BOOK TWO: MY LIFE IN THE COUNTRY

## CHAPTER XVII

THE ARRIVAL OF THE TWINS

Two years have passed away since I wrote the first part of the story of my life--two whole years, but they seem like ten, for so much has happened in them, and so many changes have taken place in me, that I feel like a different dog.

I have changed, human beings have changed, the whole world has changed, for that terrible blasting war in Europe is over. I thought when it was done, that master would stop looking grave when he read the papers, and mistress would stop crying over the woes of the suffering babies and children, but they look and act worse than ever.

It’s the readjustment master often says--the horrible setting in order of countries disordered by crimes of the worst species.

Sometimes he takes his little boy in his arms, and says, “George Washington, I had rather have you die now, than see you live to grow up and shed the blood of a fellow-man.”

I don’t think there is any danger of George Washington ever killing any one. He is the fattest, sweetest, dearest specimen of a boy baby I ever saw. He has no temper, as cute little Cyria has. He jabbers baby-talk, and plays with us dogs, and never hurts one of us.

I heard master say the other day that he had no liking for a man who never changes his opinion, and I believe that saying is true with regard to dogs as well as men. I never used to like babies. Why? I never cultivated them. I love them now, because I study them, and it is one of the pleasures of my life to note the astonishing developments and differences, between the rapidly growing and changing Cyria, and little George.

Sometimes they bother me, but who has not trouble? A dog that dreams through life, lives in a back yard away out of sight, nobody notices or cares for. You’re bound to have a scrap occasionally, if you come out to the light.

I never liked living in a back yard, but I used to run like a greyhound from disagreeable things, and seek pleasant ones, and it kept me always on the jump. Now I have made up my mind to stay by this family, no matter what happens to them. There is great happiness in an accepted family. I notice some human beings are always trying to get away from their home environment, and many times it is with them as it is with me--it keeps them on the trot all the time.

I don’t want any one to think that I imagine I have become a perfect dog. Good gracious, no! I am just a good, plain, American every-day sort of a dog. I have no illusions about myself, or my owners. I want to do my duty in the dog walk of life to which I am called. I’ll go round a block to attend to my business and avoid a fight, but if trouble meets me the other side of the block, I’ll not dodge it, but I’ll grip it by the throat and try to down it. If it downs me, I’ll get up and shake myself, and hope for better luck next time. To keep myself humble, I often say, “Great Cerberus! what a fool I am, but still not half so much of a fool as I used to be.”

Another most important opinion I’ve changed, is that the city is a better place to live in than the country. How could I ever have made such a mistake? I’m a country dog, now and forevermore, and all my dog set has gone over with me. The country to live in--the city to visit.

You ought to hear old Gringo on the subject. “’Pon my word, Boy,” he often says when we gossip together, “I never dreamed that an old Bowery dog would get so stuck on green grass and blue sky.”

The Bonstones live right under a long and beautiful eminence called Green Hill. Their big, bare house spreads out like a barn under the hill slope. They haven’t one thing in that house they could do without. They have no carpets nor stuffed furniture, no draperies at windows, just plain shades, and their floors are of some smooth, shiny tiles that can be flooded with a hose, and the water runs down and waters window boxes on the floor below. They haven’t a table cloth in the house, but they have lovely things to eat on tables of finely polished wood, and they have plenty of big, soft cushions and comfortable wicker chairs, and many floor rugs that can be lifted easily and taken out-of-doors.

It’s the most sanitary house I ever saw, and Mrs. Bonstone says it reminds her of a hospital. However, she does not complain. She says that a little while after she was married, when she found her husband wanted to come to the country, she said, “It’s the man’s right to choose the place of domicile, and here’s one woman that will let her man go further than that, for he may build the house, and furnish it too.”

Everybody says it is an ugly house, and yet I notice everybody likes to visit it, and sit by the big jolly fires in winter, or loll on the spacious verandas in summer, and partake of the fine meals that are served in the dining-room.

All the jewelry and silver were banished from the house long ago--they were sold for the benefit of the unemployed, and Mr. and Mrs. Bonstone wear a sporting sort of clothes, and a handsome couple they are. He has got quite brown, and she has a magnificent colour from being so much in the open air. She hasn’t any bric-a-brac to look after, nor fol-de-rols such as most women have, and even the servants are out a great deal, for the Bonstones install in their house every labour-saving device that is put on the market.

Cyria is a little beauty, and browner than ever, but not foreign-looking. Strangers always think she is the Bonstones’ own child. Six months ago, every one said her nose would be put out of joint but it wasn’t. It is straighter than ever.

I shall never forget that wonderful event. Good old Gringo, who has matured wonderfully since coming here, and who has also seemed to grow younger, for he has lost his rheumatism because he takes more exercise, came over to our house one drowsy summer day just gasping and panting with excitement. He is always going about here with his double shuffle gait. He has no health commissioner, and no policeman nor muzzle to worry him.

“What’s up?” I asked, blinking at him sleepily.

“We’re ahead of you,” the good old dog snorted--“you’ve got one baby only. We have three.”

“Not triplets,” I gasped.

The old dog gave me a look. “Of course not, though if it had been triplets, it would have been all right. We’ve got twins, Boy, but Cyria counts in. She’s our baby, too. Come on over--come on over and see them. We’ve all got rats in the garret over them. We’re crazy, crazy, crazy--just think--two babies.”

“Boys or girls?”

“One of each, of course,” he exclaimed, his square face alight with pride. “Come on, double quick.”

I capered back with him--it almost kills me to see him run--bull-dogs weren’t built for grace. Of course, I saw nothing of the babies, but we listened under the window, and occasionally heard little faint peeps like young birds.

“Look at mister walking in the blue garden,” gurgled Gringo. “Wouldn’t you think he was tramping on wool?”

The blue garden was full of blue flowers of different shades, and rocks, and rills, and rustic seats and arbours. It was a delicious spot, and very æsthetic.

Mr. Bonstone certainly didn’t look blue. He was walking to and fro quite quickly, in spite of the heat, and occasionally he lifted his eyes to the sky.

“Doesn’t know whether he’s on his head or his heels,” whispered Gringo.

Suddenly the man stooped down, and picked a bachelor’s button to put in his coat. Then with a broad smile, he picked another, and put beside it.

“Remembers he’s got to run double,” said Gringo gleefully. “Believe me, I’m happy for mister.”

“What are you going to call your babies?” I enquired. “You’ll never get such a good name as George Washington.”

“We had only one ready,” said Gringo, “that was John. I guess mister will settle on Mary for the girl, if missis don’t object.”

“Well,” I said, “you’re pretty close to us. John and Mary are two of the oldest and best of names. Nothing fancy about them.”

“Mister wants them to be good,” said Gringo. “He says nothing else counts, if you haven’t got that rock-bottom character. My! what a training they’ll have. If they don’t want to serve their fellow-men, they’ll have a fight with the missis. She has gone batty on the subject.”

“I hear she even believes in women voting,” I said cautiously.

“She believes in letting men, and women, and children, and animals do everything they blank please, provided they don’t bang into any other men’s, women’s, children’s or animals’ rights. Liberty for her. None of your coop-me-up rules.”

“It’s a good thing she’s got out of that old society, sleep-eat-and-play life,” I said.

“A mighty good thing,” observed Gringo. “She was most dotty.”

“Hist!” I cried, “who’s crying?”

“Little Cyria,” said Gringo, “she’s a regular baby--temper too--but our own.”

Poor little brown girlie--she trotted toward the blue garden, ran up to the abstracted Mr. Bonstone and clasped both his knees. “Oh! Daddy, Daddy, Cyria’s mos’ dead.”

“What’s the matter, baby?” he asked kindly, and sitting down on a rustic bench, he took the child on his lap.

“Thomas’ little boy has been teasin’ me. I wented up to the stable with nurse. The boy said, ‘Feel your nose, little girl----’” and she went on, to choke out her story of despair. The bad boy had said she was only a “’dopted” child, and now there were two babies who were real babies, and she would either be sent away or put in a corner.

She spoke very plainly for a child of little more than three years, for she had been brought up with grown people.

“Oh, Daddy, won’t you love me any more?” she cried. “Won’t you let Cyria sit on your knee?”

“Of course, I will,” he said. “Don’t believe any of this nonsense.”

“But the bad boy said you had only two knees, and where would I go?”

“I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” said Mr. Bonstone gravely, “we’ll strap an artificial knee on Daddy for one of the babies--the boy for example. My right knee belongs to you, my first little girl.”

“Daddy, what’s a ’dopted baby?” she asked pitifully.

“A ’dopted baby is something a little better than your own baby,” said Mr. Bonstone.

The child suddenly threw her arms round his neck. “Daddy, you is sweeter than the roses.”

Mr. Bonstone kissed her very affectionately, then he said, “Come, see the new babies. You must choose one for your own, and I will choose one.”

“I want the girlie,” said Cyria.

“Very well, you shall have Mary.”

“An’ she must go seepie in my beddie.”

“Possibly later, but not just now,” said her adopted father; then he took her away in the house.

“Nice man, that,” I said.

“Rather,” observed Gringo wisely, and with an eloquent shake of his square head.

“Gringo,” I said, “I hear that old Mrs. Resterton is coming out here.”

“She arrived to-day,” replied Gringo. “She stood that big house in New York as long as she could. She thought she was in heaven when the boss let her run it, and she had what she’s been, longing for--that is, lots of dough. But she isn’t as smart as little missie, her granddaughter, and she found that though her place was just as firm in sassiety----”

“Society, Gringo,” I said. “You never do pronounce that right.”

“So-ciety then,” continued the old dog. “She was as strong in it as Grant’s tomb, but the butterfly world fluttered by, when she no longer had her gamesome wasp. So she wrote mister. I thought he’d smother laughing. He took the letter out to the orchard, for the old lady didn’t want missis to know. She said in it everything she didn’t mean, but mister read between the lines. She missed her granddaughter Stanna, and her great-granddaughter Cyria----”

“I like that,” I said, “when she fought so against the child’s adoption.”

“Oh! forget that,” said Gringo, “anyway, she wanted to come live here, and he let her come, and he’s going to sell the house, and make a big figure on it for an apartment-house site, and he’s going to get a coupé for her to run about in, and have all the old ladies she wants.”

“She’ll be agreeable, won’t she?” I asked anxiously, for I hated to hear of anything clouding the Bonstones’ lovely home life.

“Agreeable, yes. She’s a comely old dear. Everybody likes her. She minces round in her black silk, poking her aristocratic old nose into everything, but who cares? The servants favour her, and the missis pets her like a baby.”

“But Master Carty,” I said, “I do hope he isn’t coming.”

“He’s got to,” said Gringo uneasily, “as his home with his grandmother is broken up.”

“There’s your snag,” I said.

Gringo looked gloomy. “You bet--the young rap tipples all the time. The women can’t stop him.”

“Maybe country life will.”

“Maybe,” said the good old dog, “but I’ve seen many lads going Carty’s way. I’ll tell you what mister will do. He’ll give him a good fair showing, then if he doesn’t make good, he’ll kick him out.”

“But what about the women?” I said.

“The women,” exclaimed Gringo with suppressed rage, “I’m tired of this drink-martyr’s business. The men have all the fun, the women all the pain. Every time that young rapscallion comes out here, missis sneaks up to his room to feel his coat pockets, and search his suit-case, to find out if he’s brought any of the powerful, and if she finds it, she cries, and pours out half and puts water in, and if a caller comes, down she goes, smiling as if she hadn’t a trouble in the world. I’d like to chuck all the drunkards in New York Bay with a rock on their necks.”

“Come, come, Gringo,” I said, “that doesn’t sound like you. Can’t you think of a way to reform the poor wretches?”

“Nothing but shut off the liquor,” said Gringo.

I burst out laughing. “How you have changed, old fellow. You used to be for high license, drink in moderation, self-restraint, etc.”

“It doesn’t work with sap-heads,” said Gringo. “I’m for drowning now. Do you know what missis did--had that fellow put over her head.”

“You mean his bed-room--when he comes out to visit?”

“Yes--so she could listen for his step. When it’s steady, she is gay. When he stumbles, and pushes the furniture round, she is sad.”

“I shouldn’t think your master would have allowed that,” I said angrily. “It’s a shame for Mrs. Bonstone to be so bothered.”

“Mister,” exclaimed Gringo, “do you suppose he knows? Not a word of it. Women keep little tricks like that to themselves.”

“Well, I hope he won’t kill her,” I said. “I wish we could do something to help her.”

“Maybe we can,” said Gringo with a knowing air. “Our owners don’t know how much help they get from dogs.”

Old Gringo’s prophecy came true, and in rather a funny way, later on.

## CHAPTER XVIII

THE SHOWMAN’S DOGS

It was six months ago that the twins came, and now they are fine healthy young babies, being pushed round in their perambulator all over the place by their nurse, who is so well-trained and so up-to-date that she is over-trained or “fine” as Gringo says.

Gringo and I were watching them one day a few weeks ago, as we sat side by side up in the orchard at the Bonstones’. This orchard is a little one containing very old trees, and is never ploughed. It is a lovely shady place to rest, for the grass is kept short and is soft as a carpet. It has become quite a social meeting-place for the dogs of the neighbourhood, and we often discuss things there.

“Fine babies, those,” I remarked.

“Yes,” assented Gringo, “I suppose you wouldn’t find a finer pair in the whole state of New York.”

“Do you like them better than the little girl, Cyria?” I asked.

Old Gringo wrinkled his forehead. “I never think about that,” he said. “They’re all ours, and I guess the mister and missis don’t think of it either.”

“That’s good,” I replied. “I’d hate to see the little brown baby made uncomfortable.”

Gringo chuckled. “Those were great times back in New York, but I’m glad I’m in this army.”

“There’s no doubt about it, you are firmly wedded to country life now,” I said.

“Wedded, I guess so, and I often snicker to think how I’d have fought to a finish any dog in the Bowery that told me I’d get to praise the country and run down the city.”

“And you thought you’d get bored here,” I said with a sly laugh.

“Bored,” and he grunted happily, “what chance have I? It’s up at daylight with mister, and out to the stables and barn, laying out the day’s work for the men, examining the stock to see they’re all first class--by the way, mister’s going to make a fortune raising colts, ’cause the war cleaned out all the horses--then in the house for breakfast--I say, Boy, things do taste good out here in this clear air--then in town in the car, out again, and pottering around after missis and little Cyria, out in the gardens and after the hens till lunch time, then a drive in for mister, and a stop in the village with him.”

“I say, Gringo,” I interrupted, “I believe of all the things your master and mine have done out here, that automobile school is the best.”

“Right you are,” said the old dog. “These lads that my boss picks up out of prisons, and in the streets, won’t settle down to anything that isn’t pretty lively. They’ll break colts or hustle round a machine shop, but they’ll not stick to indoor work.”

“That breaking colts is new business to me,” I said. “How can you take a pale, weak, city lad and make him successful? I thought you had to have strong men.”

“Oh, that’s the old brute way,” said Gringo. “You begin now when coltie is young and tender. Hitch him up with a little bit of something dangling after him. Break him in gradually to something bigger. Lots of these city yaps haven’t ever had anything to like--anything decent, you know.”

“I understand,” I replied. “They’ve had nothing to love.”

“There’s one rogue,” said Gringo, “who sleeps in the boxstall with his pet colt, and ’pon my word, I’ve seen him with his arm round its neck. He’s a guttersnipe, and my boss will soon rout him out and make him sleep in a bed, but he ain’t too hasty with these low-life chaps.”

“What’s this new talk about jitney cars?” I asked.

“Our bosses have got a lot of second-hand cars, and are doctoring them for some of our lads who can run them about New York like a taxi-man does.”

“But a jitney is a five-cent fare thing, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but it pays. Catch my boss in anything that doesn’t speak up when it’s spoken to.”

“That will be fine,” I said, “for then the boys will be self-supporting.”

“I didn’t finish my day, Boy,” said the old dog, “after we tot up things down at the village, we have our supper, and don’t the food taste first-class, then a short evening on the veranda, and then bed. I tell you it’s a full day, as full as a Bowery day.”

I laughed, and he laughed too; then I said, “I’m mighty glad, old man, that the intimacy between our two families has kept up.”

“So am I,” said he, “but do you know what I overheard when we first came out? Says my missie to your missie, ‘Claudia, we are only a mile apart. If we see too much of each other, we shall fight. We ’most did the other day--and our husbands shouldn’t be too much together. They’ll fall out, sure as rats.’”

“Did she says ‘rats’?” I asked.

“Oh! that, or something like it,” said the old dog so impatiently that I resolved not to interrupt him again.

“Well,” he went on, “says she, says my missie to yours, ‘I’d hate to have a break,’ and your missie said so would she, then they said they wouldn’t call for a week, and next morning your missie was over to borrow a pattern for a pair of knitted reins for Georgie to play horsie, and my missie was back in the afternoon to take her some sweet pickles she had been making. So there you are--and I must not forget to say that the two families were all over on your veranda in the evening.”

“Good joke,” I said laughing heartily, “and we dogs are just as friendly as the human beings.”

“Thick as thieves,” said Gringo, “and I must say we’re a pretty good gang.”

As Gringo was speaking, two of the dogs in the performing troupe that Amarilla belonged to, came round the corner of the house. They are two beautiful snow-white French poodles, and have exquisite manners. When they first came out, they were thin and frightened. That was before we arrived. By the time we came, they were fat and prosperous and happy looking dogs. On the stage, they had worn their hair clipped in the approved fashion for poodles, and their forelocks were tied up with ribbon.

Mrs. Bonstone took the ribbons off, for she wanted them to be real dogs, she said, and they are only clipped now when warm weather comes, and then all over.

It does Gringo and me all the good in the world to see the quiet delight these two handsome dogs take in their well-ordered life here. They are full of interest in American life. They were born in Paris, and at first they thought the whole world was bounded by the Seine where they used to be taken to be washed. Then they were sold to this dreadful man, Fifeson, who beat them sometimes, but not nearly as often as he beat Amarilla, for poodles are naturally splendid trick dogs, and learn things easily.

“Gringo,” I said, “do you think these dogs are any different from other dogs who have never been treated cruelly?”

“’Course I do,” he growled. “Don’t you see they ain’t like you and me?”

“Yes, I see it,” I replied, “but I wanted to know whether you did.”

“Their spirit’s broken,” he said. “The Frenchmen are happy, but there’s a look in their eye, as if they wouldn’t be surprised any minute, if some one up and struck them.”

“Weary Winnie doesn’t show it as much as they do,” I said.

Gringo grinned. Weary Winnie was his pet among the showman’s dogs. She was a fat, lazy, young miniature bull-dog with a wrinkled muzzle that looked as if she were always smelling something disagreeable and one white tooth that stuck out beyond the others. She came of grand stock, but was rather stupid, and had played an old woman on the stage, being dressed up in a shawl and bonnet. Amarilla says her beatings were awful, for she couldn’t seem to learn the simplest thing. The showman made her hold things in her mouth, and at last he had to give up the pipe, for she always let it fall out. Finally he tied a basket to her lips, and the string hurt her.

When we came out here, she was taken over to our house to be a playmate for me, but she used to run away and howl about this place till at last master asked Mr. Bonstone to keep her. When she isn’t sleeping, she is paddling about after Gringo, and looking just about as graceful as he does.

She sleeps in a box-stall in one of the stables, with the Frenchmen. Mr. Bonstone likes to have plenty of dogs about his horses, for they are such good guardians. No stranger can get near the horses when the dogs are at their post, and some of them are always in or near the stables.

Gringo, of course, always sleeps in his master’s dressing-room. He saved Mr. Bonstone’s life once, out west, when a bad man who was his enemy crawled in a window at night, and was just about to shoot at that head on the pillow so dear to Gringo.

“How did you stop him?” I often ask Gringo, for he loves to tell the story.

“Just took a playful leap at his throat,” the old dog always says.

“And what did your master do?”

“Heard the rumpus, got up, and took the man’s gun away.”

“And what did the man do?”

“Broke down, and wanted to shake hands with the boss.”

“And what did your master do?”

“Shook, and told him to go home, and get another gun.”

Gringo, of course, can leap like a cat, that being one of the characteristics of a thoroughbred bull-dog. He, however, can jump higher than most bull-dogs, for the man from whom Mr. Bonstone bought him had given him special training. He was a famous boxer, and Gringo says he used to put on gloves and have many a go with him. Gringo would spring at the boxer’s chest--he was a six-footer--and try to bite a button from his vest. The boxer would give him good blows with his gloves, and drive him away, but Gringo always came back. It was rough training, but it made the young dog hardy.

Besides the Frenchmen and Weary Winnie, the Bonstones have Yeggie, a mongrel, another one of the showman’s lot. Oh! what an eloquent looking little fellow he is. His eyes seem to be pleading with you to make up some message, that he is unable to deliver.

Amarilla says he is another one that got plenty of whacks from the showman. She says that look of tears in his eyes, means that he is trying to tell you of his troubles, so that you will sympathise with him.

All these show dogs have nightmare most horribly. That is one reason why Gringo won’t allow Weary Winnie to sleep in the house with him. He had her in one night, and he said that though he was fond of the creature, he couldn’t have her yelling blue murder every hour in his ear.

Yeggie is young and dashing, and hasn’t very good manners. He was a tramp dog when the showman got him, and sometimes he annoys me by saying that I, too, led a tramp’s life. I explain to him over and over again, that a wandering dog isn’t necessarily a tramp dog, but he can’t make the distinction. Poor fellow, he hadn’t early advantages, and is rather inelegant in his ways. We older dogs are always correcting him, but he forgets easily and is still very heedless. However, he has a very happy time, and that is the main thing. He loves the men and the horses, and always sleeps on the foot of Joe’s bed in his room over the larger of the two stables.

