Chapter V: Part 5

And with dogs—whose average life of activity runs little beyond ten years—ring honours usually come in youth or not at all. Yes, and they depart with youth. The dog remains handsome and useful for years thereafter. But his head has coarsened. His figure has lost its perfection. His gait stiffens. In a score of ways he drops back from the standard required of winners. Younger dogs are put above him. Which is life—whether in kennel, or in stable, or in office, or in the courts of love. Youth wins.

Yet the passing years seemed to take no perceptible toll of Bruce. His classic head lost none of its fineness. His body remained limber and graceful and shapely. His coat was mightier than ever. Even McGilead’s apprehensive and super-piercing glance could find no flaw, no sign of oncoming age.

The years had, hitherto, been well-nigh as kind to Angus, himself. Dry and wiry and small, he had neither shown nor felt the weight of advancing age. Yet, now, passing his sixtieth milestone, an attack of rheumatic fever left him oddly heavy and slothful. Instead of taking the stairs two at a time, he set a foot on every step. And at the top of any very long flight, he was annoyed to find himself breathing absurdly hard.

He found himself, for the first time in his life, sneering at youth’s gay ebullience, and snubbing the bumptiousness of his growing sons.

“Youth!” he snarled grimly once to the Master, as they met at a show. “Everything’s for youth, these days. It was a-plenty different when I was young. Just as a man begins to get seasoned and to know his way around, folks call him an oldster and fix up a place for him in the chimney corner. Youth isn’t the only thing in this world. Not by a long sight. Take Bruce, here, for instance. (Yes, I’m talking about you, you big ruffian! Give me your paw, now, and listen to me tell how good you are!) Take Bruce, here, for instance. Nearly eight years old. Eight in August, isn’t it? As old, that is, as fifty-odd for a human. And look at him! Is there one of the young bunch of dogs that can win against him—under any judge that knows his business? Not a one of ’em. He’s finer to-day than he was when he came out at his first show. Us oldsters can still hold our own, and a little more. Bring on your youngsters! Me and Brucie are ready for ’em all. (Hey, Big Boy? Gimme your other paw, like a gentleman! Not the left one.) Why, first time I set eyes on this dog I said to myself—”

"I’ve got something up at The Place that’s due to give Bruce the tussle of his life in the show ring some day," bragged the Master. “He’s Bruce’s own son, and grandson. That means he’s pretty nearly seventy-five per cent. Bruce. And he shows it. His kennel name’s ‘Jock.’ He’s only eight months now, and he’s the living image of what Bruce was at his age. Best head I ever saw. Great coat, too, and carriage. He’s the best of all Bruce’s dozens of pups, by far. I’m going to show him at the ‘Charity’ in September.”

“Are you, though?” sniffed McGilead. “It happens I’m judging at the ‘Charity.’ (Some liars can say I’m beginning to show my age. But I take note they keep on wanting me to judge, oftener’n ever.) I’m judging at the ‘Charity.’ And I’ll be on the lookout for that wonderful pup of yours. All pups are wonderful, I notice. Till they get in the ring. Being old Bruce’s son, this youngster of yours can’t be altogether bad. I grant that. But I’ll gamble he’ll never be what his Dad is.”

"You’ll have the first say-so on that," answered the Master. “I’m entering Bruce for ‘Open, Any Colour,’ at the ‘Charity.’ (By the way, it’s the old fellow’s last show. I’m going to retire him from the game while he’s still good.) Little Jock is entered for ‘Puppy and Novice.’ It’s a cinch they’ll come together before you, in ‘winners’!”

“And when they do,” scoffed McGilead, “don’t feel too bad if Bruce gets winners and the pup don’t get a look in. Jock may never see a winners’ class. Plenty of these promising world-beaters never do. You’re as daft on this ‘youth’ notion as any of ’em. Here you’ve got the grandest collie in the States. And you turn your silly back on him and go cracking your jaw about an upstart pup of his that most likely has more flaws than fleas—and a bushel basketful of both. Grrh!”

Often, during the next three months, Angus found his mind dwelling reluctantly upon the newcomer. He was anxious to see the near-paragon. He realised he was all but prejudiced against the youngster by the Master’s boastful praise.

Then, McGilead would pull himself up, short. For he prided himself on his four-square honesty and his dearth of prejudice in show-ring matters. This absolute squareness had brought him where he was to-day—to the very foremost place among all dog-show judges. It had kept him respected and had kept his services in constant demand for decades, while showier and lesser judges had waxed and waned and had been forgotten.

This honesty of his was McGilead’s fetish and pride in life. Yet, here he was, unsight, unseen, prejudiced against a dog, and that dog his adored Bruce’s own son!

McGilead brought himself together, sharply, cursed himself for an old blackguard, and sought to put the whole matter out of his mind. Yet, somehow, he found himself looking forward to the five-point Charity show more interestedly than to any such event in years.

It was one of McGilead’s myriad points of professional ethics never to go near the collie section of any show, until after his share of the judging should be over. Thus it was, on the day of the Charity show, his first glimpse of Jock was when the Master led the youngster into the ring, when the puppy class was called.

