month, his fore legs had gone for ever--like a dachshund's."

"Ah! When I get back," said Dick, musingly, you'll be pretty nearly a two-year-old, Jan, boy."

"And if all goes well, he will be as strong a hound as any in England; won't he, Betty? You'll see to that."

"I will if you'll help to keep us going the right way," said Betty, smiling at the Master.

And so, directly after an early breakfast, the Nuthill party drove to the station, with Jan on the floor of the wagonette and Finn pacing easily beside it. There was quite an assembly on the platform of the little station to see "young Mr. Vaughan" off. For he was bound for Liverpool that day, where he was to meet Captain Will Arnutt, of the Royal North-west Mounted Police of Canada, with whom he was to embark for Halifax, _en route_ for Regina, in Saskatchewan, the headquarters of the R.N.W.M.P., for which fine service Dick Vaughan had enlisted, after a stiff course of training under Captain Arnutt's personal supervision.

"Between ourselves," the captain had told the Master, in Lewes, a week or two earlier, "neither I nor the Royal North-west have much to teach young Vaughan in the matter of horsemanship, and I look to see him make as fine a trooper as any we've got. But there's one thing we can give him, and that's discipline. We can teach him to face the devil himself at two o'clock in the morning without blinking--and I think he'll take it well. I don't mind a scrap about his having been a bit wild. He's got the right stuff in him; and, man, he's got as pretty a punch, with the gloves on, as ever I saw in my life. An archangel couldn't make better use of his left than young Vaughan."

This rather tickled the Master, who up till then had never considered archangelic possibilities in boxing.

"I was certain the boy was all right," he said.

There was a rousing cheer from the group on the platform as the up-train moved off, with Dick Vaughan leaning far out from one of its windows.

"I'll be home in eighteen months," Dick had said when he bade Betty Murdoch good-by. And the Master, who was beside her, nodded his sympathy and approval.

"You'll lose nothing by the five-thousand-mile gap, old chap, and you'll gain a whole lot," he said.

"You'll larn 'em about 'osses, Master Dick," shouted old Knight, the head groom, to the M.F.H. And the farmers' sons roared lustily at that. Jan barked once as the train began to move, and the Master's hand fell sharply over Betty's upon his collar; for Jan, though not yet half so strong as his sire, was a deal harder to hold when anything excited him. Like his friend Dick Vaughan, he was of good stuff, but had not as yet learned much of discipline.

As the Nuthill party walked down the station approach to their wagonette, among quite a crowd of other people, Betty felt Jan's collar suddenly tighten--his height, even now, allowed her to hold the young hound's collar easily without using a lead, for he stood over thirty-one inches at the shoulder--and, glancing down, saw the hair all about his neck and shoulder-bones rise, stiffly bristling. In the same moment came a low growl from Finn, who walked at large on the far side of Jan and a little behind the Master. There was no anger in this growl of Finn's; but it was eloquent of warning, and magisterial in its hint of penalties to follow neglect of warning.

"Why, what's wrong now, old--Ah! I see!" exclaimed the Master.

On the opposite side of the approach was David Crumplin, walking toward the goods-shed of the little station, and followed closely by the redoubtable Grip. Grip's hackles were well up, too, for the three dogs had seen one another before their human friends had noticed anything out of the ordinary. But though Grip's bristles had risen just as stiffly as Jan's, and though the sensitive skin over his nostrils had wrinkled harshly and his upper lip lifted slightly, the gaze of his wall-eyes was fixed straight before him upon his master's gaiters. He saw Finn and Jan just as plainly as they saw him, but he never turned a hair's-breadth in their direction, or betrayed his recognition by a single glance.

Grip was no swashbuckler, and he never played. Life, as he saw it, was too serious a business for that. But and if fighting was toward, well, Grip was ready; not eager, but deadly ready, and nothing backward. Grip had his black cap either in place on his head or very close at hand all the time. It was doubtless with a sufficiently sardonic sneer that he presently saw Jan jump obediently into the wagonette. Grip had seen to the carting of thousands of lambs and sick ewes; but for himself to climb into a horse-drawn vehicle at the bidding of a lady!--one can imagine how scornfully Grip breathed through his nostrils as he saw Jan driven off, with Finn, as escort, trotting alongside.

He bore no particular malice against Jan, and in his hard old heart probably thought rather well of the bellicose youngster. But, given reasonable excuse for the fray, he had been blithe to tear out the same youngster's jugular; and, be the odds what they might, he would quite cheerfully have stood up to mortal combat with Finn himself. But as things were, the first meeting of these three since the fight in the lane passed off quite peacefully.

All the same, there was a ragged fringe to one of Grip's ears, and for weeks he had limped sorely on his near fore leg. It was written in his mind that Jan must pay, and pay dearly, for those things, when a suitable occasion offered. He was no swashbuckler, and did not know what it meant to ruffle it among the peaceably inclined for the fun of the thing; but, or it may be because of that, Grip never forgot an injury, and, if he had known what forgiveness meant, would have regarded it as an evidence of silly weakness unworthy any grown dog.

It is certain that Finn bore Grip no malice. That was not his way. Grip had offended by his ruthless onslaught upon a half-grown pup, and Finn had trounced him soundly for that. Now that they met, some months afterward, Finn thought it wise to give warning, by way of showing that he, in his high place, was watchful. Hence his long, low growl. In his adventurous life Finn had many times killed to eat, as he had frequently killed in fighting and as an administrator of justice. But he never had borne malice and never would, for that would have been clean contrary to the instincts of his nature and breeding.