Thomas sleeps in the other stable, and Czarina is always his companion. She is a magnificent Russian wolfhound, and is Mrs. Bonstone’s special pet, next to Sir Walter, who is the favourite-in-chief, though he is not very much with his mistress now on account of his devotion to the hens.

I should have mentioned sooner this aristocratic dog. From the start, Sir Walter liked the idea of moving to the country, for it suggested his former life in Scotland.

Gringo and I imagined he would be the show-dog of the place--always in evidence on the avenue, in the drawing-room, on the verandas, or hanging about the automobiles.

To our amazement, that dog’s one idea when he got to the country was to have something to boss. He would have preferred sheep, but Mr. Bonstone could not keep any, as we are too near the city. Sir Walter could do nothing with the horses, for the men were with them all the time, and told them what to do.

“He wants to run a show of his own,” Gringo used to say, “and though I like the dog, he ain’t going to boss me!”

He couldn’t boss me, either, and not one of the showman’s dogs minded a word he said. He did fuss round the Jersey cows a bit, but the lad that drove them to and from the pasture wouldn’t have Sir Walter interfering, so he took to following Mrs. Bonstone about when she took care of her large flock of hens.

They were beautiful white Wyandottes, and were kind and sensible. It is wonderful what intelligence hens have when one treats them well. Sir Walter got interested in them, found he could order them about to his heart’s content, and when seeding-time came, he had made himself so useful that kind-hearted Mrs. Bonstone was delighted to be able to give them their liberty, under his superintendence.

Those hens knew just as well as Christians that it was naughty to scratch up the seeds in the vegetable and flower gardens, but they had a pleasant little way of yielding to temptation till Sir Walter took them in hand.

“Bow, wow! chickies,” he would say, running round and round them, and carefully steering them away from danger points to the orchard or the meadow, or the new land that was being broken up by a plough.

Those hens minded him beautifully, and he was as happy as the day was long.

At first, the other dogs would roar with laughter to see him rush out to the hen-houses in the morning, wait for his charges to be let out, and wander about with them all day.

One day he caught Yeggie making faces at him, and gave him a great walloping, and that taught all of us to be more respectful. If he liked hens, he had a right to associate with them.

“A gentleman can perform any kind of menial labour without degrading himself,” Sir Walter said to Yeggie, and emphasised it by a bite on the ear.

As time went on, the hens became more and more of a passion with Sir Walter, and by the time the twins came he was sleeping out in a kennel by the hen-houses, and had a pet white chicken roosting on his back. Its name is Betsy, and it is not to be killed, but kept for him, as he is so fond of it.

Many of the Bonstones’ neighbours have hens stolen, but no one now ever braves the army of dogs at Green Hill.

One man tried it--a stranger who did not know about the dogs. He had tramped out from New York, and seeing the flock of Wyandottes on the farm as he passed by on the road, he decided it would be a good place to steal a few chickens. He lay hidden in some bushes till night, then he crept cautiously to the barn. Sir Walter met him, and growlingly escorted him to his kennel. The other dogs scented a stranger, and the unhappy tramp found himself confronted by Weary Winnie, Yeggie, the Frenchmen and Czarina. They did not bite him. Mr. Bonstone’s dogs, and ours too, are trained never to put their teeth in a man unless he is trying to kill them, or some human being. We can nose, and push, and knock over, and grip, if necessary, but not bite.

The poor tramp was in a dilemma, and finally he crawled into Sir Walter’s kennel, and covered himself with straw.

Cook was the first one up at the hen-houses in the morning. She wanted fresh eggs for breakfast.

Seeing Sir Walter watching the kennel door with a peculiar air, she went up and looked in, and screamed when she saw a man’s head in the straw.

Thomas and Joe came running from the barn, and ordered the man to come out.

“Sure and I can’t,” he said, “those gentlemanly dogs have peeled every stitch of clothing off me.”

Sir Walter says his clothes were thin and old, and they literally dropped off him, when the dogs pushed him about.

Thomas howled with delight, and telling the man to shake off the straw in which he was buried, he sent Joe up to the house for a suit of old clothes of Mr. Bonstone’s. That tramp had the greatest admiration for the dogs, and sat about the place for days smoking and staring at them.

Mr. Bonstone at last ordered him to get out. He absolutely wouldn’t work, and busy Mr. Bonstone was not the kind of man to have an idle person about.

## CHAPTER XIX

GOOD KING HARRY

So much for the Bonstones--now for my own dear family. We are not as high up among the hills as they are. My master bought, not a regular farm like the Bonstones, but what they call a gentleman’s estate. It has eighty acres of ground, some woodland, some meadow, a big old-fashioned flower garden, a fine strip of land for vegetables, and a stately old colonial mansion.

The house is situated on a bit of rising ground overlooking the Pleasant River Valley--just a tiny, baby valley with a slender thread of a river picking its way among meadows of the greenest grass I ever saw.

The house is beautifully, even luxuriously, furnished, but without a foolish expenditure of money. The drawing-room is a dream. We dogs are allowed to go in, if we are quite clean, and if we lie down quietly on the big hearth-rug, and do not romp about and shake ourselves.

Even if a dog does live in the country, there is no need for him to be careless in his habits. I often tell that to Cannie the Dandie Dinmont terrier, who fell to our lot in the division of the showman’s dogs.

His coat is dense, hard and wiry, and it is some trouble for him to keep himself clean. Sometimes he neglects himself a bit between his washings by Louis, and then I scold him. He is a grey brindle in colour, and a fine, sensible little chap, but inclined to reminisce too much about his trials with the showman.

“Look ahead, little dog,” I often say to him, “and not over your shoulder.”

He never resents my criticism. He is a very docile, courageous and affectionate dog, and a great favourite with every one here.

Beside Cannie, we have King Harry, the best specimen of a bloodhound I ever saw. His magnificent domed head, and wrinkled forehead give him an appearance of great wisdom. His eyes are small and deep-set, with a third eyelid. His ears are long and fine in “leather,” and hang close to his kind old cheeks. His muzzle is long, deep and blunt at the tip, and he has a dewlap in the front of his throat.

[Illustration: KING HARRY, THE BEST SPECIMEN OF A BLOODHOUND I EVER SAW]

Oh! what good talks I have had with this noble dog. He has told me the whole history of his race. I never knew before that they are called bloodhounds because they were used first of all to track wounded animals. They were known in ancient Gaul, and there is distinct mention of them in England during the reign of Henry the Third. De Soto in his expedition from Spain to Cuba brought a pack of bloodhounds with him to subdue the natives. Some of these same hounds were brought to our Southern States, and now there are plenty of them there, and they are known as “man trailers.”

So the present American bloodhound is a descendant of the old Spanish kind. King Harry is of English stock. He says his grandmother, old Lady Gray, had the longest list of cases to her credit of any dog in America.

When I asked him, one day after we first came here, what he meant by that, he said that she had captured thirty criminals--men and women who had burnt houses or killed some one.

“How would she do it?” I asked him.

He said he had asked his grandmother many times to tell him about the way she was trained, and she said that she was one of a litter of five puppies. Now her owner wished to know which of the puppies had the best nose, so he used to approach the tightly boarded side of their yard on tiptoe, and put his eye at a knot-hole.

“Oh! I see,” I exclaimed, “that was to find out which pup discovered him first.”

“Yes,” replied King Harry. “My grandmother was always the first to wind him, so he gave her special training. When she was four months old, he taught her to lead quietly, neither pressing forward, nor holding back on the chain. Next, she was taught to follow, and to come at a whistle.”

“All this was for obedience, I suppose,” I remarked.

“Yes, and to form her character,” said King Harry. “Next she had to learn to jump in and out of a buggy--there were no automobiles then--to climb fences, to swim creeks, to get accustomed to the noise of a town, and to become used to strangers, but never familiar with them. She was not allowed to play with children, nor with other dogs--just with her owner, Tim Dobson.

“When she was eight months old, Dobson took her to the woods. A stranger held her by the collar, and Dobson started off with an old towel in his hand. He kept shaking it at my grandmother, who strained at her collar, and was finally released by this assistant.”

“Why the towel?” I asked.

“To make her anxious to play with it, and to reach her master. This was the overtaking lesson, and it was repeated several times, then came the lesson in trailing. Dobson hid behind a tree, and when he was out of sight, the assistant released grandmother. As soon as she reached the place where she last saw Dobson, she dropped her nose to the ground. She never had much trouble in owning a trail----”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Recognising the scent of the person she was following--she had a grand nose, and Dobson used to keep bits of meat in his pocket to reward her for quick work. She was taught to bark on trail, and bay at hiding-places. Then when she was well educated along this line, Dobson changed places with his assistant.”

“You mean Dobson ran with your grandmother, and together they trailed the assistant.”

“Yes. Dobson kept changing his assistant, so she wouldn’t get familiar with him. He would make him strip off his coat, and run. Then grandmother would smell his coat, the older the coat the higher the smell, and Dobson would run with her, and encourage her to trail him. The assistant used to have other men cross his trail, he would wade in creeks, and walk along fences, but grandmother nearly always got him, even when she had to work out a cold scent.”

“I would like to have seen that fine Lady Gray,” I said enthusiastically.

“I am said to look exactly like her,” said King Harry with a melancholy smile, “but alas! I was stolen when a puppy, and I can do only amateur work at trailing. However, if you just want to see my grandmother, look at me.”

I smiled, and he went on. “Next thing came the taking up of a trail with which grandmother was unacquainted. Dobson had the man who was to be trailed go to an old stable with an earth floor. He would walk about a few minutes, throw down his hat, and leave the place. In ten minutes, Dobson would take grandmother there, keeping every one else out, let her smell the hat, then hunt up the owner.”

“How interesting all this is,” I exclaimed. “I had no idea such pains was taken with the training of bloodhound puppies. I thought the trailing gift came by instinct.”

“Everything that’s worth anything costs trouble,” said King Harry. “Grandmother said as soon as she learned how to take a trail freely and eagerly, she was entered to horse and man trailing.”

“How do they do that?” I enquired.

“The assistant led the horse thirty yards, being right out in front of him, so the horse would be on his trail, then he mounted, rode thirty feet, dismounted, led the horse fifty feet, mounted, rode one hundred feet, dismounted and led.”

“Well,” I said, “no wonder your grandmother became so clever.”

“Clever,” repeated King Harry, “she was a marvel. She once followed a trail that was thirty hours cold.”

“Whose trail was that?”

“A poor, crazy, coloured woman. She had set fire to her house, tried to kill her husband, and then ran like a fox to a swamp. Grandmother followed her from seven o’clock one evening till two the next morning, and the poor creature was found more dead than alive, and put in a hospital where she subsequently recovered.”

“I have heard that bloodhounds are very fierce in disposition, but I don’t find you so,” I said.

“Some of them used to be made so,” said King Harry, “but they are really just like other dogs. Treat them kindly, and they will treat you kindly, and a bloodhound can be trained not to lay hold of a fugitive.”

“I say, King Harry,” I remarked, “dogs are wonderful creatures. It’s a pity men don’t understand better how to utilise them.”

“What gets me most of all,” said the dog in his melancholy voice, “is the unappreciated devotion of dogs. I heard your master telling the other day of a friend of his who was in Belgium during the late war. He said that no human beings were more faithful than dogs; that the red-cross animals were simply magnificent, and even the poor house-dogs who were left in the Belgian villages, when their owners fled for their lives, were so devoted that they sat by their kennels till they dropped dead. Even when food was offered them, they turned their heads away. The poor starving brutes thought it was right for them to stay by their ruined homes, and not to take food from strangers.”

“Don’t talk about that war,” I cried, “don’t talk about that awful war--I’m trying to forget it. Come on down to the village. There’s to be a feast in Neighbourhood Hall.”

Good King Harry pricked his drooping ears, and ran along with me. This Neighbourhood Hall was one of the grandest institutions I ever heard of, but I will tell of it later on, for I want to give an account now of something King Harry did to help along the work master and Mr. Bonstone were engaged in.

## CHAPTER XX

THE REFORMED SHOWMAN

King Harry, as he said, had never been trained as his grandmother was, for he had been stolen when he was a puppy, but he inherited enough trailing instinct to do pretty good amateur work, and we dogs were always setting him tasks, and were surprised at his cleverness in picking up a trail.

One night, shortly after my conversation with him about his grandmother, we gave him something to do for our owners. We thought at first that there was going to be a serious case, but in the long run it turned out more happily than we thought it would.

It was about ten o’clock on a fine spring evening. There had been a lot of cold weather, when suddenly this glorious day burst upon us, like a harbinger of summer. Everybody had been out-of-doors all day long, and master and mistress sat on the front veranda, too contented to go to bed.

Little stars peeped timidly from a somewhat misty sky, and the river babbled happily of even warmer days to come, and summer delights of flower and song, for the birds were beginning to return from King Harry’s sunny South.

Master sat in a big chair, mistress was swinging in a hammock, Amarilla was cuddled in her arms. I lay under the hammock, King Harry was sprawled on the gravel walk below, and Cannie, the Dandie Dinmont terrier, had gone down to the river to get a drink.

We had steps down to the pond near the house where the goldfishes were, but he never would drink from the place where those yellow things lived, as he called mistress’s Japanese beauties.

The night was very still, and presently I heard Cannie’s soft paddies coming back, pit-a-pat with excitement.

King Harry didn’t notice this. The good dog depended more on his nose than his ears and eyes. Perhaps from having been with human beings so much, I see and hear more quickly than most dogs. Something was the matter with Cannie, that was one thing sure.

I ran down the veranda steps, and put my muzzle close to his. “Lie down, and out with it,” I said.

He flopped on the gravel beside King Harry. Now our heads were all together--the bloodhound’s dome, my sloping head and strong, muscular jaws, and Cannie’s hairy nose.

“Something’s gone wrong,” he said with his strong, Scottish accent. “I was wandering down yon by the alders near the river, when I heard a furious noise of something being driven hard. It was an automobile coming from New York way. It stopped short when it got near me, and turned in among the alders. I scampered out of the way, and a man hid it in off the road. Then he sprang out, and tore up across the turnip field toward Gringo’s house. I was too far off to smell him, but I got a verra uneasy impression.”

He stopped, and both dogs looked at me. I had been with the Grantons longer than they had, and they were waiting for my advice.

I was puzzled. “If it were an ordinary case of big country-houses and rich people,” I said, “I would imagine it an attempt at burglary. But you say the man was alone.”

“Stark alone,” said Cannie.

“And he left his car there?”

“Yes, down yon,” said the little dog, nodding toward Pleasant River.

“You see,” I went on, “master and mistress and the Bonstones haven’t anything worth stealing, but grandfathers’ clocks, and pianos, and old furniture. They’ve given away jewelry and silver, and anything that would tempt their fellow-men. However, it’s our duty to investigate. Lead on, Cannie.”

He galloped ahead with King Harry, and I paused an instant and listened.

“Rudolph,” my mistress was just saying, “I’m sleepy. I think I will go to bed.”

“Very well, darling,” he replied, and he got up and helped her out of the hammock, and opened the screen door for her.

“I think I will sit a while longer,” he said as he kissed her. “I have a little business to plan out.”

“And I have been keeping you from it by my chattering,” she said. “Why did you not ask me to keep still?”

“Because I preferred pleasure to business,” he said gallantly, and she laughed, and went to bed.

That just suited me. She would be out of the way if we wanted master, and he was sure to sit for a while, for he was a most scrupulous man about keeping his word, even to himself.

I raced after my dog-brothers. The night did not seem as dark as to human beings. Cannie was on his hind legs peering into the car, and King Harry was up on the seat, snuffing and blowing over a pair of driving gloves.

I stood and listened for a minute. What an exquisite night! The lovely misty sky spread above us was serene and comforting, the great dark earth was warm and palpitating--one could hear things growing. Talk about the quiet of the country--this country just talked, when a dog had ears to hear. The tiny growing leaves of the trees had one language, the grass had another, there was no mistake about the joy of the frogs--they were simply yelling with delight to think that summer was coming.

Just here King Harry jumped down. “I needn’t have stayed so long,” he said, “but I wanted to do some fine work.”

“What have you found out?” I asked. “Your eyes are blazing.”

“It’s that demon Fifeson,” he said. “No trouble to find his scent, but I wished to know whether he’s after good or evil.”

“I hear he’s reformed,” I said, “and is doing well in a garage on Broadway.”

“I hate him,” said King Harry. “I suppose it’s wrong, but it will take years for me to get over my resentment toward him. He never hurt me much. I had simply to draw a wagon on the stage, but it used to make my blood boil to see him flog that small Amarilla.”

“Never mind that now, old man,” I said, “tell us what you’ve discovered.”

“When a man is in a furious rage, and about to commit a crime,” said the hound, “a strong acrid smell emanates from him. Those gloves are damp and excited as to scent, but not criminal. I guess Fifeson is here on business.”

“Maybe it’s good business,” I said.

“We canna tell,” said the little Scotch dog cautiously. “For what did he hide his car? I suspicioned who it was, but didna care to tell till I was sure.”

“Come on,” I said, “let’s follow him.”

King Harry put his old muzzle to the ground, but before he did so, he said, “Of course, I’ll follow mute.”

I nodded my head, and we started off up the road, going not very fast, as King Harry was not an expert trailer. He nosed to and fro, and Cannie said impatiently, “I tell ye, man, he crossed the turnip field.”

“I’m not going to be ‘lifted,’” said King Harry stubbornly. “You never indicate to a hound the direction in which his quarry has gone. I’m doing this, anyway. Kindly hold your tongue.”

The abashed Cannie slunk behind me, and we went up across the turnip field in King Harry’s good time, down to the hollow where the long meadow grass grew, across it through the pinewood belonging to us, and into the pasture belonging to Mr. Bonstone.

The sweet wild grass was soft to our paws, and we skipped over the many rocks sticking their ribs up through the ground. We cantered easily along, and King Harry took us to a path leading to the young orchard at Green Hill, then to an asphalt walk that ran from the house down to the electric car track in the road. This walk was for the convenience of the farm hands when they wanted to take the car to the city. The men would start out from their rooms over the stables with nicely blacked shoes, and Mrs. Bonstone had suggested that this walk be made, so they could arrive in the city with smart looking feet.

Well, King Harry soon had us in the vicinity of the stables. This meant that all the Bonstone tribe of dogs had to have a muzzle in the affair, though we would just as soon have worked the thing alone.

Sir Walter Scott was the first to challenge us. “Woo, woo,” we heard in his deep growl, as he lay crouched behind an apple tree.

As quick as a flash, his tone changed. Our scent had been borne on the night air. He ran to meet us, nosing hurriedly, to find out what this late visit meant.

“Wow, wow,” came from the stables in Yeggie’s sharp voice, and without waiting for Joe to wake and let him out, he took a flying leap through the open window to the roof of the harness-room, and came limping to greet us.

“Shut up,” I said irritably. “Why don’t you wait and think, before you bark?”

“Yeggie always barks first, and thinks afterward,” said the little dog, and he licked my ear so humbly, that I had to forgive him.

Czarina came among us like a silent shadow, and poked her long muzzle at me. “What’s the matter?” she said.

“Good London, he’s off,” I replied inelegantly; “all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t turn King Harry from his trail.”

“Now we’ve got to trail him,” said Czarina, “for he’s out of sight,” and she put her muzzle to the ground.

“I think I’ll stay with the hens,” said Sir Walter, sitting down outside his kennel. “Betsy’s in there, and she’s fussing, for she can’t see well at night. Bark, if you want me.”

“What’s up?” asked Weary Winnie sleepily. She was always the last to arrive, and now she stood blinking drowsily at us, and wrinkling her nose more than ever.

“We’re man-trailing,” I said; “come on, youngster,” and off I started.

By this time, every dog had caught the scent of Fifeson, and they were a mad-looking lot. If they had followed the natural impulses of their plain dog hearts, I think they would have liked to tear that man to pieces that quiet summer night, but they were trained animals, and each one knew if they dared hurt so much as a hair of his wicked head, they would be severely called to account by Mr. Bonstone. So merely growling unutterable things, they all pressed on.

Suddenly, we brought up short near the house. There had been an old well on the place for a long time. It was, strange to say, close to the front door of the present house, which was built in a slightly different place from the old farm-house. The well had been built over, and a bird’s bath tub was on the top of it, surrounded by a clump of syringa bushes, so the pretty feathered things could bathe in the privacy that they love as much as human beings.

“The brute’s in there,” hissed Cannie between the two broken-off teeth, knocked out by the amiable Fifeson.

At that instant, I felt a soft impact against my throat, and mighty glad I was that I stood on good terms with Gringo.

The old fellow had slipped down from his master’s bedroom by the winding staircase that led from an upper to a lower veranda. Mr. Bonstone never shut up, by night or by day, the best friend he had. He was at liberty to roam all over the farm if he wished.

Gringo’s old lay-back nose wasn’t as good as mine, but he felt that friends were abroad, and he was right on the spot to help us if necessary.

“It’s Fifeson,” I said. “I might have known he was near, for Amarilla has been trembling all day. She’s as sensitive as a baby.”

“What’s up with Fifeson?” asked Gringo.

“I guess he’s all right,” I said, “but we’re watching. He’s in that syringa bush.”

Well, there we sat for a short time--King Harry, Gringo, Czarina, Cannie, Yeggie, Weary Winnie and myself. The Frenchmen didn’t turn out.

The air was so clear that we could hear every word spoken on the veranda. Though it was late, a neighbour and his wife were calling on the Bonstones, and we could hear the clink of glass, as bottles and glasses touched each other.

A shudder ran through the Fifeson dogs. They all hated the sight and sound of a bottle, for it was when their master was drunk that he beat them most.

A thought came to me. I whispered to Cannie, “Come on home with me,” and followed by him, and taking the shortest cut known to us dogs, we just galloped back to the Pleasant River house.