Six other pups also were brought into the ring. McGilead, as ever, surveyed them with breathless keenness, from between his half-shut eyes—pretending all the while to be talking interestedly with the ring-steward—while the procession filed in through the gate.

But his eyes, once singling out Jock, refused to focus on any other entrant. And he set his teeth in a twinge of wonder and admiration for the newcomer. Moreover, he observed in him none of the fright, or curiosity, or awkwardness that is the portion of so many puppies on their first entrance to the show-ring. The youngster seemed comfortably at home in the strange surroundings.

Nor was this unnatural. The Master had made use of a simple ruse that he had employed more than once before. Arriving at the show, long before the judging had begun, and while the first spectators were trailing in, he had led Jock at once to the ring, where, of course, neither the Master nor the dog had, technically, any right to be at such a time.

First unleashing Jock, the Master had let him roam at will for a few minutes around the strange enclosure; then had called the wandering collie over to him, fed him bits of fried liver and lured him into a romp. After which, the Master had sat down on the edge of the judging block, calling Jock to him, petting and feeding him for a few moments, and then persuading the pup to fall asleep at his feet.

Thus, when they re-entered the ring for the judging, Jock no longer regarded it as a strange and possibly terrifying abode. To him the ring was now a familiar and friendly place, where he had played and slept and been fed and made much of. All its associations were pleasant in the puppy’s memory. And he was mildly pleased to be there again.

McGilead’s veiled eyes were studying minutely every motion and every inch of Bruce’s young son. And as a dog lover he rejoiced at what he saw. The pup was all the Master said and far more. Well-nigh as tall and as strong of frame as his sire, Jock had Bruce’s classic head and wondrous coat; the older dog’s perfect and short-backed body, ear carriage, flawless foreface, true collie expression and grace of action, soundness and build. Above all, Bruce had transmitted to him that same elusive air of regal dignity and nobility.

“Walk your dogs, please!” rasped the judge, starting out of his daze to a realisation that the seven exhibitors were waiting for him to come to earth again.

As, seven years earlier, he had waved Bruce aside, that he might not be bothered in his judging of the lesser contestants, so, now, he bade the Master take Jock into a corner while the parade and the preliminary examining went on. The Master—this time not worried—obeyed.

And the scene of Bruce’s début was re-enacted, both in puppy and in novice classes. Not one competitor was worthy of a second’s hesitancy between himself and Jock.

Then, for the time, the tawny débutante was allowed to go back in peace to his bench; and the other classes were called. When “Open, Any Colour,” came up for judging, this most crucial of all classes had fine representation. Four sables, two tri-colours and two merles contested.

Yet, in all honesty, not one of the rest could equal old Bruce. The great dog stood forth, pre-eminently their superior. And, with the customary little tug of pleasure at his wizened heart, McGilead awarded to his old favourite the squarely earned blue ribbon.

“The pup’s a wonder,” he told himself. “But the old dog is still the best of the lot. The best of _any_ lot.”

The regular classes were judged; and the best dog in each came into the ring for winners. At last, Bruce and Jock stood side by side on the judging block. The contest had narrowed down to them.

And now, for the first time, McGilead was able to concentrate all his attention and his judging prowess on a comparison of the two. For several minutes he eyed them. He made their handlers shift the dogs’ positions. He went over them, like an inspired surgeon, with his sensitive old fingers, though Bruce’s body was already as familiar to his touch as is the keyboard to a pianist. He made them “show.” He studied them from fifty angles.

Now, to casual observers, Angus McGilead was going through his task with a perfunctory deftness that verged on boredom. The tired, half-shut eyes and the wizened brown face gave no hint of emotion. Yet, within the Scotchman’s heart, a veritable hell of emotion was surging.

This prolonged examination was not necessary. He had known it was not necessary from the first instant he had seen the two dogs, sire and son, standing side by side on the block before him. He was dragging out the judging, partly in the vain hope of finding something to make him reverse his first opinion, but chiefly to settle, one way or another, the battle that was waging within him.

For, at once, his acutely practised eye had discerned that Jock was the better dog. Not that he was better, necessarily, than Bruce had been a few years earlier. But hitherto unnoted marks of time on the older dog had sprung into sudden and merciless relief by comparison with the flawless youngster.

Seen alone, or with the average opponent, these would not have been noticeable. But alongside of Jock, the latter’s perfection brought out every incipient flaw of age in his sire.

All this had been patent to McGilead at his first critical glance. The younger dog was the better. Only a shade the better, thus far, it is true. But by such shades are contests won—and lost.

No outsider—few professional judges—could have recognised the superiority of one of the competitors over the other. Yet McGilead recognised it as clearly as by lightning flare. And he saw his duty—the duty that lay plain before him.

He had given Bruce his earliest ring award. He had awarded Bruce the prize that gave the dog his championship. And now he must discrown this collie he loved. For the first time he must pass Bruce over and give winners to another and younger dog. Youth will be served! His heart as sore as an ulcer, his pale and half-shut eyes smarting, the hot and impotent wrath of old age boiling in his brain, Angus McGilead continued his meaningless and seemingly bored inspection of the two dogs.