Master was still dreaming on the veranda. “Stay here and watch the house,” I said to Cannie, “I’m going to take him back with me.”

It was the work of an instant, to spring at master’s arm and look at him with my most burning glance.

“All right, old fellow,” he said; “I’ll go with you.”

He turned round, glanced at Cannie who was sitting close to the door, not very well pleased at being left out of the fun, then ran, actually ran, to the garage with me, for he saw the occasion required haste, and got out his new French racing car. I sprang to the seat, barked in the direction of Green Hill, and in a few minutes, we streaked up in front of the Bonstones’ house.

The callers departed, when master arrived. Gringo said they had been there for an age. Master sat down, and the Bonstones began talking to him, but he didn’t say much.

He kept looking at me, and presently I led the way to the syringa bushes. He saw the dogs sitting round, and said in a low voice, “Hello! there--come out, whoever you are.”

I thought to myself: master is a clever man, the Bonstones are clever people, but not one of them knows what we dogs have sensed--namely that there is a man in the bushes, and we know all about him, except his business here, which, however, we are sure is of a pacific nature, and not criminal. And some people say, dogs are not clever!

The bushes parted, and Fifeson came out, looking very hot and sticky. He is a weasel-faced little man. With that appearance, I don’t see how he can be a decent chap, but he’s making a brave fight for it. I hated him almost as much as the other dogs, and with a growl, I stepped aside for him to pass me. I did not want the brute to touch me.

Keeping close at master’s heels, I listened to hear what Fifeson had to say for himself.

“I say, sir,” he said in a low, almost agonised voice, “for heaven’s sake send Mr. Bonstone down here, and don’t tell his wife who it is--it might cost me my life, sir--it might.”

“All right,” said my master, “don’t be scared. Only the dogs know, and they won’t peach.”

Fifeson had seen us. He knew that though the dogs hated him, they would not hurt him. He had been their master. Even in the midst of his perturbation, he clicked his dry tongue, and snapped his fingers at his old victims. Not one of them would go near him. Weary Winnie made a kind of shuffle toward him, but Gringo growled at her, and kept her from carrying out her impulse. The dogs wouldn’t hurt him, but they wouldn’t forgive him.

I ran after master to the veranda. “Norman,” he said carelessly to his friend, “a man has come from New York to see you on special business. He doesn’t want his presence known. Just step down to the syringas, and speak to him.”

Mrs. Bonstone is a very clever woman. She gave master a quick look, and catching up her little silk wrap said, “Good night, I’m going to bed.”

As soon as she was gone, Mr. Bonstone brought Fifeson up on the veranda, and gave him something to drink. He gulped down his ginger ale in a flash, and said a few hasty words.

His breath was nearly all gone, for the night was warm, and he had rushed uphill part of the way. However, he had had time to recover himself in the bushes. I think perhaps it was fear that made him hot.

“You know Jones’ big jewelry store down town,” he said to Mr. Bonstone in a low voice.

Mr. Bonstone nodded.

Fifeson pulled his chair further in the shadow of the wall. “I say, turn out some of the lights, won’t you?”

Master jumped up, and turned out every one, while the man went on whispering to Mr. Bonstone.

“It’s going to be broken into at two o’clock to-night. I believe you set Jones up after he failed.”

Mr. Bonstone nodded again.

“I knew you had big money in it,” Fifeson gasped. “Get to town quick. Get a friend to make the police wise. Don’t go to headquarters yourself. You did me a good turn. I thought I’d stand by you.”

“Thanks,” said Mr. Bonstone briefly. “Shall I go back in your car?”

“Oh! Lord, no,” said the poor wretch in an agony. “I may get shot for this, anyway.”

He was breaking away, when Mr. Bonstone caught him. “How did you find out?”

“Was in the garage under a car--two gangsters came in to hire an auto--I caught a clue and followed it up.”

He paused in some embarrassment, and Mr. Bonstone said, “All right, go. I’m obliged.”

Fifeson shot out into the night, and not a dog followed him this time.

Mr. Bonstone turned to my master, “Fifeson has had some dealings with the underworld that he doesn’t want to reveal. Now, how am I to get to town?”

“I’ll take you in the racer,” said master pointing to his French car.

“I’ll say a word to Stanna,” said Mr. Bonstone, and he leaped upstairs calling over his shoulder, “Czarina.”

Czarina told me afterward that Mr. Bonstone shot into his wife’s bed-room, exclaimed, “I’m going to town--will explain later. Keep the hound with you for company. Everything’s all right, but dress yourself and telephone Thomas to take you over to Claudia. Tell her Rudolph is with me. We’ll be back in a few hours. Not a word to a soul about the man who was here.”

Czarina says Mrs. Bonstone smiled brightly, never asked a question, motored over to my dear mistress’s house, told her the two men had gone off to the city, probably on one of their errands of mercy.

I think mistress was a little worried, for Czarina says she called for Cannie, King Harry and myself to watch in the house till master returned. She got King Harry and Cannie, but not your humble servant, for I had sprung first in the car, and was flying to New York on the wings of the wind.

The car is a beauty, and as there were few machines on the road, master didn’t trouble about the speed limit. We didn’t go quite into the city. We stopped at the Johnsons’, where Louis and I had had the adventure in saving Lady Serena Glandison from drowning. Mr. Johnson, fortunately, was just getting home from his club in his own car. A few words to him from master, and back he went to the city, to put detectives on the track of the wicked young burglars who were going to steal Mr. Jones’ diamonds.

The burglary didn’t come off, two men were caught, and sent to Sing Sing, though one escaped, and best of all, Fifeson’s connection with the affair was never suspected, as it had been managed in such a roundabout way.

Fifeson went on from better to best, and now he is chauffeur for a millionaire, and we dogs often see him driving about in a smart maroon livery, and with a smile of smug respectability on his weasel face. I hear he has just married a very respectable Norwegian girl. I don’t believe he told her his past. The millionaire’s dog told Gringo that if any woman could keep a man straight, it would be that light-haired Norwegian Anna.

Women seem to have a great deal of influence over men. I suppose if all the women in the world were good, there would be no bad men.

I heard mistress talking to master about his hurried trip that night, and she was gently trying to find out what it had all been about.

“I can’t tell you names, dearest,” he said. “It might cost a man his life. I will merely say that a man whom I began to help, and who was taken hold of by Bonstone later, did him a good turn, and saved him some money.”

“Everybody seems to be half good and half bad,” said Mrs. Granton with a puzzled face.

“Every one,” said master emphatically, “and it goes to prove that we should all go through life with an infinite pity for every one, including ourselves.”

## CHAPTER XXI

MASTER CARTY’S BOTTLE

Now I must hark back to Master Carty.

He couldn’t seem to get over his tippling for a long time after he came to Green Hill--not until something happened.

I have referred before to my conversation with Gringo about Master Carty’s troublesome habit. The good old dog never mentioned the tiresome young man, till three months after that, when one day, as he and I were taking a stroll in the young orchard to get some of a new kind of young grass that was springing up about the baby trees, and that was very good for our stomachs, we saw Master Carty taking a short cut across to the house. There was a gentle hill in the orchard, and just as our naughty young man got near it, out came a flask from his pocket. He was just going to take a long pull out of it, when old Gringo pretended to see a mouse in the earth, gave chase, and stumbled in front of the self-indulgent young man.

Ordinarily Gringo doesn’t worry about the mice. He’s not that kind of a dog. One of my duties is to hunt them, so they won’t hide under the snow in winter, and girdle the fruit trees.

Well, away went the flask. I sprang to pick it up, grabbed it, held it carefully neck down, and laid it at Master Carty’s feet.

He praised me, and aimed a kick at Gringo. The old dog stared at him thoughtfully, and didn’t say anything, but the next day he played a fine trick on him.

It was a pouring wet day, but still Mrs. Granton and George Washington had gone over in the limousine to spend the day with Mrs. Bonstone, Cyria and the twins.

The air was so warm that they were all sitting out on the partly covered-in veranda. The rain beat against the glass, but Cyria and our baby were snug inside, playing with a Noah’s ark and a box of blocks. The two little tots sat on a rug, and the twin babies lay asleep in a pretty swinging cot. Mrs. Bonstone lounged in a reclining chair beside them, and my mistress rocked and talked and knitted a sock for George Washington.

I was in a corner, having an after-lunch nap. Human beings would do well if they could imitate dogs, and throw themselves down for a rest after eating. Usually, they get up from the table and fly at their work harder than ever.

After a while, I thought I would go up to the barn and see what the other dogs were doing, for no one was in sight but Amarilla, who never ventured far from Mrs. Granton.

On rainy days, it was the custom for the dogs to assemble on the barn floor to have a gossip.

I found the whole bunch up there, every one with lip curled, and indulging in a hearty fit of dog laughter. Even Gringo, who was not too old to enjoy a joke, was just shaking with dog amusement. The polite Frenchmen were giggling, while the nervous Yeggie ran up and down, squealing and yapping with delight. Czarina’s aristocratic lip was curled high in enjoyment, and Weary Winnie, forgetting her laziness, was rolling over and over in the hay ki-yiing with glee.

Sir Walter Scott was missing; probably he was huddled in one of the hen-houses and letting the chicken Betsy roost on his back to keep her feet from getting damp.

“What’s the joke, boys?” I asked.

“Let me speak, oh! let me speak,” said the dancing Yeggie. “Mr. Carty comes home by the train, he has to walk from the station, ’cause there’s nobody’s car there to give him a lift. Yeggie happens to be down there calling on a friend, Yeggie follows him home.”

This dog always speaks of himself by his name, instead of using a pronoun. He is a silly little fellow, yet lovable, and he has occasional strains of sense.

“Well,” I said. “I don’t see any joke yet, but go on, and don’t jump up and down the whole time you’re talking.”

Yeggie continued, “Master Carty’s rubber stuck in the mud, Master Carty said a naughty word, and stooped down to pull it on. Yeggie saw something wicked in his pocket.”

“A flask, I suppose,” I said.

“No, not a flask; that wasn’t big enough for to-day. It was a bottle with strong stuff in it--Yeggie smelt it.”

“Well, what did Yeggie do?” I asked impatiently.

“Yeggie did nothing. He just watched. Master Carty was talking to himself. ‘If I take this brandy in the house, those blessed’--only Yeggie didn’t hear blessed--‘women will be watering it, and I’m wet enough without any more diluting. I’ll hide it.’”

“And you marked the hiding place, and came and told Gringo.”

“Yes, Yeggie did,” and the little Jack-in-the-box almost danced his legs off.

“And what did you do, Gringo?” I asked, turning to him.

“I thought about that kick he gave me yesterday,” said the old dog. “A man who starts kicking animals, winds up by kicking human beings. If I should ever see Master Carty kick Mrs. Bonstone, or the brown baby, I’d bite him. So I thought we’d better extract the kick right now.”

“Isn’t this terrible,” I exclaimed. “He’s bringing far too many bottles from the city lately. It’s amazing how many drinks a day a man can take.”

“He’s a scamp,” said Gringo, “but he’ll get nothing out of his bottle this time. I ran up here, when Yeggie told me, and what do you think we’ve done to the bottle?”

“Hidden it of course, but where?”

“No, not hidden it,” said Gringo, “we’ve smashed it.”

“Let me finish, oh! let me finish,” squealed Yeggie, and he went on. “Master Carty didn’t hide his bottle in the bushes the way he does sometimes. Yeggie saw him bring it here to the barn. He climbed the ladder to the hay-mow, he tucked it somewhere and came down.”

“You see,” said Gringo to me, “he wanted to have it in some place easy to get at in this storm, and where he could have some good excuse for calling on it. He’d run out here to see the horses in the stable beyond, then he’d have a swig at his old bottle.”

“The rogue!” I said irritably.

“Smell! smell! smell!” cried Yeggie, dancing up and down, “it’s right here.”

I had noticed a heavy smell of brandy when I came in the barn, and now I trotted to the other end near the big open doors, and there on the floor, lay the remains of a bottle on a bed of wet oats.

One of the men had spilt the horses’ feed, and hay and oats were all mixed up with the nasty drink.

“But how did you get the bottle down from the hay-mow?” I asked.

Old Czarina began to laugh, and licked the ear of the poodle next her. “Frenchmen are clever,” she murmured.

I stared at the poodles. In the days of their captivity, they had learned how to climb ladders. They were now never asked to perform any tricks. One day, when we first came out here, Mrs. Bonstone had shown a neighbour’s boy what odd things they could do, and his mother told Mrs. Bonstone afterwards that he went home and tried to teach his dog, and beat him cruelly when he would not learn until she interfered and took his stick from him.

“That settles it,” said Mrs. Bonstone, “no more clown tricks for our dogs. They may be as intelligent as they please along their own lines, but they shall not be asked to imitate human beings. They may do it on their own initiative, if they wish.”

The Frenchmen, however, really liked to climb, and Mrs. Bonstone smiled when she saw those two white dogs going, paw over paw, up the ladders that led to the hay-mows. The barn loft was a great place for them to retire to when they wanted a nap.

The stableman, however, did not smile. One day I heard Thomas talking severely to the two Frenchmen who stood before him like two culprits. “If I ever ketch you two young limbs messing up the hay for my horses again, I’ll lather you,” he said, and he shook a strap at them. “Horses hate to have dogs, and cats, and any critters lying on their feed. How would you like a horse to lie on your breakfus, hey?” and he hung the strap up where they could see it.

The Frenchmen trembled, and went away with hanging heads, and from that day to this, I had never heard of their climbing to the mows. So I said to Czarina, “Weren’t they afraid to go up there?”

“Ask them,” she said with a motion of her noble head toward them.

The Frenchmen bowed politely--they always did everything together, and each one lifting a forepaw, curled it slightly, to signify that they had mounted to the mow and found the bottle.

“And pushed it down?” I asked.

“Yes! yes!” said all the dogs.

“My! what a smash it made,” cried Yeggie. “Yeggie jumped, and then the smell--wow!” and he twisted his muzzle all up in a knot.

“Brave dogs,” I exclaimed, “especially brave, since you so hate a bottle, but weren’t you afraid Thomas would catch you?”

“Yeggie watched,” cried the little dog. “If Yeggie barked once, it meant some one was coming, and the Frenchmen must drop on the hay, and be dead dogs. Two barks from Yeggie meant that they had time to skip down the ladder. But no one came.”

I congratulated the two poodles on their cleverness, and asked whether the men had found the bottle.

“No. We found out after we’d had the trouble of watching for them, that they’d fed the stock for the night, and had gone to the city on a half holiday. The chauffeur is to shut the barn doors in an hour.”

“Master Carty will be out before then to call on the bottle,” I said.

“He’s coming, boys, he’s coming,” said Weary Winnie suddenly. She had been staring out the barn door in the direction of the house. We dogs all scattered, except Yeggie who crept behind a grain measure.

Later on Yeggie, with wicked glee, related Master Carty’s disappointment and anger on not finding the bottle. He climbed to the mow, groped about in the hay, came down, smelt his lost treasure, raged at the men who he thought had stolen it, and flung himself back to the house in a passion, telling what he was going to do to be revenged on the thieves.

That was not the last of the bottle. The next scene in its history came the next morning. A terrible thunderstorm coming on at dinner time this same day, prevented my master and mistress from taking the baby home. They often stayed all night at the Bonstones’, who had plenty of guest rooms.

Everybody was late for breakfast the next morning. The dear human beings had sat up late talking the night before, over the library fire that Mrs. Bonstone had had lighted to make things look cheerful.

Gringo and I were the first downstairs. We ran out-of-doors, and to our surprise, were met on the front veranda by Czarina, Yeggie, the Frenchmen, and even Weary Winnie, all in the most extraordinary state of excitement.

“Come up to the barn,” they cried, “come up to the barn,” and not a word more would they say.

We ran up like foxes, and there in front of the barn a most peculiar thing was taking place.

Sir Walter stood with his aristocratic face in a snarl of worry. He was staring at his big flock of Wyandottes who were behaving in a most erratic manner.

“If those hens weren’t so steady,” I said, “I would guess that they are trying to do a cake walk.”

Yeggie could keep still no longer, and just burst out, “They’re doing the Carty walk--they got at the bottle. Yeggie saw ’em.”

“What!” I barked wildly.

“Shut up,” said Gringo giving him a nip, “you’re making Scott feel sore,” and he threw a compassionate glance at Sir Walter.

“I will explain,” said Czarina in her slow, solemn way, and she began, “You remember the oats that got soaked with the brandy yesterday afternoon?”

“Perfectly,” I replied.

“This morning,” she continued, “when Thomas threw open the barn doors, Sir Walter, who had just got the hens roused, drove them in here to get some nice dry hayseed. They said it would have been better for them to get out early, and pick up the fat worms that had come up on the soil loosened by the rain. However, Sir Walter didn’t know that. I think he thought the wet ground would be bad for the chickens’ feet. Be that as it may, the hens obeyed him, came in here, and he calmly watched them while they crowded about the spilled oats. He has a good vein of Scotch thrift, and he thought it was a good thing to save the oats.

“However, they were affected immediately. You know any kind of a bird has a short digestive tract. When they began to stagger, he withdrew to that spot, and he will not allow any of us to explain the affair to him.”

“Well, some one’s got to put him wise about it,” said Gringo decidedly, “and right away. I believe I’ll do it,” and he set out in his sturdy fashion to have a talk with Sir Walter. For a long time, they stood with their heads close together, then Sir Walter, with a furious face, bolted toward the house.

He had never liked Master Carty very much, for the young man used to tease him unmercifully, and no dog likes persecution any more than a human being does. I knew what he was going to do, and I whispered to Gringo, “If I’m not greatly mistaken, we shall soon see Mrs. Bonstone in the arena.”

Sure enough, as we heard later, Sir Walter burst into the bed-room of the lady he loved so dearly, and served so well in his devotion to her hens, and pulling at her gown, until she hurriedly finished her dressing, induced her to come up to the barn with him.

I shall never forget her face, as she stood staring at us, at the hens, and at Thomas and Joe, who by this time had appeared, and were yelling with glee at the sight of the tipsy hens.

They quieted down when they saw Mrs. Bonstone, and one of them beginning to sniff, followed his nose, till he walked straight to the spot where the bottle still lay in the midst of the few oats left.

“Some one’s been having a spree here,” said Joe.

Mrs. Bonstone swooped down, caught up the broken neck of the bottle, and despite herself, could not help flashing him a suspicious glance.

“I’m a teetotaller, ma’am,” he said shortly. “Joe and me never brings nothin’ from the city.”

She winced as if he had struck her. She knew she had done wrong to suspect him, but I have noticed that wherever drink goes, it breeds suspicion and mistrust even in the good.

“Forgive me, Thomas,” she said softly, and there were tears in her eyes. “I know it wasn’t you, nor Joe.”

Then the tears began to roll down her cheeks, and she went swiftly back to the house. She did not like to see her pretty hens staggering against each other, and leaning up against the trees in the orchard, and she knew very well who was responsible for their condition.

She sent her husband and Mr. Granton out, and I thought they would kill themselves laughing at the plight of her hens. They were powerfully ridiculous, and to see Sir Walter trying to bunch them, and get them into their hen-houses to hide their shame, was as good as a play. He ran round and round them with his tongue out, and panted for all he was worth. The poor creatures tried to obey him, but they had little use of their legs, and finally he flopped down on the grass, and made up his mind just to wait till they got over it.

Only Betsy was sober, and she walked curiously all round her companions, lifting one claw high in the air, then the other, and saying softly, “Ka! Ka!” She was too dainty to eat oats, and had been holding herself in, to share in Sir Walter’s nice breakfast down at the house, as she usually did.

“That’s right, Walter,” said Mr. Bonstone mopping his eyes, “let them sleep it off. Good dog,” and he patted him.

I ran behind the two men as they went to the house. I wanted to hear what they said.

“There’s a serious side to this, Granton,” said Mr. Bonstone, “and my wife will be worried to death. Some one has brought forbidden fruit here. It’s between the men and that scamp Carty.”

My master was very careful about meddling with his friend’s private affairs; however he said softly, “No tramp could pass your dogs. I believe your men are beyond suspicion, but it’s always safe to give the suspected person the benefit of the doubt.”

“All right,” said Mr. Bonstone briskly. “We’ll go on the supposition that the offender is unknown.”

The ladies were at breakfast when we entered, and very sweet and pretty they looked, as they sat at a well-spread table, drawn up close to some windows overlooking the rose-garden.

My dear mistress had got a little more flesh, and I thought her quite handsome now, but she never ceased inwardly bemoaning the fact that her beauty had fled, though she said little about it.

“Let it stay fled,” Gringo often growled. “She’s a better woman without it.”

“No, Rudolph, I don’t want to look at drunken hens, or drunken anything,” she said, when my master invited her to go up to the orchard, and see how amusing the hens were. “Suppose George Washington should drink when he grows up,” and she shuddered.

“The drink will all be banished by that time,” said her husband good-naturedly. “You women are getting so decided on the subject.”

“I don’t see how you men can jest,” she went on. “I think it’s a very sad subject--a very sad one,” and she pursed up her lips.

Her husband didn’t answer, but he was pleased with her attitude, for he gave her enough fried chicken for two women, and usually he tried to scrimp her about her food, for he was so afraid of the dreadful flesh coming back.

I think Mr. Bonstone was in misery till breakfast was over. He had put Carty out of his mind, and I knew that there floated continually before his eyes the vision of those white beauties who were no longer mistresses of themselves. He choked once or twice over his coffee, and finally he went off by himself in the rose-garden, and indulged in what Sir Walter calls a burst of Homeric laughter.

“I don’t see why he wants to laugh that way,” Sir Walter often says to me. “It’s so underbred. I like the way Mrs. Bonstone laughs much better.”

“He’s having a good time,” Gringo always growls, if he hears this criticism, “and he’s hurting no one. Let him alone.”

Master Carty came in very late for breakfast that morning, and only the two ladies were left. He had slept off his ill-temper over the loss of his bottle, and was in his usual waggish, teasing mood.

He pulled his sister’s hair as he passed her, and made an amusing face at Mrs. Granton.

His sister began to whimper a bit, and I knew a scene was coming.

“What’s the matter, Sis?” he asked kindly. “Has Bonstone been beating you--don’t cry in my coffee, if he has. It will only weaken me, when I punish him.”

“The h-h-hens are all drunk,” she said as she passed him his cup.

“Drunk!” he exclaimed, “and what do they find to get drunk on in this double-distilled temperance household? Spring water, eh?”

“Some one brought this bottle to the place,” said Mrs. Bonstone, dramatically withdrawing from under the table the broken neck that she had picked up in the barn.

Master Carty started, and said, “Ye gods! Have I found the murderer of my long-lost brother?”

Mrs. Granton chipped in here. She was hand and glove with Mrs. Bonstone in trying to reform her old friend Carty.

“Perhaps some of your men have been drinking,” she said airily, “and let some of the nasty stuff fall on the barn floor, and the hens ate the hayseed.”

This was not quite correct, but it served her purpose.

“Jerusalem!” said poor Master Carty.

Gringo gave me a push. We were both lying on the floor in a big patch of sunlight, apparently observing nothing, yet taking note of all that went on.

Mrs. Bonstone worked herself, or seemed to work herself into a sudden passion. “I shall ask Norman to discharge both those men, if they are guilty. I shall not have drunkards about the place. They might set the barn on fire.”

Now this touched Master Carty in a tender spot. He was mischievous and self-indulgent, but he was no coward.

“Let me see that neck,” he said miserably.

His sister handed him the bit of broken bottle, and both women surveyed him narrowly from under their eyelids.

Gringo and I were close to his place at the table, and we heard him mutter, “Well, I’ve got it in the neck this time--like the chickens.”

“What are you muttering, Carty?” asked his sister.

“Nothing, nothing,” and he pushed his chair away from his untasted coffee--Oh! how good it smelt, with lots of lovely cream from the Bonstones’ own cows in it, and a sugary sweet smell, for he liked six lumps.

“Stanna,” he said presently, “where’s your husband?”

“Gone,” she said, “some time ago. He was in a hurry to get to town. We were late.”

“Then I’ll have to tell you,” he went on with hanging head. “Don’t blame the men. This bottle was mine,” and he hurled the neck through the open window. “I--I’m very sorry. I don’t see how your hens got at it. They must have vicious tastes.”

Now just here, instead of falling on his neck, and extracting from him promises of reform, as she had done so many, oh! so many, times, his sister did what seemed to me a queer thing, at first.

She put her arms on the table, dropped her head on them, and said, “Oh! oh! oh!” a great many times.

Gringo had been licking his paw thoughtfully, while he listened to the conversation at the table. Now he stopped, and pondered. He had struck a snag in his thoughts. He was trying to catch on to Mrs. Bonstone’s wasping, as he told me when I whispered to him.

Presently he went on licking, and I knew he had got the clue.

“What is it?” I whispered.

“She’s going to make fun of him, poor soul!” he responded. “She’s tried everything else.”

Master Carty was striding up and down the room. “Stanna,” he said stopping short, “what’s the matter with you? One would think you’d never seen a bottle before.”

“It’s not that, brother,” she cried, lifting her head, and beating the table with both her little hands. “It’s the ridicule that will be made of you. Norman was just roaring with laughter. He thought it was the best drink joke he ever heard, and you know he is full of them. He will tell it to the men at the club at lunch. It will be all over the city, that Carty Resterton has sunk so low, that he drinks with the hens. You know what a picture Dicky Grey, and Mark Jones and all that set will draw--Carty Resterton having a carousal in the barn, because his sister’s house isn’t open for that sort of thing. He took a pull at the bottle, then the hens had their turn--oh! oh! oh! I can’t stand it,” and she went off into an admirable fit of hysterics.

Mrs. Granton threw water on her face, and rang for Annie and they slapped and pinched her, and put her on the sofa, and Master Carty stared and glowered, till she recovered enough for him to ask her a furious question, “Do you mean to say that Bonstone is deliberately going to make game of me?”

Mrs. Granton flashed out at him, “Carty Resterton, what do you mean? Your brother-in-law is the soul of honour, and he has had infinite patience with your weakness. Do you suppose any one told him it was your bottle?”

Master Carty rammed his hands down deep in his pockets. Annie came in the room with a glass of something for Mrs. Bonstone, and he had to wait till the door closed behind her. Then he shouted, “I wish to heaven I knew what you two women mean.”

“Hush, hush,” said Mrs. Granton patting Mrs. Bonstone as if she were a child. “I will speak for you,” and speak she did, and with an eloquence that astonished Gringo and me, too, though I understand how much she had developed since the baby came.

“She hits out from the shoulder,” muttered Gringo admiringly.

Mistress gave Master Carty about the plainest talk he’d ever had. She told him how he was killing his poor grandmother and sister, and if she’d been in their places, she would have turned him out to die in the gutter.

“She wouldn’t, you know,” I said anxiously to Gringo.

“I track her,” said the good old dog. “She’s fighting for her friend. It’ll do him good.”

“And your brother-in-law,” said mistress furiously. “How many men would put up with your actions? It’s common talk, that you come home here staggering, night after night.”

The discomfited Carty at last got a word in. “But what has all this got to do with Bonstone’s going to town and making game of me?”

“He hasn’t gone to make fun of you,” cried mistress, “he’ll tell the story, and your boon companions will put their own interpretation on it. They’ll know it was you that debauched the hens. They know you bring bottles home.”

“Debauched the hens,” cried Master Carty, putting both hands to his head, and acting as if he were trying to lift himself up by his hair, “Good London! have I sunk as low as that?”

Mrs. Granton’s voice suddenly became compassionate. “Run to the telephone, dear Carty,” she said, “we can’t help loving you, in spite of your faults. Telephone Norman, telephone my husband--beg them to say nothing of the occurrence. Beg them to keep quiet. Tell them it was your bottle, that your friends will put their own construction on the story, no matter how innocently it is told. Fly to the telephone, like a good boy.”

Mistress glanced at the sofa. Her friend was with her. She was doing right. She urged Master Carty to the hall, she put the receiver in his hand, he called up Mr. Bonstone and my dear master. He faltered and stammered, and she supplied words. Finally, the campaign was over, and he came back to the table where Mrs. Bonstone, having revived by this time, was sitting ringing for fresh coffee.

Then didn’t the two women pet him! He was their own dear boy, no one should make fun of him, while they could protect him. No one must tell Grandmother, she would be so shocked, and Master Carty alternately beamed and glowered, and cast puzzled glances at us, as if he didn’t quite know whether to be flattered or disgruntled.

They begged him not to go in town that morning, to take them for a drive, and presently the two women with the children, Gringo and myself, were spinning over the beautiful country in our big touring-car, with Louis grinning happily as he conducted us.

The roads were grand after the rain, and the country was a dream, everything being washed and clean from the heavy rain.

Mistress took Carty to our house to lunch, and Gringo says when he went home late that afternoon, he walked up to the hen-houses and stared at the Wyandottes for a long time, with the most curious expression on his face.

Then, Gringo says, he muttered, “A companion to hens--by Jove! I must look higher.” He sauntered back to the house, mounted the staircase to his lovely room overlooking the beautiful, blue garden with its rocks and rills, and after enjoying the view from the window for a while, got out a little book from a locked drawer, and wrote something that Gringo heard him read aloud, “Sworn off again, and by the hens, I mean to keep my vow this time.”

He has kept it so far, though Gringo says Mrs. Bonstone often looks at him very anxiously. That’s the worst of tipplers. You never know when they’re going to break out again.

## CHAPTER XXII

MRS. WAVERLEE’S SCHOOL

Old Czarina, who came from Russia, says the most wonderful thing to her in this Green Hill district, is the school for children in Neighbourhood Hall.

This is the building that master and Mr. Bonstone put up on the village square. It is a big white erection with colonial pillars and plenty of verandas, and it has a garden round it, and a playground for little children, and inside is a library, a restaurant, a swimming pool, a pretty parlour where young people can dance and play games, and a big hall where moving pictures are given.

The country people just pour into it in the evening. Every one pays five cents, and after a certain length of time, the village will own the whole place, for Mr. Bonstone and my master believe in public ownership of public amusements.

One rule of the moving picture hall delights us dogs greatly. No trainer of animals can ever exhibit his creatures there. That is in the charter.

One good-sized room in the hall was reserved for a school for the children of the village, and Mrs. Waverlee is their teacher.

To come back to Czarina. She says that if all children in Russia could have such a teacher as Mrs. Waverlee, there would not be so much misery among them. She says that in her country, great pains is taken with the education of the children of the rich. They are made to speak French, and if a child forgets and addresses the mother in Russian, he or she is made to say the sentence over again in French, and sometimes in English, for they have governesses and nurses of different nationalities.

“In this wonderful country of America,” says Czarina, “you educate everybody. I was amazed to see a little Russian Jewess with her arms round Mrs. Waverlee’s neck the other day. In her own country, the child would be kept down, and if she had a teacher, would not dare to embrace her. Imagine the delight of her parents, at having a rich, cultured woman like Mrs. Waverlee devoting herself to the education of their child.”

All the dogs love Mrs. Waverlee, but Gringo is her stoutest admirer,

## partly on account of the English blood in his veins, and he often

runs down to her school and calls on her, or visits her in the pretty cottage in which she lives with Egbert.

She welcomes any well-behaved dog to her school, and the other day Gringo and I sauntered down to the village and approached Neighbourhood Hall.

It was a lovely day, and the doors were all wide open. We trotted across the tennis court, and the place where the boys and girls play basket-ball, to the garden at the back of the hall.

There is a big patch of greensward there, with a pond in the middle, where some white ducks, pets of the children, are always paddling about.

The children were all out on the grass, the most of them with bare feet.

When Mrs. Waverlee caught sight of us, she called with her pretty English accent, “Good morning, dogs, come to me.”

We walked toward her, Gringo with his queer sidewise gait like that of a racking horse. He never picks up his paws, the way a fox-terrier does.

“How fortunate,” exclaimed Mrs. Waverlee, as we lay down on the grass beside her. “Our lesson this morning is on the dog, and I had not a single dog caller. Now, children, do these two friends of mine suggest anything?”

“Tell us about bulldogs, please,” the most of them cried. Two little girls were for fox-terriers, but they were in the minority.

Some people blame Mrs. Waverlee because she allows the children to follow their own bent so much. One day, before the war closed, I heard her say to a lady, “Would it not be cruel when these little creatures come to school, bursting with questions about affairs in Europe that they hear you older ones discussing, for me to pin them down to a lesson in grammar, for example? No, I find out which way their minds lead me, and I follow it. Mornings when they want to know how the Germans and the Allies are getting on, I spread out a map on the grass and give them a united geography, history and peace lesson.”

Mrs. Waverlee shut her eyes, as she spoke. No one knew what agony it cost her to discuss the war, but she was not a woman to dodge her duty. She met it squarely in the face.

The lady who was criticising her, said with reluctant admiration, “My boy certainly does display an unusual knowledge of current events, but I am conservative in my ideas, and would like him brought up along old lines.”

“Then you must take him from here,” said Mrs. Waverlee sweetly. “The best and newest in an educational way is what Mr. Bonstone and Mr. Granton insist on.”

The lady didn’t take her son away, and a little later I heard her gushing to Mrs. Bonstone over the school.

“I never heard of anything like it,” she said. “The other day my husband brought home to dinner a distinguished Swiss scholar. When my Frankie heard our guest was from Switzerland, he ran to him, climbed on his knee, and asked him the most intelligent questions about his own country. He knew about the different cantons, the fine system of military service, the high mountains, the villages in the cup-like valleys, the big hotels, the peasants, the German-Swiss and the French-Swiss, and the coolness between them that the war has brought to a close, and he even yodelled for Monsieur de la Bontaine who is French-Swiss. The man was in an ecstasy. He pressed my child to his heart; he exclaimed, ‘Madame, I have not heard any grown man or woman talk in so picturesque a way about my country, since I came to America. It is a marvel. When did you have him in Switzerland?’

“I never had him there, I told him, and at first he could scarcely believe me. Frankie came to my assistance. ‘Mrs. Waverlee makes a country out in the garden,’ he said. ‘We have sand, and toy trees, and houses, and men and women, and stones, and we build mountains and make villages and forests, and then we go in the big hall, and see the moving pictures of it. Oh! it is great fun.’

“Monsieur de la Bontaine asked permission to visit the school, and he quite fell in love with Mrs. Waverlee. No, I shall not take Frankie away. I am going to give Mrs. Waverlee five hundred dollars to spend on further equipment for the school.”

Mrs. Bonstone was enchanted, and told her husband and my master how well their scheme was working out.

Master sighed. He was never satisfied with what he had done. He was always looking ahead. “Oh! for such a school for every young child in New York,” he said.

Now, to stop wandering, and go back to the day of our call--Gringo often says, “Boy, you are an A number one dog, but you reminisce too much”--Mrs. Waverlee put him up on the top of a box, then didn’t she exhaust the bulldog subject. She went away back to the days in old England, when cruel sports flourished. She told how men can take breeds of animals and birds and change them. The bulldog was inbred, until they got an animal perfectly adapted to the sport of bull-baiting.

She had some of the boys wheel out-of-doors an almost life-sized cow that is part of the school plant. She opened Gringo’s mouth, and the old fellow rolled his eyes kindly, while she showed the vise-like construction of his jaws. Then she asked him if he would make a spring at the cow, to show the children how the ancient bulldog used to leap at the bull’s head, and hold on by his teeth.

Gringo crooked his hind legs, gave one of his cat leaps, and landed on the cow’s upper lip. I don’t know what that old cow was made of, but there Gringo hung, and Mrs. Waverlee showed the children how his lay-back nose enabled him to breathe, while he retained his grip.

Bye and bye, the lip broke off, and then some of the children cried.

“This is too realistic,” said Mrs. Waverlee, “but the cow is not hurt, and the wicked sport of bull-baiting is all over.”

I may say, in passing, that some people blame Mrs. Waverlee because she does not keep everything painful from the children.

“I do not wish to make them soft,” she says with flashing eyes. “Evil and suffering are all about them. They must have some acquaintance with them in order to be able to overcome them. I make my own boy sit in school beside a beautiful and innocent German lad, to teach him to overcome his hatred for the nation.”

After the cow had been wheeled away, and her broken nose hidden in a young lilac bush, Mrs. Waverlee said, “Now, let us examine doggie’s points.”

I opened my eyes. I didn’t know she knew so much about dogs. She made Gringo walk away from her, and toward her, and she felt his back and his head, and had him sit down and get up, and she turned over his rose ears to show the children the pink lining, and pinched his brisket, and lifted his feet to see if they were sound, showed the children the set-out of the shoulders that enabled a bulldog to crouch low between the horns of an angry bull who tried to gore him. Then she explained that sometimes twenty or thirty dogs would be killed before the bull could be thrown.

That was news to me, and I whispered to Gringo, “I didn’t know you actually had to throw the bull.”

“Certainly,” he replied, “a heavy dog with a good grip could do it easily, if he knew how.”

After Mrs. Waverlee penalised Gringo slightly, because the wheel of his back wasn’t quite perfect, he stepped off the box, and everybody went home to lunch.

Mrs. Waverlee invited Gringo and me to accompany her and Egbert to their cottage, and we had a fine lunch with Patsie, Egbert’s fox-terrier who had been confined to the house with a sore paw. They had a lovely little cottage, but it had a small garden only. One day I heard Mrs. Bonstone, who has become very intimate with Mrs. Waverlee, say to her, “Bretwalda, you are a rich woman. Why do you not buy a larger place than this?”

“Why should I?” said Mrs. Waverlee indifferently. “I have Neighbourhood Hall close by, and the river and the meadows are open to me, and the lanes and high-road, and the pretty winding village street. It is all mine.”

“You queer creature,” said Mrs. Bonstone, but her tone was admiring.

Mrs. Waverlee glanced up at the sky with her strange other-world look. I don’t believe anything in this world counts much with her, except getting human beings ready to go to the next one.

Shall I be there, oh! shall I be there with my dear master? just burst from my dog-heart, one day when I was sitting watching her as she gazed up at the sky.

We were all alone, and that clairvoyante, beautiful woman understood me.

“Dog,” she said with exquisite gentleness, as she laid her hand on my head, “do you think the Creator of this marvellous universe, would ever destroy anything utterly, in which he had placed the spark of life? No--we shall all live again--purified, immortalised, made perfect.”

I licked all the dust off her pretty feet. In her own garden, she wore sandals and no stockings. I wished there was something hard I could do for her--I adore her.

## CHAPTER XXIII

MASTER’S BROTHER-BOYS

Living out here in the country as we do, I see a great many poor people, either coming here to beg, tramping by on the high road, or sitting on the rustic benches that master has had placed all along the sidewalks that bound his property.

I am amazed at the topsy-turviness of their ideas. Now, rich people are not perfect, but on the whole, they seem to have more common sense than the idle poor. These shabbily dressed persons perch round on the benches, stare at master’s big white house showing among the trees, and these are their sentiments: “I wish I had been born rich--I wish some one would die, and leave me some money--I wish I didn’t have to work”--one man only, in the whole course of my eavesdropping under hedges, have I heard say, “That’s a wise guy in that big house. He’s slaved for what he got. Let him keep it.”

However, this kind of lazy talk does not affect master and Mr. Bonstone. I have heard them say again and again, that there are frightful inequalities in the human lot, that every man does not get a living wage, and there should be more brotherhood and sympathy between class and class. Perhaps that is why they never get disgusted or offended or suspicious. Some of the rich people about here say that they are bothered to death with squealing, envious poor persons, who hang round them, begging for money for this scheme and that scheme, which has always at bottom the everlasting endeavour to get something for nothing.

Master and Mr. Bonstone smile, and never worry, nor argue, nor fuss--they just keep on helping everybody that applies to them.

One day, the first summer we came out here, I was up on the balcony outside master’s bed-room with him. He had come home from the city very hot and tired, and he was having a lovely time lounging in a big chair with a glass of lemonade at his elbow.

The parlour-maid came up and said that a young man wished to see him.

Master got up patiently, put on his coat, and went down-stairs with me at his heels.

An unprepossessing looking young fellow awaited him in the hall. He had a loose mouth, and he talked out of one side of it, and his jaw was undershot and one-sided, like that of a badly put together dog.

Master sat down on the monks’ bench beside him. “What can I do for you, sir?”

The lad twisted his rag of a cap in his hands. “I thought you might give me some money.”

“What do you want money for?” asked master.

“To get a job.”

Master smiled. “You don’t wish money to get a job--you wish a job to get money.”

“I had work,” the fellow said with a twist of his mouth, as if he tasted something bad, “but it didn’t bring me in enough to keep body and soul together.”

“Now, what kind of a job do you want?” asked master.

“Somethin’ easy that will bring in lots of coin,” he said audaciously.

“Come, now--you know easy things don’t bring in lots of coin,” said master.

The young fellow swept his eyes about the handsome entrance hall, and said, “I bet you got this easy.”

Master shook his head, and stifled a yawn. It was a hot day, and he does not believe in arguing. However, he said shortly, “I did work for it.”

“Go on,” said the fellow jeeringly, “I don’t swallow that.”

“Poor chap,” said master kindly, “no power of digestion. Not your own fault, likely.”

“What are you givin’ me,” said the young man wonderingly.

Master looked him all over. I knew what he was thinking, “Poor weak-backed, gutter-boy, fished out of the troubled waters of New York, and sent here to be reformed”--but it was master’s duty to undertake the job. Likely he’d fail, but it was up to him to try.

“Come on, boy,” he said suddenly, clapping the lad’s greasy shoulder. “Let’s go look for something for you.”

The lad put his old weed of a cap on his head, but master strolled out bareheaded. The sun was getting low, and it was not as hot as it had been.

First he went to the gardens, and tried them on the lad. Roses and cabbages did not appeal to him, and he surveyed them with a dull eye. He didn’t care to dig in the ground.

Master took him to the garage. No, motor-cars did not strike his fancy, either. He hadn’t courage, nor skill enough to manage any kind of a machine.

The tiny stable was the next place to visit. Here lived Moonstone, a Shetland pony, nominally George Washington’s, but he was too young to ride it yet, and young Egbert had the sole use of it.

Neither did the pony appeal to the poor city boy. I could have told master he didn’t care for animals, for he had successively passed by me, Amarilla, King Harry, and Cannie, without a word for one of us.

“Let’s stroll down to the village,” said master. “Perhaps we’ll find something there.” So down we went along the high road, then fragrant with flowering rosebushes.

First, there were cottages and villas standing back from the road in gardens and on lawns. The boy was not interested in them. When we got to the stores, his eye brightened. Master, who was watching him shrewdly, saw his hungry gaze go toward the grocer’s.

It was a store with a fine display. Behind big windows--for the village women had a health association and would allow no food to be displayed on the street--were stacks of fruit and vegetables, and everything a first-class grocer should keep. All the neighbourhood patronised the man, and it enabled him to keep an excellent stock.

“Would you like to stand behind a counter?” asked master.

“I might,” said the lad.

“You think it would be an easy job?” said master slyly. Then he smiled.

The lad grinned. He had some sense of humour.

“Mr. Washburn!” exclaimed my master, “may I speak to you?”

The grocer came running from his office where he was making up his accounts.

“Will you take a friend of mine for a few days’ trial?” asked master.

The grocer was immaculately clean, and his eye ran over the greasy-looking boy.