He loved Bruce—better than ever before he had realised. He had always felt himself the marvellous collie’s sponsor. And now—

Oh, why hadn’t the dog’s fool of an owner had sense enough to retire him from the ring before this inevitable downfall had come; this fate that lies craftily in wait for dog and horse and man who stay in the game too long?

The Master had said this was to be the old dog’s last show. His last show! And he must leave the ring—-beaten! Beaten by a youngster, at that! A pup who had years and years of triumphs ahead of him. Surely the smugly perfect little tike could have waited till his sire’s retirement, before beginning his own career of conquest! He needn’t have started out by annexing dear old Bruce’s scalp and by smashing the old dog’s long record of victories!

Bruce! Glorious old Brucie, whose progress had been McGilead’s own life-monument! To slink out of the ring—at his very last show, too—defeated by a puppy! Oh, this rotten cult of youth—youth—_youth_! He and Bruce were both back numbers at last.

But were they?

Bruce, bored by the long wait, nudged the Scotchman’s inert fist with his cold nose, and sought to shake hands. This diversion brought the judge back to earth.

A gust of red rage set McGilead’s blood to swirling. On fierce impulse he straightened his bent figure and unveiled his sleepy-looking eyes in a glare of fury.

He laid both hands on the head of the gallant old dog whom he idolised.

“Bruce wins!” he proclaimed, his rasping voice as harsh as a file on rusty iron. “Bruce _wins_!”

Wheeling on the Master, he croaked, in that same strained, rasping shout, the scrap of a schooldays’ quotation which had come often to his memory of late.

“‘It’s safer playing with the lion’s whelp than with the old lion dying!’” he mouthed. “Bruce wins! Retire him, now! ‘Youth will be served.’ But not till us oldsters are out of the way. Clear the ring!”

As he stamped from the enclosure he was buttonholed by a sporty-looking man whom he had met at many a show.

“Mr. McGilead,” began the man, respectfully, “the Collie Club of the Union has appointed me a committee of one to engage you for judge at our annual show in November. Some of the members suggested a younger man. But the Old Guard held out for _you_. I was going to write, but—”

“It’d have done you no good!” growled McGilead, sick with shame. “Let me alone!”

“If it’s a question of price—” urged the puzzled man.

“Price?” snarled McGilead, turning on him in senile fury. “_Price?_ There’s only one price. And I’ve paid it. I won’t judge at your show! I’ll never judge again at any show! My judging days are over! I’m a dead one! I’m an old, _old_ man, I tell you! I’m in my dotage! I—why, I couldn’t even trust myself, any more, to judge squarely. I’m _through_!”

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SIX: Lochinvar Bobby

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SIX: Lochinvar Bobby

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

729: _Lochinvar Kennels. CHAMPION LOCHINVAR KING. Lochinvar
Peerless—Lochinvar Queen_

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not to be rebuffed, Mackellar continued:

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

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

Mackellar pattered on:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Presently from sheer nervous fatigue he snoozed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Poultry bones are the worst and most dangerous fare for any domesticated dog. Their slivers tear murderously at throat and stomach and intestines; and have claimed their slain victims by the hundred. Yet, since the beginning of time, wild animals, as foxes and wolves, have fed with impunity on such bones. No naturalist knows just why. And for some reason Bobby was no more the worse for his orgy of crunched chicken-bones than a coyote would have been.

He awoke, late in the morning. Some newborn sense, in addition to his normal fear, warned him to stay in his den throughout the daylight hours. And he did so; sleeping part of the time and part of the time nosing about amid the flurry of feathers in vain search for some overlooked bone or fragment of meat.

Dusk and hunger drove him forth again. And, as before, he sought the farmstead which had furnished him with so delicious a meal. But as he drew near, the sound of voices from indoors and the passing of an occasional silhouette across the bright window shades of the kitchen warned him of danger.

When, as the kitchen light was blown out, he ventured to the chicken coop he found the door too fast-barred to yield to his hardest scratch. Miserably hungry and disappointed he slunk away.

Three farms did Bobby visit that night before he found another with an unlatched henhouse door. There the tragedy of the preceding evening was repeated. Lugging an eight-pound Dominic rooster, Bobby made scramblingly for his mile-distant lair. Behind him again raged sound and fury. The eight-pound bird with its dangling legs and tail feathers kept tripping up the fleeing dog; until, acting again on instinct, Bobby slung the swaying body over his shoulder, fox-fashion, and thus made his way with less discomfort.

By the third night the collie had taken another long step in his journey backward to the wild. When a dog kills a chicken every one within a half mile is likely to be drawn by the sound. When a fox or wolf or coyote kills a chicken, the deed is done in dexterous silence; with no squawks or flurry of feathers to tell the story. Nature teaches the killer this secret. And Nature taught it to Bobby; as she has taught it to other gone-wild dogs.