“We’ll have to fix him up a bit,” said master.

“I’ll take him,” said Mr. Washburn, “on your recommendation.”

“Don’t work him too hard at first,” said master. “You’re a hustler, I know.”

The lad opened his dull eyes, and looked so dismayed, that the two men burst out laughing. Finally the young fellow laughed too. He felt that he would not be imposed on.

Master then took him to the village shoemaker whose wife kept a boarding-house for young men. Here were a number of city lads who were working in Mr. Bonstone’s automobile school. It was now close on six o’clock, and they were all sitting on the front veranda, with their feet on the railing. Master introduced the newcomer, and asked one of the lads to take him to the dry goods store, and buy a ready-made suit, and have it charged to him; also to take him to Neighbourhood Hall, and introduce him, and give him a good time.

The newcomer, whose name was Walt Dixon, took everything as a matter of course. He showed neither surprise nor gratitude. Master nodded his head slightly to the lad who was to take him in charge. That meant, “Watch him--find out what his morals are. If there’s anything that would endanger village life, let me know, and I’ll ship him elsewhere.”

Now all this happened some time ago, and as Gringo says, “It’s up to Walt Dixon to make good.” But he can’t. He’s merely a putty sort of lad. He does his work spasmodically, he tries the grocer’s patience, he has always to be watched and guarded. Nobody likes him, nobody dislikes him. He’s not immoral, and not strictly moral. He’s a kind of grown-up baby, master says, but he’s supporting himself, and he’s out of New York, where he loafed and lived off the earnings of his mother and sister.

The only good thing about him is that he is faintly grateful, and slightly attached to my master, and I should not wonder if some day he would be brought to our house to work in some capacity or other.

The most of master’s “brother-boys,” as he calls them, are bright, smart lads who have gone wrong, usually through no fault of their own, and when their feet are set on a right track, they run like hounds toward a definite goal.

They have brains. Walt Dixon is almost foolish. Master dreads mentally defective lads and degenerate ones, but he never hesitates to tackle them. Nor does Mr. Bonstone. He had what might have been a very serious case of a defective lad in this neighbourhood a fortnight ago.

Gringo told me about it. He came over one morning in great haste, and flopped down beside me, as I stood on the kitchen veranda, lapping my bread and milk breakfast.

“Well, old boy,” I said, “what’s up with you?”

“Come on out under the grapevine,” he said.

We walked over to a little arbour where cook sits to prepare vegetables for dinner, and lay down in the shade.

“It’s that McGrailey brat,” said Gringo.

The McGrailey brat is a half foolish boy, the only son of a very respectable, Scotch-American gardener down in the village.

“He tried to burn us up,” said Gringo.

“Good gracious! tell me about it,” I said.

The old boy licked his lips and began. “Last night at twelve, I got up to lap a little water from my basin in my boss’s bath-room. I was just saying to myself, says I, ‘If I’m dry out here, the Bowery dogs must be on fire,’ when I heard six yelps from that imp Yeggie.”

[Illustration: “I HEARD SIX YELPS FROM THAT IMP YEGGIE”]

“Six yelps,” I repeated, “that means trouble in the hen-houses.”

“Sure,” continued Gringo. “They were pretty sharp yelps, so up I goes to master’s bed, and nips his foot sticking out for coolness.”

“He’s always alive, so out he tumbled, and said, ‘Go ahead, pup.’”

“You like to have him call you pup,” I interjected. “It makes you feel young.”

Gringo’s fine eyes grew soft. “It makes me hark back to the west, and lively days when we both acted like kids.”

“How old are you, Gringo?” I asked curiously.

“Never you mind that, young dog,” he said. “I’m as old as I look, and I look younger than I am, so let me go on with my story. You’re an awful interrupter. The boss and I tumbled over each other to get to young Yeg who was waiting out on the gravel. He pointed for the hen-houses, and there was the grand Sir Walter sparring, dodging, pushing and barking at foolish young Willie who had a box of matches in his hand. The young rap had set fire to every dry patch of grass in the orchard, and neat little blazes were leaping up to greet us--too friendly by a long shot.”

“Dear me!” I said, “this is thrilling--and everything so dry from the hot weather--what did you do?”

“I brushed Sir Walter and his eticut aside.”

“It’s etiquette, Gringo,” I reminded him.

“It wasn’t anything when I butted in,” said the old dog stubbornly. “Little Willie struck my fancy as a naughty bull, and I pinned him to mother earth. Mister put his two fingers in his mouth and let a whistle screech that brought the men and other dogs rolling out over and over, and in two minutes they’d stamped out the blazes.”

“What about Willie,” I asked.

Gringo burst into a hearty dog laugh. “I let him rise to the occasion, and he trotted to master, and held out his box of matches, and said: ‘Little Willie couldn’t sleep, so he thought he’d come and burn the bad weeds out of Mr. Bonstone’s orchard, ’cause Mr. Bonstone is a kind man to Willie.’”

I laughed too. “That sounds like Yeggie’s talk.”

“The boy has just about as much sense as Yeg,” said Gringo. “Mister threw a bag over Sir Walter, who was smoking and smelt to heaven, for he too had been set on fire by the thoughtful Willie. Then he takes Master Willie by his shirt collar--he was in a long-tailed garment that looked as if his mother had brought it from the old country, and down to the village, he marches the boy.”

“Didn’t Mr. Bonstone dress?” I inquired, in what, I suppose, was rather a shocked voice, for Gringo said disdainfully, “What’d he dress for? He had on a pair of decent pajamas--best outfit for a hot night, and no one was abroad but the moon. However, if you must know, Thomas brought him a cloak, and he threw it on when we went to the village.

“At first, Willie didn’t want to go home. You know what a time we have to keep him off our place. Only by telling him that we were going down to the ballroom, which is his name for Neighbourhood Hall, could we get him started. We trundled down to McGrailey’s house, and mister pounded on the door.”

I made an exclamation of pity, and Gringo said, “My heart was sore for them too. They’ve good Scotch heads, and the boy’s an awful drag on their peace of mind. They stood in the doorway after my boss had pounded a while--white-faced, and with eyebrows up.

“Mister was cool but firm as a rock--he’s often told them the boy would do some damage. He walked the boy before him into the stuffy parlour, and sat down on one side of the big family Bible, and the McGraileys sat on the other.

“‘How soon can you get your lad out of this?’ asked mister in his short way.

“Mrs. McGrailey began to cry, and old man McGrailey looked black.

“‘Sir,’ said the woman presently lifting her head. ‘S’pose ’twas your boy.’

“Father McGrailey took up the cry. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘s’pose ’twas your boy. Would you take him out of his warm bed, where you can look at him every night, and send him where he’d be beaten, and driven and scared and he--oh! great heavens--an idiot boy.’

“‘He isn’t an idiot,’ said mister. ‘I’ve told you dozens of times he’s a moron. He comes first in the class of mental defectives. Imbeciles and idiots are below him--and he does not stay in his warm bed.’

“‘I couldn’t send him away,’ wailed Mrs. McGrailey with her arms round Willie. ‘I couldn’t give him up. He’s all I have.’

“‘I told you,’ said mister striking his hand on the table, ‘that there’s a good institution up state, and I saw boys in your Willie’s class, and their faces were fine. They were feeding lads weaker than themselves. He’d be taught a trade too. I’m speaking for his good. He’s a plague to this neighbourhood.’

“Father McGrailey looked madder. ‘I’ve heard you, sir, a hundred times, say you didn’t believe in no herding of people or animals together--that you wouldn’t even bring up a pup in kennels, if you could find a home for him.’

“‘That’s so,’ said my boss coolly, ‘but I make one exception. Persons whose minds are affected cut the very bottom out of society. They’re our criminals. I’d doctor them. What are you doing for your boy; come now.’

“The man and the woman looked at each other with quite cunning faces. The boss had finished strong, I was lying beside his chair, and thinks I to myself, ‘What’ll they do now?’ I knew they’d win out, for I tell you, Boy, a pair of parents at bay is a worse team than a pair of tigers.”

“Stop, Gringo, a minute,” I said. “Let me get my wits to work. Two good citizens with a dangerous fool of a boy have got the richest man in the community cornered at midnight. He’s got a good heart. They’ll overcome him, but how?--I give it up.”

“So did I,” said Gringo triumphantly, “but they didn’t. ‘Sir,’ said McGrailey in a voice that made my skin creep--it had the Scotch burr, and an awful agony twisted up with it--‘may you never know the heart-scald that we’ve known. I tell you, sir, I’ve visited the police courts in New York--I’ve seen young men and women that were nothing but grown-up babies judged as if they were you or me--God pity the weak in brain--and I vowed a vow that I’d kill my son before I’d trust him to the stone heart of the unfeeling public!’

“This was pretty stiff, and mister began to waver.

“The woman came back with her old cry--‘S’pose it was your boy--s’pose it was your boy.’

“My boss’s face softened. I knew his thoughts ran back to the room where young John lay in his baby sleep, so soft, so happy, so coddled. Could anything tear that boy from his arms?--not the whole world.

“‘My friends,’ he said softly, ‘I’m pleading for your boy. You don’t understand. You’re doing him an injustice to keep him here. There are institutions, I tell you, where he will be treated kindly.’

“Mrs. McGrailey began to cry so horribly at this, that mister said in a hurry, ‘Well, then, in the name of common sense, suggest a way out. Your boy is not going to run loose about this place. That’s the very way to tear him from you.’

“‘Mr. Bonstone,’ said McGrailey, ‘you own two hundred acres of wild land out Torbellon way.’

“Yes, mister said he did.

“‘Start a cottage colony, sir. Give me the post of head gardener. I’ll build a house with my savings, and I’ll give you the names of a score of persons like myself who have children that are not like other children. They’ll put some money in--but they won’t send their boys and girls to a big institution.’

“‘I think you’re wrong,’ said mister shaking his head. ‘Your boy would be better away from you--and you’d have to hire experts to train him and others like him.’

“‘Hire them,’ said McGrailey commandingly.

“‘Look here,’ said my boss, ‘you fellows rate my bank account too high. I’m sailing close to the wind just now.’

“‘Trust you to raise money,’ said the man almost contemptuously. ‘Haven’t you and Rudolph Granton got the name for good sense in business, and wisdom in philanthropy--ask your fellow rich men. They’d give you funds, when they’d turn a deaf ear to the likes of me.’

“My boss got up. ‘Then I’m to start a private institution for Willie?’

“‘That’s it, sir,’ said McGrailey grimly. ‘You’ll do that, and more too for a neighbour.’

“‘Maybe I’m a fool,’ said mister calmly, ‘but I’ll think it over. Meanwhile, keep the boy close.’

“‘That we’ll do, sir,’ said the man respectfully, then he broke down, for he was all cut up. The boy had nearly killed him and his wife. He cried, and she cried; and they caught the boss’s hand, and God-blessed him; and he fled, and left his cloak with them; and he’s coming up this evening to talk the affair over with your boss.”

“Don’t those two men beat the Dutch for doing good?” I exclaimed. “They even get up in the night to do it.”

## CHAPTER XXIV

SIR EDWARD MEDLINGTON

One cool, sharp afternoon, when the second summer of our stay in the country was drawing to a close, I found myself all alone over at Gringo’s house. All the dogs were away somewhere, so finding no one in the orchard to gossip with me, I made up my mind to run down to the village and call on Mrs. Waverlee.

It was just about five o’clock, and she had a nice English fashion of always having afternoon tea. When the maid brought in the tea things, there was always a blue bowl for Patsie’s tea, and a pink one for any caller he might have. There was quite a nipping wind that afternoon, and the thought of that pink bowl nearly full of weak tea, with four lumps of sugar, and plenty of cream in it, just warmed the cockles of my heart, so off I trotted for the village.

Mrs. Waverlee was at home sitting by the fire, and looking very sweet and pretty but rather tired, for she taught away a good deal of strength every morning. Her whole soul was in her work for the children.

She patted me very kindly, when I ran into her dainty drawing-room, and invited me to lie down on the rug before the fire.

Then she leaned back--not in her rocking-chair, for she hadn’t one in her house--but in a big chintz-covered arm-chair that fairly swallowed up her slender figure. She was gazing intently at a large oil painting that stood in the almost loving embrace of another big chair, placed in a good light from a window. Paper and wrapping stuff lay on the floor, and I guessed that the picture had just arrived.

While she sat staring at it, her little maid ushered in another caller. This time it was Mr. Bonstone. He spoke nicely to her in his short manner, said “Hello! Boy,” to me, then stood leaning against the mantel, watching her pour out a cup of tea for him. As he approached the little table to take it from her, his eye fell on the painting.

He didn’t say anything, but his look said, “Ah! she has been getting a family picture from England.”

I have already remarked that Mrs. Waverlee was a bit of a clairvoyante. She saw he was interested, and she said in her distinct, delicate way, “It is my father, taken with my boy when we were last in England.”

Mr. Bonstone was slowly wiggling his spoon back and forth in his cup to dissolve the sugar. As she spoke, his eye kindled. Something in the portrait aroused his attention. Then his hand stopped moving the spoon.

“Your father,” he said slowly.

“Yes,” she repeated simply, “my dear father.”

Most American women would have vouchsafed some more information, seeing that his curiosity was aroused, but she was a regular Englishwoman, and could talk sweetly for hours, and tell you nothing.

At last, Mr. Bonstone took the initiative, and said, “May I ask his name?”

“Medlington,” she said, “Sir Edward Medlington.”

He said nothing. He was as reticent as she was, but both their eyes spoke. I saw there was something underneath his interest.

He drank his tea, ate an English muffin, drew some papers from his pocket, and talked over some business with her about Neighbourhood Hall; then he took up his hat. Before he said good-bye, he went over and stood silently before the big picture.

Mrs. Waverlee began to speak. She had become very friendly with him and his wife, and she did not wish to appear ungracious. Then I think underneath it all, was a feminine desire to know why he was interested in this picture.

“My father was in the army,” she said, “as a young man. During an Egyptian campaign, he lost a leg. A change came over him during hospital life, and he left the army and entered the church.”

Mr. Bonstone looked spellbound, and murmured something about noticing that the tall man in the painting, holding the little boy by the hand, had on clerical dress.

“My mother died when I was a baby,” Mrs. Waverlee continued, “and my father brought me up, and has always been very, very dear to me. I expect him here shortly to visit me.”

“Your father was not an only son, was he?” asked Mr. Bonstone.

“No, he had a younger brother who came to America.”

“He is not living, is he?” asked Mr. Bonstone in an almost inaudible voice.

“No,” she said with a side glance at him. “He died some years ago. We don’t know whether he left any children.”

“Good-bye,” said Mr. Bonstone, and he held out his hand.

“Good-bye,” she said calmly, but their eyes met, and he grew a furious red.

“My love to Stanna,” she said, following him as he hurried to the door. “Thank you for all your kindness to me. If you had belonged to my own family, you could not have been kinder.”

He made some sort of an inarticulate reply, and she came back to the painting. Then she repeated Mr. Bonstone’s questions. “Your father is not an only son,” and “He is not living, is he?”

“Why negatively,” she said, “unless he knew the answers? He is the son of my uncle who quarrelled with his father, and ran away to America with his barmaid wife. I feel the relationship, and I also recognise family traits.” Her face grew a beautiful pink. “A good man, and my own cousin. Now I am not without relatives in this new country. Thank God! It will be a good thing for my boy. But I must not acknowledge this relationship, until it will be welcome to this odd man.”

All this was intensely interesting to me, and I too turned a fresh attention to the painting. It was not difficult to recognise little Egbert as he had appeared a few years ago. The tall old man was handsome and commanding in appearance, and yet his face was the essence of gentleness as he held the boy’s two small hands. “Won’t Gringo be excited,” I thought, and I was just about to whine for the door to be opened so I could run away to him, when my dear mistress appeared.

“Well, Boy, you too are here,” she said kindly as she came in, then she began talking to Mrs. Waverlee about the latest news, which was something that affected me deeply and painfully.

“There is to be a new kind of a dog-show in New York,” she said, “a dog-hero show. All dogs exhibited must have done something noteworthy, or they cannot be entered. You, Boy, are to go on account of the service you rendered our hostess. Gringo will be there, also King Harry and Walter Scott.”

“Is it to be a show for thoroughbreds alone?” asked Mrs. Waverlee.

“No, breeding has nothing to do with it. It is all inner worth--dogs who have saved persons from burning or carried messages, or who have shown great intelligence. In fact, I believe the mongrels will predominate.”

“When does it begin?” enquired Mrs. Waverlee.

“Next week.”

My heart sank within me. Oh! how I dreaded a dog-show. When I was a young dog, I had been exhibited several times, and every time I suffered tortures. It was not so bad in the day time, when my owners were about, and everybody was watching the men who took care of the dogs; but at night it was terrible. All the dog-owners went home, and the men who were left in charge, invariably drank and either quarrelled, played cards or slept, and dogs would get caught in their chains and nearly strangle. Oh! that wretched drink--how much misery it causes. Then the men would tell lies about watering and feeding us, and many a dog suffered the tortures of hunger and thirst. There were a few conscientious attendants, but very few.

I dreaded intensely going through this again--indeed my sufferings at a dog-show were responsible for my wandering life, for it was after being exhibited seven times in one spring, that I ran away from my first home with a dog-fancier.

Another thing I dreaded in connection with the forthcoming dog-show was, that everybody would find out how valuable I was, and attention would be drawn to me as a desirable dog to steal. Mr. Granton knew that my points were good, but he had never chanced to meet any one who could tell him just how good they were. He didn’t know a very doggy set of men.

Well, the day came, and I was entered at the show, and the thing itself was not half as bad as I thought it would be. These dogs were all very much beloved by their owners, and were not held on account of their value as dogs, but as heroes and dog friends to mankind. I was uneasy, for I hated being taken from my nice home and being deprived of my liberty, but I underwent no actual suffering. For there was no drink there, and Louis, who was very fond of King Harry, slept both nights the show lasted, curled up in the straw in the big box-place our good bloodhound occupied. So we did not suffer.

Gringo was furious at having to go. He hated notoriety, and he hated being taken away from Mr. Bonstone; and Mr. Bonstone was just as upset as he was, but there was no help for it. The show was for charity, and to acquaint New York with the actual value of the dog heroes of the country--dogs who had risked their lives to save human beings from harm.

The dog who took first prize was a little mongrel who had so little thoroughbred in him, that nobody could tell in which class of dogs his ancestors had started. He had saved five hundred hotel guests from death by fire. The hotel was a regular fire-trap, and he had barked and raged when he smelt the smoke, till he drew attention to the dreadful danger, and every one got out while the hotel burnt to the ground.

Gringo got third prize. I was surprised to hear how many events the modest old dog had been in. He was chained next to me, and his remarks on the show were killing. He loathed vain dogs--these fellows who adore shows, and when the travelling boxes are brought out, bark with excitement, and on arriving, bask all day long in popular approval.

I had honourable mention. Gringo thought I would get a prize, but when I looked round the show, I said, “Some of these fellows here will ride rough-shod over me. It’s amazing what a sum of fidelity to the human race they represent.”

The event of the show to me was, as I had anticipated, the finding out of my value. I was adjudged the best dog of all breeds shown, and my value was placed at seven thousand dollars. How I regretted this. Coarse, sporty looking men, who bestowed not a glance on the noble animals who had saved precious lives, came and stood before me with their beefy faces alight with interest. Most unfortunately, however, it was not the sporting class that took the keenest interest in me. Those men were rough but honest. Two young men of the white-faced, putty-looking class that master and Mr. Bonstone dread so much to handle, made me tremble.

They did not come up and stand before me, to admire me and ask questions. They stood a long way off, and they got a boy to go and ask an attendant particularly where I lived. I knew I should have trouble with them some time in the future, and I vowed that they would be pretty clever to catch me napping. Both days I was at the show, they came several times to stare at me surreptitiously, and the second day, they brought another fellow of their own class with them.

I tried not to worry, and repeated to myself something that master often murmurs when he is putting on his shoes to go down town. “Where are the worries I had this time last year? Gone with the snows of winter, and the roses of summer. Therefore, why worry over the worries of to-day?”

The pleasantest thing about the show was, of course, the twice-a-day visits of our owners. The second day, Mr. Bonstone approached our bench accompanied by Mrs. Waverlee, Egbert and a tall old gentleman who limped quite a bit.

“Wooden leg,” muttered Gringo. “It’s the boy’s grandfather.”

I had told Gringo of his master’s interest in the portrait of the old baronet. He was as keenly interested as I was, and with me, concluded that Mrs. Waverlee was correct. Mr. Bonstone was her cousin.

“Why don’t they out with it?” said the old dog--“I hate secrets.”

Well, they did out with it this day. A dog-show seemed a strange place for a recognition between a noble Englishman and his long-lost nephew, but stranger things than that have happened.

Sir Edward had arrived two days before, and Mr. Bonstone had not seen him until he met him coming into the show with Mrs. Waverlee and Egbert.

Gringo and I stared at them. “My poor boss,” said the old dog, “his eyes are eager. He’d like to have relatives like other folks.”

Mrs. Waverlee was sweetly self-possessed. No one would have guessed that she was very much excited, and was watching her father and Mr. Bonstone surreptitiously.

I have forgotten to say that Walter Scott was chained the other side of Gringo and King Harry, and the three grown-up persons and the boy were fondling us alternately.

Mr. Bonstone was delighted that he would be able to take Gringo away that evening. “Only a few hours more, kid,” he said in a low voice as he softly rubbed his hand over Gringo’s rose ears. A seal ring, his only ornament, for he hated even a breast pin, caught the old baronet’s eye. Now he had evidently noticed no familiar resemblance in this man, but he could not help recognising the ring on which was engraved the family crest.

He didn’t say anything. He was a very well set-up, self-possessed old gentleman, and very English. He simply turned a little pale, and said, “May I look at that ring?”

Mr. Bonstone nodded, and taking it off, handed it to him.

“This old man’s father was a tartar,” Gringo whispered to me. “It’s rough on him to remember how he and the young brother who had pluck enough to run away were bullyragged.”

Mr. Bonstone stood fondling Gringo’s head, and looking calmly at his relative.

“Good blood,” muttered Gringo. “Do you notice, Boy, that the quality don’t shriek and tear their hair over great events. They’re quiet as the grave.”

I didn’t say anything, but I imagined the panorama passing before the eyes of the fine-looking old man turning the ring round and round in his hand. Having been in England, I could call up a picture of the old country house, the pleasant life, the gentle mother, the domineering old father, the submission of the elder son, the rebellion of the younger--and now the younger son was dead, but his son lived and would slip into the place of his father in this old man’s heart.

“Your Christian names?” asked Sir Edward in a low voice as he returned the ring.

“Edward Norman Mannering.”

Sir Edward’s eyes clouded. He dropped his head on his breast for a few seconds. His dead brother had given his own dear brother’s name to his son.

Then he spoke again, “Why Bonstone?”

“My mother’s name,” said Mr. Bonstone shortly.

Sir Edward glanced at Mrs. Waverlee who had moved away a few paces, while the two men were talking. She smiled brightly. She understood.

Then he said in a low but a beautiful, affectionate voice, “You have your father’s eyes. Give me your arm, my boy.”

“Gringo,” I said, “isn’t that a perfectly touching sight, to see that dear old man going about leaning on those two young people?”

Gringo spoke very gruffly. He pretended he didn’t care, but I could see he was deeply moved.

“Now my kind master’s got some folks,” he said. “There’s not a line of worry about him. We’ll see something very fancy in his life now.”

And we did, for it appeared that the possession of relatives of his own had been the one thing lacking to round out Mr. Bonstone’s beautiful life.

His devotion to his uncle was superb. He was down at Mrs. Waverlee’s constantly, and when he was not there Sir Edward was at Green Hill.

There was a great excitement all over this place, and in New York too, when it was announced that Mr. Bonstone was related to the distinguished English army officer and present clergyman--Sir Edward Medlington, and was a cousin of the aristocratic Mrs. Waverlee. Nobody seemed jealous. Everybody was glad.

Mrs. Resterton basked in reflected light. She dragged in the title whenever she could with propriety, and the way she mouthed the “Sir Edward” was lovely to hear.

Gringo grinned whenever he heard her. “Never before heard of two words giving a woman such satisfaction,” he said.

The nice old lady’s only regret was that the title passed to Egbert as the son of the eldest son, rather than to Mr. Bonstone as the son of the younger.

I heard Mrs. Bonstone one day enlightening her. “Grandmamma,” she said, “don’t you understand Norman well enough to know that if he had inherited a whole bushel of titles, he would reject them all? As it is, he often shocks his uncle by his democratic ways. No--Norman is a plain American. He has thrown off his English traditions.”

“Sir Norman has a very pleasant sound,” said the old lady plaintively.

How Mrs. Bonstone laughed. “And Lady Bonstone or Lady Medlington,” she said--“wouldn’t that be charming!--imagine a milkmaid and a poultry-woman with a title. That is all I aspire to be.”

The dogs, too, were very fond of talking about the baronet, and great discussions took place up in the orchard about his title, and his artificial leg, and his nice simple ways, and his clear manner of speaking.

Some of the dogs held that it was a great pity that a baronet should have a wooden or a cork leg--we couldn’t find out which it was, for his man-servant never talked, and Patsie, the fox-terrier, was no gossip.

“Why not a baronet?” said Gringo. “He’s just the one to afford time to go limping about.”

The dogs also could not understand his being a clergyman and rector of a church.

“Yeggie thought he’d wear a pink coat, and go round looking for foxes to hunt,” said the little cur, jumping up and down, “but he never kills anything but fish, and he bangs them on the head as soon as they’re caught so they won’t suffer--I heard him say so the other day.”

“I thought he’d get drunk every night,” said King Harry. “I once knew an English earl down in Virginia, and his valet had to sit up till one o’clock to undress him.”

This put the old country dogs on their mettle. Gringo, Walter Scott, and Cannie snapped at good King Harry, and told him that the English aristocracy were as sober as any class of people.

“And if our people had any faults,” added Walter Scott, “the war has taken them all away.”

“Where is the nobleman to-day?” I asked one chill November afternoon of the assembled dogs.

“Down the river,” said Yeggie. “I saw him going Walt Dixon’s way.”

It seemed strange that there should be any connection between this fine old English gentleman and a poor miserable lad from New York, but there was one strong bond of union. They were both ardent fishermen.

Now last spring my master had taken great pains to interest Walt in some form of out-door exercise. He was so lazy that fishing was the only sport he could be induced to undertake, but as time went on, he became an enthusiast, and no one in the whole country round about knew as well as he just which fishing pools to visit to get a bite.

There were several small rivers near us, and Walt knew them all. Sir Edward, finding out that Walt would be of more use to him than any one in the neighbourhood, cultivated him assiduously. My master was delighted. This association was of inestimable benefit to the boy he was trying to befriend.

Yeggie came dancing up to Gringo one day and asked why the distinguished stranger was finding out about fishing in this cold autumn weather.

“Don’t you know, pup?” said Gringo with a wink at me, “that folks hang round what their mouths water for? Give me the name of the dog that lingers long round the kitchen windows, when the good, hot smell of meat is wafted out.”

Yeggie hung his little head.

“The noble baronet is laying out the land for next spring, when he’s coming back to see us all,” Gringo continued. “He’s got to get home soon to his church. He’s a good man--he works. Some folks and some dogs are lazy--they don’t earn their salt.”

“Good-bye,” said Yeggie abruptly. “Yeggie’s going to call on the hens,” and he diddled away.

Gringo laughed heartily, as he disappeared round the corner of the barn. “I like that little fool kid dog,” he said.

“Sir Edward has been gone ever since lunch,” I remarked. “I know, because he lunched at our house to-day, and soon afterward went for a walk up the Lalabee River road.”

“He ought to be back soon,” said Gringo, “the dark is coming on.”

How well I remember that afternoon. Nobody was anxious about Sir Edward, but in half an hour, when it had become quite dark and he had not returned, there was great excitement. A man with an artificial leg who takes long walks is something of a marvel, but he cannot go on indefinitely, and he never had stayed out as long as this before. There was really painful anxiety at last. I, suspecting nothing wrong, had gone home, and was playing with George Washington in the nursery when Bessie the nurse came in, and called Mrs. Granton to the telephone.

I followed her, and heard enough to assure me that everybody was out looking for Sir Edward, and they had decided to ask for King Harry to trail him.

Mrs. Granton was in great trouble. “Oh! Norman,” she said to Mr. Bonstone who was telephoning, “there was a child lost in Torbellon this morning, and an hour ago some men came in a car and got King Harry to track her--Have you tried Walt Dixon?”

I couldn’t hear Mr. Bonstone’s reply, but I knew by what Mrs. Granton said, he had thought the hound would be quicker. However, failing the hound, he would try Walt.

I tore out through the front hall, and ran over to Green Hill. On the way I met Mr. Bonstone in an automobile hurrying down to the village for Walt. Afterward, we all heard the story of the rescue from Gringo who went with his master.

Walt told Mr. Bonstone which road Sir Edward had taken, and the two followed it in the car, and occasionally leaving it to plunge into the bushes by the river bank at places Walt thought might be visited by Sir Edward.

They had a lantern with them, for by this time it was quite dark. Mr. Bonstone at last became frightfully nervous, not outside, for he was not that kind, but internally nervous.

“Walt,” he said, “think hard. I heard you talking to Sir Edward yesterday. Did he say anything to make you think he might take some new road you’d never been over?”

Walt thought a moment; then he said, “I did tell him of a new pool high up in the river, that no one but me knows about. I got a dozen trout there one early morning last spring; but he couldn’t get there alone, I told him. It’s a rough road.”

“Just the one he’d try,” said Mr. Bonstone. “Jump in, and lead me to it.”

This time, when they left the car, they took a rocky path to the little river. “There’s a tiny islet in the middle of the river,” said Walt, “with stepping stones to it, but I guess he couldn’t make it.”

“I’ll wager he’s there,” Mr. Bonstone muttered. Then he lifted up his voice, and yelled, “Hello! Hello!” till Gringo says the woods by the river rang with the sound.

Then he listened, and at once came a husky peeping like a bird with a cold in its throat.

They were close to the islet, and Mr. Bonstone, swinging the lantern for the boy behind him, skipped over the stepping stones to it. There was a solitary tree rooted among the rocks, and there, hanging to a low-growing limb, was the poor baronet. His keen angler’s instinct had caused him to mount the limb to see if it would be a good place from which to throw a line; his wooden leg had caught in the crook of the limb, and there he hung, almost head down, until his strength had been exhausted.

Mr. Bonstone and Walt soon got him down, carried him to the car, and gave him a drink from a flask that Mrs. Bonstone had provided. Then they rushed him to the Green Hill house which was nearer than Mrs. Waverlee’s, and put him to bed.

All the family came to enquire about him. Mrs. Waverlee was very much troubled in her quiet way, and poor Egbert was trying hard not to cry. Master, who was almost as upset as Sir Edward’s own family, said to Mrs. Resterton, “Why in the name of common sense did that old man with a wooden leg try to climb a tree on a dark night?”

Mrs. Resterton was dreadfully flushed, and was fanning herself violently. “You have just come from town,” she said, “you don’t know that it was quite light when Sir Edward started, and you don’t understand how crazy he is about fishing. He is always studying those books on angling in the library.”

“I’m not fond of fishing,” said master, “so I don’t share his enthusiasm, but what I do like about the affair is the part my poor boy Walt has played.”

“He certainly tracked Sir Edward,” said Mrs. Resterton, “but for him, Sir Edward might have died before Norman found him.”

“She got the baronet’s title in twice that time,” snickered Gringo who was lying beside me at Mrs. Resterton’s feet. Then he began to pant nervously, for the old dog’s sympathies had been aroused, and he had tramped fast all through the woods with his master and Walt.

“Well,” I said to him, “isn’t this a queer world? Seems as if when a dog or a man does a kind deed, he always gets his pay for it.”

Gringo stopped panting long enough to say, “Sure, and it’s my wonder that when folks are so keen for rewards, they don’t do more good. There’s big interest on being decent.”

“They’ll do something handsome for Walt,” I said

“You bet,” returned Gringo. “His nest won’t want for no feathers from this out.”

“Any feathers, Gringo,” I said gently.

“Oh, shut up,” he growled. “You know what I mean.”

“I don’t wish other dogs to make game of you,” I said firmly.

“Bah! what’s grammar,” he said contemptuously.

“It isn’t grammar,” I said, “it’s good English.”

“I’m American now,” he growled. “I’ll talk as I like.”

“All right,” I replied, “I’ll never correct you again.”

“Yes, you will,” he said crossly. “You just dare to stop correcting me.”

“But you resent it,” I said.

“You make me mad, the way you rub it in,” he flared up. “Just correct me, and don’t gab.”

I couldn’t help laughing, and soon the good old fellow joined me. “Gringo,” I said, “we’re good friends--always and forever.”

“You bet!” he said.

I was going to correct him, then I reflected that “You bet” though slangy is decidedly English, and I ran away home after my master, who went to take the good news of Sir Edward’s return to his wife.

## CHAPTER XXV

THE BOY MONTMORENCY

A few days after Sir Edward’s adventure, and when he was quite restored to health, and ready for more experiences (for he was a most daring, plucky old man) there was a strange arrival in our home.

I had been to New York with my dear mistress. She wished to call on some friends on Riverside Drive and had invited me to go with Amarilla, for she knew I loved motoring. Fortunately it was not a very cold day, and she took the touring car. I detested the limousine. She was all wrapped up in a big cloak, and Amarilla sat on her lap and kept her warm. I thought that of all the ladies we passed in handsome automobiles, not one had such a dear face as my own mistress. I sat on the seat beside her, and she tucked the rug all round my neck to keep me comfortable.

Well, we had a very pleasant afternoon in the city. Amarilla and I did not go into any of the houses, but one lady sent us out some sweet cakes which were very acceptable, for the cool air had, sharpened our appetites.

“Amarilla,” I whispered in the little dog’s ear, “where is the charm of the Drive, of Fifth Avenue, of Broadway? Gone--gone, except as lovely, lively places to visit. No more New York for me.”

Amarilla trembled, and nestled closer against Mrs. Granton. She had always hated a city. How her little face brightened when we were well on the broad road leading to Pleasant River. How much we both loved that big house, and the dear people who lived in it.

“Amarilla,” I said, “if our family moved back to New York, would you come too?”

She gave a pitiful little squeal, but it was a decided “Yes.”

“Suppose they lost their money, and had to live down town, would you stick to them?”

At this she struggled to her feet, wagged her bushy little tail, and barked sharply.

“Hush, Boy,” said our mistress, tucking her up again. “You are exciting Amarilla.”

I persisted and whispered again, “Suppose your missie (that was what she always called Mrs. Granton) was poor, and had nothing to eat: would you go on the stage again, to earn some money for her?”

Amarilla hesitated one instant, then she began to howl very gently, very resignedly, but with great determination. She would be willing to make any sacrifices for the woman who had been so good to her.

Mrs. Granton was annoyed with me. She knew that we dogs communicated with each other. “Boy,” she said irritably, “if you make Amarilla uncomfortable once more, you shall go in with Louis.”

This quieted me. I cuddled up to her, wiggled my body by way of apology, and did not say another word till we got home.

I am a great talker, and often keep on when I know I should stop. When Gringo first knew me, he called me “The Wandering Dog” because I had travelled so much, but after a time he called me “The Wandering Dog” because I told so many stories that hinged on each other.

When the car pulled up in our own _porte cochère_ I followed Amarilla as she ran after her dear missie to the library. Such a big fire leaped in the chimney, and before it stood master with George Washington all dressed up in his white velvet dinner clothes, for he was allowed to come to the table and sit in a high chair with toys before him. He got nothing to eat, of course. He had had his bread and butter supper at five.

Well, in addition to George Washington, there stood on the rug a boy about a year older than George, and master’s face as he surveyed him was a study.

He was a kind of a caricature of a petted darling. I understood at once that he was a poor child, masquerading as a rich one. I know the poor smell. Somebody had taken great pains with his toilet. He had on a little plush cap with a gilt tassel, his coat was green with gold buttons, his shoes were a pale blue, his little hands were dirty, but his gloves sticking out from his tiny pocket, were quite clean. That was so like poor people--to have clean gloves and dirty hands. He seemed to have no handkerchief, and was sniffing violently at intervals.

Master was grinning. “Read this, Claudia,” he said, handing a slip of paper to mistress who had sunk into a chair, and was examining the child with wondering eyes.

“Mr. Granton and Lady,” she read aloud, “Dear Friends, raise the boy as your own--he is good blood. His name is Montmorency.”

Mistress looked amazed. “Where did he come from?” she asked.

Master shook his head. “I don’t know. Bessie says when she was bringing our boy in a short time ago, this child came strolling up the avenue toward them, clutching this piece of paper in his hand. Bessie read it, then ran down the avenue as fast as she could, but there was no one there.”

“Little boy,” said mistress, “where do you come from?”

He turned his small, pale, rather intelligent face toward her, and said something that sounded like “Gnorrish!”

Mistress looked despairingly at her husband. “What is your mother’s name?” she asked.

This time he uttered a single syllable that sounded like “Granch!”

“Da, Da, Da has come home,” interrupted little George gleefully.

“Why, he doesn’t speak as well as our baby,” said mistress. “What shall we do about him?”

“He’s a present, evidently,” said master.

“George, come here,” said mistress, and she took her own child on her lap. Then she went on. “We don’t know what sort of a place he’s come from.”

Master pressed the electric button beside the mantel, said something in French to mistress, and when the parlour-maid came she received instructions to take the little stranger away, have him thoroughly washed, his head included, his clothes folded up and put away, and other ones put on him.

“I wonder what the mystery is about him,” said master. “Why should any one try to foist a child on us anonymously, when we are so ready to help any one? I can’t understand it.”

“I understand it,” said mistress softly, and as she spoke she stroked George’s fair head. “It’s some poor creature who cannot provide for her child. She looks at our child with envious eyes. She thinks if she gives up her boy, we may do for him what Stanna has done for Cyria.”

“Do you think that is the explanation?” said master. “But in Stanna’s case everything was open and above board. I don’t like this mystery, and I don’t care to be dictated to with regard to the size of my family.”

“Let’s find out the mother,” said mistress. “It will probably be an easy matter.”

It wasn’t an easy matter. Master put several detectives on the case, but the affair had been arranged by some unknown person with infinite skill, and they could not find out one thing about it. No one thought of appealing to me, though I had guessed immediately where the boy came from.

Master of course thought of King Harry; but he was useless, for the child’s tracks led right to the station, and the station meant New York city, and the hound would be of no use there. He had found the lost child in the country that he had been searching for when Sir Edward was missing, but a city with its multitude of tracks bewilders any bloodhound.

The evening the child arrived, there had been about him a strong smell of a place I did not know, but also a faint suggestion of a place I did know, especially about his face, his hands, and the piece of paper he carried, and that place was the Blue-Bird Laundry.

We dogs have every person, every locality, listed in our world of smell. I had been to the laundry several times with my master, and the mingled odour of soap-suds, cooking, and the personal scent of the women there, could not be mistaken by me.

These detectives that master employed had no highly developed sense of smell. They were following trails suggested by their eyes and ears.

Master was a long time figuring out my interest in the child, but finally it dawned upon him.

I was always sniffing about the little stranger, for I wanted to help my dear mistress. She was such a good mother, and I hated to see her troubled. Her loving heart, so warm toward all mothers, since she had had a child of her own, had prompted her to take young Montmorency right into her own nursery, but she did not enjoy doing so.

One day when I was following her about the house, she came suddenly into the nursery, and stopped short, gazing at the two children.

There stood Montmorency, dressed in a dainty suit of pale blue, uttering a succession of queer, uncouth sounds which all seemed to begin with “G,” and teaching a vulgar little trick to her beloved George. The trick wasn’t very bad, but George was so much cleverer than Montmorency that he added some details of his own, that made me grin, but which brought a frown to her face.

She caught George to her, and sat staring at the little stranger. After a while, master strolled into the nursery.

“That child belongs most decidedly to a different stratum in society,” she exclaimed, “a much lower one,” and she told him about the trick, which was a spitting one.

“I believe you’re right, Claudia,” said master thoughtfully, and he too stared and stared at young Montmorency, who was polishing off his funny little nose on his clean tunic.

I ran toward master, and pushed my paw against his knee--a habit I have when I wish to attract his attention, or have a conversation with him. Of course, this is not good manners for a well-trained dog. All dogs should keep their paws on the ground where they belong, but I was allowed this liberty by my kind master, and I took care never to abuse it.

“By Jupiter!” he cried, which is the nearest he ever comes to a swear-word. “I believe Boy has nosed out something about that child. Claudia, please keep George quiet for a few minutes.”

Master fixed a steady gaze on me, and I stared full into his eyes. We were concentrating. “Boy,” he said at last, “that child comes from New York, doesn’t he?”

I barked once, sharp and clear.

“You smell a New York smell on him?” said master.

I barked twice. “Yes, sir,” that meant, “I certainly do.”

“Riverside Drive smell?” asked master.

I looked disappointed, and turned my head away.

“Smell of Ellen’s home?” pursued master.

No, this child had never been near Ellen, so I said nothing.

“No up-town suggestion,” said master. “Down town, then?”

I was tremendously excited. I was leading him on. I barked wildly, and danced about the room.

“Getting warmer,” said master, who was becoming excited too. “Now, where have we been down town together? In my office, Boy?”

No, no, he was on the wrong track, and my face fell.

“No office clue,” he went on. “French café, then--perhaps a waiter’s child.”

Wrong, wrong, and I said nothing.

“The settlement house, or the day nursery?”

No, no, poor master--why could he not guess. He mentioned ever so many places down town that we had visited together, and he was so slow at getting to the right spot, that I, in despair, lay down on the floor, put my nose between my paws, and pretended to go to sleep.

“He finds you very stupid, my poor Rudolph,” said mistress slyly. She loves to tease him occasionally, and she was following his questions and my answers with intense interest.

“Let me make a suggestion,” she said at last. “There is one place you never used to visit, but that you go to quite frequently now--Is it the Blue-Bird Laundry, Boy?”

I barked, I screamed with excitement, I ran to her, and licked her slippers and her hands. Oh! the clever woman.

“By Jupiter,” said master again, “this looks like magic. Now, let us find the woman. Is it Perky Moll, Boy?”

The matron in the laundry is a lady who is the widow of a former friend of the Grantons. She is full of fun, and has nick-names for the girls which she uses sometimes with master, but which the girls themselves never hear.

Well, it wasn’t Perky Moll, and my excitement passed away, and I looked cast down.

“Is it Jumping Jenny, Troublesome Doll, Mrs. Willie Nillie?” and on master went, over a long list. At last he had mentioned every woman in the laundry except the right one. (And just here, I may wander long enough to say that the dreadful woman with the child that we met one night on Riverside Drive was not there. She had died, and her child was in the country with a farmer’s wife.)

Now at this point, when master was puzzled, my clever mistress interposed again. She had a scent as keen as old King Harry’s, about matters where women and children were concerned.

“Is it old Jane, the cook, Boy?” she asked softly.

Now I was in an ecstasy. I couldn’t stop to lick any one. I yelled with glee, and tore round and round the nursery.

“Upon my word,” said master slowly, when at last I pulled up. “Boy has jumped at the Jane suggestion--but she is too old to have a child. Maybe it’s her grandchild.”

Mistress didn’t say anything, and he went on affectionately, “My clever little dog--my clever brother-dog. You are worth your weight in gold.”

This made me feel and act foolish and modest, and I calmed down, and went to lie at his feet.

“Old Jane,” he repeated soberly. “Poor old Jane--what’s the matter, Claudia?”

Mistress was crying softly, but at his question she flared up. “Can’t you see?” she said wildly, “oh! can’t you see, you obtuse man? That nightmare of a woman--she has no teeth--her eyes are all red--she looks clean, but so thin and starved----”

“She is a cook,” said master.

“She has nearly killed herself working for her child,” said mistress. “I remember the dreadful hunger in her eyes one day when you took me to the laundry. She stared at me in the kitchen; she slipped upstairs, and watched me from a doorway. She tore the child from her arms to give me to bring up--oh! poor soul, and cruel, cruel society to so wound a mother heart.”

“We pay her well,” said master.

“But the money has gone to her child. She has been boarding it somewhere. Oh! Rudolph, go buy her some teeth.”

Mistress laughed and cried in the same breath, and finally she had to go and lie down. She kept on chattering hysterically about the woman who went without teeth to buy clothes for her child, until master became quite anxious.

“You are making a mountain out of a molehill, Claudia,” he said. “I cannot think that your suspicions are correct.”

“They’re not suspicions,” she said excitedly, “they’re verities. Go to town--you’ll see.”

Master thought he was done with New York for the day, but after dinner he had to post off to the laundry, where he found that everything mistress had said was correct.

Poor old Jane was not half as old as she looked. She acknowledged that no one in the laundry knew that she had a child; that she had been boarding him ever since he was a baby; that she wanted him to be brought up a gentleman; that she had sneaked him out to Pleasant River, taking infinite precautions not to be discovered; and that she had actually spent nearly every cent of her wages on this beloved child.

I went to town with master, and I shall never forget the sight of that poor, thin woman as she sat in the matron’s office answering master’s questions. Her indifference, almost stupidity about her own welfare, her quick mother-wit and shrewdness about her child, excited my most intense admiration.

When master finished questioning her, he said, “Jane, I have a plan to propose. I hope you will agree to it. You should have left here long ago, but we kept you because you begged to stay. Now you will remain in New York, only long enough to get a set of teeth.”

Here he stopped and smiled a very pained sort of smile, and looked hastily from the nice plump matron whose big blue eyes were full of tears.

“After you get your teeth,” he went on, “you will come to Pleasant River. I have a cottage to let there, you shall have it, and Montmorency may live with you. Your skill in cooking will support you. I will see to that.”

Jane began to mope in a dull sort of way. She did not cry. Her red eyes looked as if she had shed all the tears she had to shed. She said she would rather his wife would keep Montmorency, and she would stay in New York.

“That I cannot consent to,” said master, and he got up to show his decision was final.

Jane wasn’t a bit grateful. Her mania for her boy’s advancement socially made her fight against coming to the country, and kick hard at living in the pretty cottage master fitted up for her. Master and mistress paid no attention to her tempers. They went on, and coaxed and petted her, till finally she began to get her health back, and then she became more reasonable. All this happened a few months ago, and now she is the leading caterer of the countryside, and is a comfortable, decent mother, bringing up her idolised boy in a very sensible way. He goes to Mrs. Waverlee’s school, and I think will make a very decent man.

Jane never gushes to the two persons who have so befriended her, but I heard her one day tell the woman next door to her that she would walk over red-hot kitchen stoves if it would benefit Mr. and Mrs. Granton.

I seldom hear any one thank master for anything he does, but it makes no difference to him. He just keeps on doing good, thanks or no thanks.

I may say in closing Jane’s story, that she got the finest set of artificial teeth that New York could afford, and for a while the dentist had her wear things called “plumpers” to make her thin cheeks stick out. Now I hear from Montmorency’s dog, who is one of Weary Winnie’s pups, that Jane threw the plumpers in the trash can, and we can all see that she is visibly better, and has some colour in her cheeks.

The tailor’s dog, Beauty Beagle, says that her master is getting sweet on Jane, because she is such a good cook.

The tailor is a cute little man, about as fat as a lead pencil, and not much to look at, but he has a good heart and would make a fine step-father for the redoubtable Montmorency who is learning to talk quite well.

Beside that, he has true views of life. One evening when I was passing by Jane’s cottage, I heard him say to her, “You ain’t on the right track.”

I stopped to listen, for I am interested in Jane.

“Yes I be,” she said. “I want my boy to be a good dresser.”

“It ain’t the outside alone that counts, Jane,” said the tailor. “It’s the inside, too.”

“And you a tailor,” she said contemptuously.

The little tailor was pretty decided, and he went on, “You can make Montmorency a gentleman as well as Mr. Granton can.”

“Now, tell me how,” she said anxiously.

“Learn him to be meek,” said the tailor, “learn him to act like a man, learn him to be bossed so he can boss--to treat very merciful any poor folk and dumb critters that are under him, to be clean inside and out, to get a first-class education, and to wear a tidy suit of clothes.”

Jane didn’t say anything for a long time, then she remarked, “That’s like a pictur of Mr. Granton. If my boy could be like him, I’d be suited.”

## CHAPTER XXVI

THE MOST PAINFUL EVENT OF MY LIFE

Three weeks ago, I was just about to bring this partial story of my life to a close, when something very tragic, yet not altogether unexpected, happened to me.

It began with a lie. I was sitting one sharp, cool afternoon all alone up in the Bonstone orchard, thinking what pleasant homes Gringo and I had, and how few worries we experienced--a dangerous thing for dog or man to do, for something is sure to happen--when Reddy O’Mare came trotting round the corner of the barn.

Reddy is a bright-red, cocky Irish-American terrier who lives on the next place to the Bonstones--a magnificent estate called Greenlands.

“Hello! Boy,” he said gaily.

“Hello!” I said soberly. “This is the second time you’ve been here to-day.”

“Twice for me, means twice for you,” he said, in his impudent way.

“Look here, Reddy,” I said, “I’m Gringo’s best friend. He doesn’t like you, and he’s laying for you. He says if you come over here once more and sneak Weary Winnie over to Greenlands, he’ll wallop you.”

[Illustration: REDDY O’MARE CAME TROTTING ROUND THE CORNER OF THE BARN]

Reddy laughed. “Gringo’s an old fool,” he said gaily. “Sure Winnie likes a frolic with a dog her own age.”

“She has dogs of her own age here in her own home,” I said.

“But all the dog-world likes to wander,” he said with a wink, for he knew the story of my career.

I smiled. I couldn’t help it. He is so merry, so full of tricks. However, I thought it my duty to warn him again. “Look out for Gringo,” I said.

“Gringo is an old soldier dog,” he said, “he bosses too much.”

This was true, but Gringo is my best friend always and forevermore, and I was not going to discuss him with this care-free wag.

“Sure you ought to pity me,” he said, “shut up in that big house with forty thousand servants, but never a dog to play with.”

“I do pity you, Reddy,” I said. “I think it is very hard for your master to go to the city, and leave you all alone with the servants who don’t pet you. You know you are always welcome in our home.”

“But it’s the forbidden game I always want to play,” he said, with a spring in the air at a passing fly.

“Here comes Gringo,” I said, looking toward the house.

“Let him come,” said Reddy, who was no coward, and he flopped down on the grass.

The old dog came sagging along. Weary Winnie was some paces behind him, and when she saw Reddy she dashed ahead, crouched to the ground, and got all ready for a frolic with him.

Gringo went right up to Reddy. “Stand up,” he said.

Reddy stood up, and Gringo took him by the throat.

I thought he would kill him. I was first in terror, then in agony. Reddy was very valuable, and if he were killed by one of the Bonstone dogs, it would make bad blood between Greenlands and Green Hill. I was also irritated with Gringo. He was too severe with the young dogs.

I ran up and down. Would no one come? Not a soul was in sight. I galloped toward the house, then I had a sudden thought, and ran back.

Gringo still had Reddy pinned to the earth in that awful silence. “Gringo,” I whispered, after I had leaped close to his ear, “your boss is having a fit in the dining-room.”

Gringo never uttered a sound. He just let go, and raced to the house. His private vengeance was thrown to the wind, when it was a question of his dear master.

“Skedaddle, Reddy,” I said as he floundered to his feet, and staggered against Weary Winnie who had sat watching the attack in her quiet bull-doggy way.

Reddy skedaddled, and this time Winnie did not go with him.

I might have skedaddled too, but something told me I should not mend matters by doing this. I had better stand my ground.

Presently Gringo came waddling back from the house. He was in a most furious bulldog rage. I had told him a lie, and he was telling himself that he had been a fool to believe me. Mr. Bonstone was never in the dining-room at this time of day.

Beside that, I had given him an awful fright, and he was no longer quite young.

“Gringo,” I said, “I thought you were going to kill that dog.”

He said never a word, but I knew what he was thinking--couldn’t I trust him to know better than to kill a neighbour’s dog? He was merely punishing him.

“I couldn’t stand it,” I went on, “I was thinking of your reputation.”

Still he didn’t answer me, and I got angry. “You are too cross with the young dogs,” I said. “Everybody says so.”

This cut him to the quick, and he gave me an awful look. Then, for his anger was still burning in him, he had to give me a dig. “I’ll never trust you again,” he said.

Now I was in a rage. I had done the thing for the best. I was trying to keep peace, and preserve the good name of our circle of dogs.

“You are wilfully misunderstanding me,” I exclaimed.

“A lie is a lie,” he said, with a sullen fire in his dark eyes. “You never lied before.”

“And I never will again,” I yelped at him, “unless I see you trying to kill some one.”

“I wasn’t trying to kill him,” he retorted.

“You looked like it,” I said, and we went on arguing and abusing each other for half an hour. We finally got down to the question, is it right to lie under any circumstances? All the dogs heard us yapping and snarling at each other, and they came running, and took a tongue in the argument. They were tremendously excited. A row between two old friends like Gringo and myself was a most startling event in our dog circle.

Some were for lies, some against. Yeggie said a lie was a mighty convenient thing when a dog got in a corner. Sir Walter Scott said it was underbred to lie. Czarina said to lie with discretion was diplomatic. Weary Winnie said she’d rather lie than speak the truth, whereupon she got a nip from Gringo, and was sent to bed.

Finally Gringo turned to me in a passion, and said, “Get home with you--you make yourself cheap coming here so much.”

Imagine my feelings--I am a dog of spirit, and I raced out of that orchard pretty quick. Gringo and I had never had words before, and I was so broken-hearted that I yelped with pain as I ran home.

Now, being so taken up with myself, and listening to the animated barks behind me, for every dog was remonstrating with Gringo for his severity toward me, I did not notice properly the way I was going.

Usually, I am what is called an alert dog. I observe what is before, and behind, and all round me, and ever since the dog-show, I had been more than ever on the watch, for I remembered the evil looks of the two youths who had stared at me.

This afternoon I forgot them. I had told a lie and lost a friend, and this melancholy happening chased everything else out of my mind. So I ran blindly, and evil fell upon me.

I was on what we called the rock walk, a long lane between our property and the Bonstones’. Thick-growing alders were each side of it, and I leaped from stone to stone, and ran occasionally along grassy places, till I was near the Osage orange hedge that surrounded our rose-garden.

If I had been on my guard, I would have sensed the presence of strangers, and would have noticed a rustling in the bushes. As it was, I pulled up too late.

Something had just said to me, “Danger ahead, Boy: stop short, and go back.”

I whirled in my tracks, but it was too late. A stranger had stepped out of the bushes, a rope had curled through the air--I was lassoed for the first time in my life.

Half-choking, I was hurled to the ground. Something gave me a whack on the head, and I was stunned. Only partly, for I have been stolen several times, and I pretended to be more unconscious than I was.

I knew better than to cry out. I just saw that the two men bending over me were not the ones who had been at the dog-show. They were too clever to come here themselves. These were older men. I knew I was being carried to a motor car, that I was put in a box and run under the seat, and that we sped toward New York.

I was terribly unhappy, of course, but not despairing. No one had been able to keep me in a place that I wanted to get out of. I came to myself fully after a bit, and lay still and watched events.

These fellows were pretending to be electric light or telephone men. Quite often, when other automobiles were passing, they got out, and tapped poles in a knowing way. They wore big leather belts, and they dragged about ropes and coils of wire. I could look out of a crack in the box, and I heard sounds that I pieced together.

I did not know by which road we were going toward the city, but something told me after the lapse of an hour or two, that we were in the Mount Vernon or Pelham Manor district.

I lay low, and went on saying nothing; and after a time I felt the car stop, and my box was taken up and carried into some kind of a shed, a door was banged together, the box was opened, and four young men faces confronted me.

Two of them were the ones I had noticed at the dog-show. They had paid, or were going to pay, the others for stealing me. I was ordered to get out, and in a way that was not too feeble, nor too lively, I crawled out on the earth floor.

They had stolen me to sell. I knew that, and I knew also this was not the time to see about escaping. I was really exhausted, for mental worry is as fatiguing to animals as to human beings, and I just dropped down on a heap of straw.

“Ain’t much to look at,” said one of the men who had stolen me.

“It’s points,” said one of the white-faced youths. “I don’t understand the gab about it, but he’s worth seven thousand all right.”

Their talk was dreadful--all tarnished with oaths and strange slang that of course I shall translate, for it is not fit to repeat.

Poor fools--poor young fools, I thought as I looked at them. If master could only get at you--but you belong to the class he dreads, that pale-faced, anemic lot without morals, and with absolutely nothing to work on. It seems as if ill-health, and crowding and poverty, make a criminal class that is the most desperate, for you can’t do much with it. These two poor wretches should have been locked up and carefully watched. All the time I was with them I did not hear one decent word uttered by them, I did not see one decent action performed. They were rotten through and through.

I tried not to be revengeful as I listened to them. The two fellows who had stolen me were more decent than the two others. They were clamouring for their money, but they were assured none would be forthcoming till I was sold. They detailed with disgusting glee how they had hung about Pleasant River all day, pretending to be telephone men.

“He’s cute,” they said in describing me. “He gives strangers a wide berth. We most got him twice, but he veered off and ran down the road, not minding us in particular, but just ’cause he’s cute.”

I groaned inwardly. I remembered these two fellows who had even had the audacity to come up near the house and examine our poles.

Finally they went away, and my two jockeys went to a rough table in the corner of the shed, took up a black bottle and shook it.

I had no fear of their injuring me. I was too valuable for that. In a minute, it flashed upon me what they were going to do. I was to be dyed.

I smiled sardonically. My dear master would raise heaven and earth to find me. A little dye would not turn him off the track. I hoped they would be careful about my eyes, and they were, for one man rebuked the other sharply, for letting the brush come too near an eyelid. Nothing was to be done to me that would take anything off my market value.

I felt like a fool though, as they set me on the rough table and went all over my hair with a brush. How the other dogs would laugh if they saw me. A white wire-haired fox-terrier has some style--an all black one, none whatever.

However, I just made up my mind to submit. There was absolutely no use in worrying, and for to-night, I need not fatigue my brain by thoughts of escape. When I had been stolen before, I had learned to take my capture easily, till my captors were off their guard which they never were at first. I must wait some days.

One thing I had done before when trapped, was to pretend to like my captors. That rôle would not take here. These two fellows had no more comprehension of the dog world than if they had been wooden men. They loved no one, feared no one; they seemed to hate everybody, even each other. It was of no use to try to cajole them, so I just pretended to submit, without looking too happy or appearing to be ill, for then they would have dosed me.

So I let them dye me and tie me, or rather chain me to a stout iron bar run down into the earth. They pried off my collar, made a hole in the ground, and buried it, and put a new, very strong metal one on me. They acted as if they knew I was a dog with brains, but I fancy their motive was simply one inspired by native cunning and skill in stealing. They must take every precaution to ensure the success of their scheme.

Well, at last I was free to lie down on my bed of straw. One of them stayed with me while the other went into the shabby house attached to the shed and brought me out a plate of meat. Then they set a pan of water beside me and went into the house, leaving the door open. I could not make a movement without their hearing me.

## CHAPTER XXVII

WEARY DAYS AND A RESCUE

There is no use in recounting the weary days and nights that passed. I soon figured out the whole story. These two scamps, after finding out my value at the dog-show, had set enquiries on foot in the underworld, and had found out that there was a demand for wire-haired fox-terriers on the Pacific Coast. If they could ship me out there, they would get even a little more than the seven thousand dollars. The question was, to raise the money for a railway ticket. Some one must accompany me.

Day after day I heard them arguing. They brought out men, and women too, from New York. They would say that it was a sure thing, any one who went in with them would be well rewarded, but everybody seemed shy of advancing money enough for my ticket, and one of theirs, to California.

All these difficulties pleased me. I, of course, viewed with dismay a trip to California. Unfortunately for me, a day came when a middle-aged man who was the leader of a gang of forgers seemed to fall in with their scheme. He had succeeded in passing a worthless cheque on a trust company and was feeling very rich. He told my young men that he would advance them one hundred and fifty dollars, if they would give him a thousand when I was sold.

They were in a fury with him, and vowed they’d see him somewhere first. However, I heard them talking the thing over after he left, and I trembled as they seemed to come to a decision in his favour.

I knew from their talk that my dear master was advertising me much more extensively than they had ever imagined he would, and that there were a great many uncertainties connected with selling me, even in so far-away a place as California. It was only by a quick sale that they could hope to get rid of me anywhere. Then they were afraid that some of their gang, in spite of the danger to themselves on account of their criminal record, would notify the police of my whereabouts, and claim the reward. They had no confidence in any one. On their blue days, they sometimes went far enough to regret ever having meddled with me, and I was in torture lest some treachery on the part of their gangster friends would make them kill me, and run away to hide themselves.

Finally, however, they promised to let the forger have the thousand dollars when I was sold, though they assured him that recent developments made it impossible for them to ask the full price for me.

They were not sure that the forger would keep his promise about letting them have the hundred and fifty dollars. Talk about honour among thieves--the criminal world, as I heard about it from my corner in the shed, is dishonourable, untrue, frightfully selfish--there is no such thing as honour in it.

I must confess that I had had an idea that there is something fascinating about crime. The night master and Mr. Bonstone went to New York to warn the police about the planned burglary of the jeweller’s store, I had been secretly disappointed when they let Mr. Johnson follow the affair up, and we went home.

I didn’t want a burglary to take place, or rogues to be apprehended, but if the thing just had to be done, I wanted to see how burglars and police went about it.

But now--my dog soul was filled with the most awful and secret disgust and dread of this criminal life. It was nauseating. I wished to sweep it from the earth. At first I listened to the talk, then I buried my head in the straw. Such things were not fit for even a dog to hear.

I concentrated my attention on myself. I must escape--but how? There seemed not one single avenue open to me. I had always had a theory, that no man and no dog can be put in any place so tight that he can’t get out of it, but I seemed to be in such a place now. I could think of absolutely nothing to do.

The scheme of these young villains was a very simple, but a very cunning one. By instinct and habit, they were natives of the very downest part of New York. They had brought me to the country to escape the keen eyes of the New York police, who, as I have said before, are, in spite of the criticism they receive, a pretty fine body of men.

The paler of the villains posed as a victim of tuberculosis. His brother, who was not his brother at all, had hired this tumble-down cottage as a place for him to breathe fresh air and recover in. Whenever they heard any one coming this Dud, as he was called, would flop down on a rickety old sofa drawn up close to an open window. I was his devoted black dog, kept for company, while his brother, who was a hard-working baker, was away in New York. He had to be a baker, for his flabby hands never could have belonged to a man who worked out-of-doors.

This pose was very clever, for it brought them in lots of food. A good, kind clergyman told some of the ladies in his congregation about the poor, sick, young New Yorker who had such a bad cough, and they came often and brought nourishing things to eat.

How my blood boiled when I saw these nice women driving up in their cars, and sending their servants in with dainty dishes for these two rapscallions, who ate them and grumbled because there was not more wine in the jellies.

To add to my misery, the dear old widow who owned the Lady Gay cat found out about her needy neighbours, and came quite often with little bowls of custard.

My first impulse when I saw her was to spring to my feet and bark wildly. However, I lay down again. She would not recognise me. I was a black dog now. The cat would know me, but then the cat never came with her, and even if she had, at a hint of recognition from any one, I would be spirited away. So I had to content myself with wagging my tail violently whenever she appeared, and I always got a kind pat on the head.

One day, when I was terribly weary from my long confinement, and was quite a bit downcast, for I did not see how I was ever going to get away, I became desperate.

A beautiful old lady with a high-bred manner, was standing in the cottage which was a one-roomed affair, talking to Dud who was prone on the sofa coughing in a hollow way.

I began to wail softly, and she turned round, and looking out in the shed at me, said, “I should think you would have your dog in here for company. The room is cold, for you have only a feeble fire. He could lie on the sofa, and keep you warm.”

The lady had been there before, and I knew she liked dogs, for she wore a little button with “Be Kind to Animals” on it.

Dud was too cunning to be caught. “I often have him in here, ma’am,” he said. “I just put him out there before you came.”

“Let him loose,” she said. “I would like to see him run about.”

“He’s tired,” said Dud, “he was running all the morning.”

He was watching her face as he spoke, and he must have noticed a flash of suspicion, for he added hastily, “Perhaps he does want to come in. I’ll try him for a while. He likes to lie behind my back,” and getting up, he limped out to the shed.

I was trembling with anger at his lies. He unfastened my chain, and took me in his arms. His face was hateful as he bent over me. I would have to pay up for this. He was holding me apparently in a loose grasp, yet his left hand gripped one of my hind legs till it felt as if it were caught in the jaws of a trap.

I might have known better than to do what I did, but I didn’t. I made an effort to get to the kind lady. Her face made me wildly homesick, for it reminded me of my dear mistress and Mrs. Bonstone. Then, I was unutterably tired and heartsick. Three weeks had passed since I had been shut up with this vermin of manhood.

I tried to spring toward her, but my leg caught in the trap. I gave a yell of pain. I thought my jailer had broken it.

Dud was mighty clever. He let me go at once. He knew I could not run far with that aching leg. “Poor dog,” he said as I limped to a corner and began to lick it. “Did the rheumatiz come back? I’ll get you a bone,” and he went to a shelf and took down a piece of beef that he had reserved for himself.

What a fool I am! I thought, and I lay down by the stove, and ripped the meat off the bone, for they kept me pretty hungry.

The lady was reassured, for Dud in a skilful manner that amazed me, petted me as if he worshipped the ground I walked on. I would not wag my tail, and pretend I liked him, but I tore at the meat, for I knew I should lose my bone, and probably get a beating when the lady was gone.

I never looked at her as her chauffeur, who had been standing outside, opened the door for her. Dud was very careful to keep between me and the door, but he did not need to trouble. I felt that the time to escape had not come.

Of course I got my beating. He snatched the bone from me, and caught up an old broom. I shall carry the mark of that beating to the end of my life in a most ungraceful limp, for my poor sore leg seemed to be always next the broom. I tried to keep my head out of range of the blows. I had a terror of being blind.

Fortunately, his companion vermin came in while he was belabouring me, and I, poor dog, was flying from corner to corner, from under the stove, to the rickety sofa, and the shaky bedstead, to escape the terrible broom handle.

His companion, who was fresh from some nest of evil things in the city, called him a whole trainload of dreadful names. They lost their tempers, and fought. Was I sorry? I crouched under the bed and tried to discipline myself.

I murmured, “I am a respectable dog. I should grieve to see two young men so depraved. I should be sorry to see them giving each other blows--now Dud is down--his eye is laid open. I am terribly pained.”

I turned my head away, and thought I looked intensely sorry, but alas! an old tin pan that still had some shine on it stood leaning against the baseboard, and I saw reflected in it a distorted dog grin.

Well, Dud yelled so loudly, that Tike, as his chum is called, had to desist. The postman often passed about this time in the afternoon. They sat down, and glared at each other like two young tigers--no, not tigers, tigers are too noble. I can’t think of any animal bad enough to compare them with. Hyenas would have looked like gentlemen if set beside them.

Anyway, they sat and glowered, while Dud tied a wet towel to his injured eye, then they got more composed and Tike told his good news. I and Dud were to set off for California the following week. He had got the money.

Dud wanted to handle it, but Tike shook his head and exhibited just the corners of some bills sticking out of an inner pocket.

From composure, they passed to contentment. They were both frightfully tired of their long sojourn in the country. Listening to them, and consulting my own feelings, as I looked back on three weeks of being chained up, I concluded that the worst torture in the world for man or beast, is to be torn away from home and family and a happy active life, and to have nothing to do but think about yourself and your misery.

Finally Tike picked me up almost tenderly, told Dud, for the fiftieth time, what kind of a fool he was to beat a seven-thousand-dollar dog, and re-chained me to my iron bar.

Then they sat down again, and confronted each other. They were in high glee. They thought they saw several thousand dollars glittering alluringly ahead of them in far-off California. One thousand they would have to give to their friend--no, not their friend, they hadn’t any--to their fellow-plotter.

They just had to do something to celebrate. In New York, a dozen ways of jollification of their own sort would have been open to them--in this country place, there were but two things.

Tike went out and got some bottles somewhere. Then they pulled down all the blinds, locked the house door, and the outer shed door, lighted an old lamp, and sat down at a table with some cards between them.

They hadn’t a suspicion that I would try to escape. Apparently, I was beaten almost to a jelly, but I am a very strong dog, and I wasn’t half as done out as I appeared to be.

Tike cast a glance at me occasionally, as I lay on my straw bed, but soon he got interested in the cards and the bottles and forgot all about me.

As I lay there, I was doing some pretty hard thinking. Never before in my whole life had I felt as I was now feeling. I was on fire with anger, and I felt the strength of ten dogs in my body. I had had all the worries and trials of an average dog in the course of my life, but this rage of resentment was an absolutely new experience. A most profound sympathy for all tortured things came over me. I pitied all the suffering men and women in the world, the children, and poor dumb animals. Then I arranged my little plan of escape. In the morning, I would either be away from this place, or so done out that I didn’t care what happened to me.

First thing I must get some rest. Nothing could be done till the two young brutes inside had been put to sleep by the stuff in the bottles.

I am a pretty determined dog, and I made myself drop into a heavy slumber. About one o’clock, I woke up. The most extraordinary snoring duet I ever heard in my life was going on in the room beyond me, and I could see where the two poor wretches had thrown themselves, undressed, across the bed. They were safe for some hours.

The lamp was just smoking out. It would soon be dark, but I knew every inch of the ground about me, and the darkness would not interfere with what I had to do.

For the thousandth time since my captivity, I smelt round the iron bar to which I was chained. That bar had to come out of the ground. There was no other way of escape, for it was impossible for me to detach my metal collar from the steel chain that fastened me to the bar.

I must dig my way out. Fortunately, my legs are very muscular, for I have been a dog that has taken a great deal of exercise, and back of me are generations of fox-terriers trained to unearth foxes in old England.

The hind leg that Dud had pinched was terribly sore and wobbly, and at first seemed almost useless.

“None of that nonsense,” I said sternly to it. “You’ve got to be stood on.” So I propped myself on it as best I could, and began to clear the earth from that uncompromising bar.

It was a hard task. I can not deny that. All over the shed, the earth had been trodden on till it was apparently as firm as marble. But even marble can be penetrated, and I scratched and clawed, till I had a small hole dug. After that it was easier, the earth underneath was softer, but ah! me, how my paws began to ache.

I found the best way to manage was to dig till I dropped exhausted to the ground. Then I would close my eyes and rest my aching limbs for a few minutes. Just as soon as possible, I would get up, prop myself firmly on my one sound hind leg, rest the tender one gingerly on the earth, and start digging again.

When the first faint streaks of daylight came filtering through the broken boards of the roof, I had got the bar uprooted, and had begun to tunnel under the boards of the shed wall. My strength was almost gone. I had to take long times of resting, and short ones of digging. My claws were all worn off, and my paws were bleeding. I had to set my teeth, and think of master and mistress and all my beloved friend dogs, to enable me to keep to work.

Once I thought I was done for. One of the sleeping beauties in the room got off the bed, floundered about, and acted as if he were coming out to call on me.

My first thought was to spring up and try to cover the hole I had made with straw, but that would have been an impossibility, and I lay still, and wondered what was going to happen next.

Tike, for it was he that was stirring, had the will, but not the power to get to the shed, and falling in a heap on the floor, he went to snoring.

I tried to get up, and go on with my work, but it seemed as if I were paralysed. “Oh! for a stimulus,” I muttered, “my limbs are dead,” and just here something happened that was little short of miraculous.

It seems a far cry from that shed to a little black cat in New York, more than two years before, but it wasn’t.

The Lady Gay cat that I had befriended, and who belonged to the good old widow Gorman, was named Mollie. In common with all pussies, she had a habit of night-prowling. She was a cautious cat, and after her New York experience never went far from home, but on this particular night, she told me afterward, something had prompted her to wander further than usual.

She was just getting home, for it was near morning, when in crossing the field near the cottage, she heard the sound of my digging. It aroused her curiosity, and she came smelling round the shed. She soon caught a suggestion of me, and she mewed excitedly, for she had heard the widow tell about my being stolen from the kind gentleman who used to come sometimes to the cottage. Her voice was the stimulus I needed. I put my muzzle close to a crack in the board wall, and squealed gently, “Here I am, Mollie.”

“Are you with the black dog of the sick man?” she mewed.

“I _am_ the black dog, Mollie,” I said. “I’m trying to dig myself out. I’m most dead.”

“Oh! Boy,” she said, “how I wish I could help you.”

“You can,” I replied, “run and get your German police dog. I heard your Granny tell the two young men that her sons had sent her one to guard her, for they were afraid something might happen to her in your lonely cottage.”

“Of course,” she said, “good Oscar, he’s very intelligent.”

“Fly,” I begged her. “They may wake any time.”

The little cat scampered away, and soon I heard a few stealthy sounds outside, and then a long indrawn sniff from Oscar, and a stifled “Woof!” He was locating me.

The cat had explained the circumstances to him, as they ran along together. He signalled to me to begin at my end of the tunnel. I started digging like a wild dog, and he began tunnelling to meet me.

His paws are magnificent--so big and strong, and he had the acute hearing of a healthy dog. He could even hear my heart beating as I worked. In a very few minutes, I was down on the earth, crawling on my stomach out through my tunnel into his.

I fell on the grass in a heap. Oscar gave me one rapid lick, then ran his nose over the bar and chain.

“Come, come,” urged Mollie who was trembling with excitement. “It’s getting quite light.”

It seemed still dark to me, for I was almost blind from fatigue.

That sagacious dog picked up the bar in his strong, white teeth, walked slowly ahead, and I dragged myself after him.

That walk to the widow’s house was a nightmare of pain. I was tormented in every limb. Mollie ran ahead, and mewed at the back door, and the widow, who was half dressed only, opened it and stared at us in amazement.

“The black dog,” she said, “and Mollie with him, and Oscar carrying his bar. Goodness gracious! What does this mean?”

In the midst of my pain and confusion, I remembered that I must identify myself. I crawled to the corner of the fireplace where she always set my saucer of milk, when master was having his cup of tea, for we often called here when out automobiling. I squealed and tried to jump in the air, but tumbled forward instead.

Good old Granny was very sharp. She gave me a perfectly amazed look, then she screamed, “Good London--it’s the Granton dog--but black, so black,” she added.

She dashed to the water bucket, seized a towel, wet it, and began to rub my coat.

“It’s dye,” she screamed again. “My goodness! my goodness! my goodness!”

The dear old soul caught me up, bar and chain, dirty and bedraggled, ran to her own bed, and put me on it, then she flew to the telephone that her boys had given her, and called up central.

The girl who answered was called Minnie, and was a particular friend of the old woman’s.

“Minnie,” she gasped, “the police, quick, it’s Granny Gorman speaking. I’ve found the Granton dog that’s been so much advertised. He was over in the cottage by the grove with the sick young man. A man that’s bad enough to steal a dog, would hurt a helpless old woman--quick, Minnie.”

Mrs. Gorman let the receiver drop, flew to the back door, and locked it, flew to the front door, and locked that. Then she put down all the windows, and locked them. Then she got a bottle of milk, and put some in my mouth with a teaspoon.

Never again will anything taste to me as that milk did. My body was frightfully tired, but my mind followed acutely what went on.

Oscar, who had pushed his head under a window shade, and was staring in the direction of the other cottage, gave a warning bark.

Mrs. Gorman stepped to the window, then she joined her hands, cast a pleading look toward the ceiling and said, “Oh, Lord--they’re coming.”

Oscar told me afterward that the sight of those two confused, staggering young fellows zig-zagging across the field made him grin. They had not recovered from the effects of their rejoicing, but something in their poor brains had warned them to set out in chase of their lost property.

They were following the tracks of the chain that had dragged on the earth, and every time they stopped to look, they would fall down. Oscar said afterward that it was a dreadful thing to laugh at drunken men, but he couldn’t help shaking his sides over their antics.

Soon they got up to the house, and after cutting the telephone wire, staggered through the garden to the front door. After they had pounded a short time, Mrs. Gorman went to the little hall window, and without raising it, looked out at them.

They called her some very fancy names, and ordered her to let them in.

“What for?” she screamed through the glass. “You’re not in a state to make calls. Go home.”

“Give us our dog,” they yelled, pounding on the door with their fists.

“I haven’t got your dog,” the widow called back to them. Then she realised she had made a mistake. She didn’t want them to know she had discovered I was the Granton dog.

“That good dog doesn’t want to live with you,” she shouted. “He scratched his way out. You’d better let me keep him.”

This excited the two young scamps, and they began throwing themselves against the door and kicking at it.

“You mustn’t do that,” she exclaimed, “breaking into a house is a penitentiary offence.”

Dud and Tike were pretty well worked up now. They knew their case was desperate. They must get hold of me, and rush off to New York. The shock had sobered them, and one of them smashed the hall window with his fist, and ran his hand in to unlock the door.

“Don’t do that,” said the widow much more calmly, “don’t do that,” and she threw the door wide open. “Come in.”

They were a very cunning pair. Dud stood outside, while Tike entered. He came right to the bed, snatched a key from his pocket, and unlocking my collar, released me from the bar and chain, and took me in his arms.

“Come, come, young man,” said the widow coaxingly, “that dog is afraid of you. Leave him with me.”

I felt Tike give a kind of jerk. He had sense enough to know that he should not leave a suspicious person behind him. He wanted to find out what she had in her mind.

“I hope in future you’ll mind your own business,” he said roughly, “and not take in a runaway dog.”

“But I like dogs,” she said gently, and as she spoke, she laid a hand on Oscar’s collar. The intelligent dog stood watching her. At a word, he would have leaped on Tike, and Tike knew it.

“Don’t play any tricks with me, doggie,” he said in a hateful way, and he half pulled a neat little revolver from his pocket.

“Please put that back,” said Granny Gorman, “I hate guns.”

“I’ll not hurt you,” said Tike, “if you don’t hurt me.”

“Why should I hurt you?” asked the widow mildly.

“I don’t know,” said Tike sullenly, then he went on, “I’m off for home.”

The widow detained him. “Promise me you’ll be kind to the dog in future,” she said.

Tike made this promise readily enough, then he tried to escape. He was reassured in his own mind. The widow knew nothing of the value of the dog in his arms.

He found it hard to get away. Mrs. Gorman took him by the sleeve. She poured out a perfect volume of talk about dumb animals, and the importance of being kind to them.

At last Tike said rudely, “Lemme go,” and he pulled away from her.

Just as quickly as he pulled away, he shrank back. The milkman, who was a big husky countryman, had just drawn his wagon up before the little garden, and was coming up the walk to the front door with two bottles of milk in his hand.

From my place of vantage in Tike’s arms, I saw a surprised look flit over the widow’s face. Evidently, the man came usually to the back door.

Then, through the half open door, we all listened to what he was saying to Dud who stood part way up the walk.

“Hello,” said the milkman, “how’s your cough? You’re out early for a sick man.”

“Better,” said Dud in a stifled voice. “I was upset about my dog--came to get him. He ran away.”

“Did he,” said the milkman indifferently. Then his eye fell on the broken glass.

“Hi!” he said in a drawling voice, “looks as if the widder had been getting gay.”

“She’s all right,” said Dud gruffly. “I guess my dog did it. He often rampages round, and breaks things.”

“That medium-sized black feller,” said the milkman--“always looks mild as milk to me.”

“He’s awful when he gets started,” said Dud--“a regular spitfire. That’s why we keep him chained--I say, you’re not going near the station, are you?”

“Yes I am,” said the milkman in a careless way, “within a hundred feet--want a lift?”

“You bet,” said Dud. “I’m beginning to feel bad. I guess I’ll go to town, and see my doctor.”

“Jump in, then,” said the milkman hospitably, and setting down his bottles, he went toward the back of the waggon, and appeared to be moving something inside.

Dud looked over his shoulder, and called out, “Come on, Tike,” then he started toward the waggon.

Oscar and I both sensed the presence of strangers. The milkman was fooling the two young men. I watched the hair rising and falling on Oscar’s back, and wondered at his self-control, for he sat quietly near the widow, waiting for orders.

The waggon was a big one, drawn by two powerful horses. We saw Dud approach the front of it. He was going to take the seat with the milkman, and let Tike crawl in behind with me. The first one always took the best thing.

He climbed to the seat, was just about to sit down, when he stopped short, and gazed into the back of the waggon.

The milkman gave a great roar of laughter. “They’re only bottles--go in and look at them,” and he gave the slender Dud a push that sent him disappearing from view.

Tike had seen his companion’s start, and I knew from the tremor of his body that he was vaguely suspicious of something, he knew not what. He didn’t know what to do, and his eyes were glued to the milkman’s face as he came again toward the house and seized his bottles.

“Come on, Tike,” called Dud suddenly from the waggon.

Now Tike was reassured. He clutched me closer, stepped out in quite a steady manner, but he did not get far--the milkman, grinning in a most alarming way, raised his bottles, jerked their contents in Tike’s face, wetting me more than my captor, and in no wise discommoding me, for my body was on fire.

Tike, in his astonishment, struck out at the milkman, and I was slipping to the ground, when the milkman caught me and stood jeering at the confounded Tike who went staggering into the arms of two policemen who had sprung from the waggon.

Dud was inside with handcuffs on. The policemen had got the milkman to bring them to the cottage. They didn’t want any shooting, and when they drew Dud into the back part of the waggon, he, to curry favour with them, called his companion.

Well, that was the last of my two enemies for me. I never expect to see them again. They were never accused of stealing me. It was found that they belonged to a gang that had swindled big New York concerns, and they will probably serve a long term in prison for their previous crimes.

My dear master was asked to interfere on their behalf, but he said, “They will be with a good warden. Years ago, I might have done something. Now it is too late for any mild measures. They have sinned deeply, and they need the discipline of punishment.”

## CHAPTER XXVIII

THE HAPPIEST TIME OF MY LIFE

The milkman laid me back on Mrs. Gorman’s bed, and in a very short time, the best physician in the neighbourhood was bending over me.

He didn’t think it beneath his dignity to be of service to a dog. He put some cool dressing on my wounded paws, bound them up, and told Mrs. Gorman not to disturb them. Then he went away, and said he would call later in the day.

By that time, my dear master had arrived, and was sitting beside me.

Shall I ever forget that meeting! Master broke down. “My poor Boy--my poor Boy,” he said, and he took my head between his hands.

I was almost delirious with joy. I couldn’t stand up, so I just rolled over and over on the bed, and kicked in ecstasy.

“Lie still, lie still, Boy,” he said with tears in his eyes, and he gently pushed me back to my proper position. “My poor little lad--a regular sapper, engineer dog--dug yourself out of prison. Well, there’s one thing sure. You’ll never be in one again. I’ve bought a pair of police dogs, and they patrol the place day and night. You are a brave little doggie, but you have a good heart, and you don’t always know evil characters.”

As he spoke about German dogs, Oscar came pushing his muzzle toward him.

“You grand young animal,” said master, fondling him. “I can not be grateful enough to you. Granny Gorman,” and master called over his shoulder to the dear old woman who as of old was making him a cup of tea, “you must do something for your dog when you get your reward.”

Granny came toward the bed with her brown tea-pot in her hand. “What reward, sir?”

“The reward for finding my Boy. The cheque is all ready whenever you are.”

She made big round eyes at him, inside her widow’s cap. “Why, sir, the police caught those men.”

“You and your dog found my dog,” said master decidedly. “The money is yours.”

She dropped the tea-pot in her amazement. “Not two thousand dollars.”

“Yes, two thousand dollars,” he said.

She stood deliberating a long time. Her eyes went to the picture of her deceased husband on the wall, to the framed wreath taken from his coffin, to the photograph of her two boys standing clasping each other in an almost death grip. Then she said very slowly, “You’re a rich man, and I s’pose it don’t seem anything to you, but to me it’s a fortune.”

“I wish it were ten thousand,” he said heartily. “However, one can’t measure gratitude by money. I’m your friend for life.”

“Sir, that’s better than the money,” she said with a smile running all over her wrinkled old face. “If you’ll bring that lovely dog of yours to see me sometimes, it’ll be better than bags of gold to me.”

Master didn’t say any more, and she didn’t. They understood each other. He made her sit down, while he picked up the pieces of broken tea-pot from the rag mat, then he came back to me.

“You little rascal,” he said lovingly, “I believe I’ll be a beggar soon, if you keep on. Exhibiting you in that show has dragged me into endless litigation. The pictures and descriptions of you in the newspapers have brought former owners buzzing about my ears like angry bees. I’ve had to buy you over and over again, and your kidnapping cost me a heap more.”

I licked his strong hands. My dear master--he would sell his house, before he would part with me. Then I looked anxiously in his face. He knew what I wanted, and he began to tell me about home affairs. “Young George has mourned you like a brother,” he said smilingly. “He has gone about the house wailing, ‘I want my Borsie--I want my Borsie,’ and when night came, and you did not appear for your frolic in the nursery, he has often cried with disappointment.”

“And mistress,” I wondered as I gazed at him.

“She has been perfectly upset about you,” he said, “and Amarilla. The little dog is pining away, and looks like a skeleton. We did not know that she was so fond of you. The veterinary says that if you do not return soon, she will die. As soon as I had the telephone message from police headquarters here, I shouted the news of your recovery through the house, and Amarilla acted like a wild creature. Afterward, for she has little strength, she fell down exhausted.”

I was terribly excited at this news. I tried to stagger to my feet. I whined, and begged him to take me home.

“I don’t believe it would hurt you,” he said good-humouredly, “though I forgot to ask your physician.” He laughed at me as he said this, and went to the telephone.

“It hasn’t been mended, sir, since those young rascals cut it,” said Granny.

“Then I’ll run over and see him in my car,” said master, and he went to the door.

Pretty soon he came back. “It’s all right, Boy. Come along, we’ll go home.”

Granny Gorman carried out pillows and coverlets, and put a hot water bottle beside me, for the afternoon was cold. Wasn’t I a happy dog!--Master whistled like a boy, as we sped on our way home.

I lay as snug as possible on the floor of the racing-car, but it seemed a long time before we got on the Pleasant River Road, although we were going like the wind.

However, we came at last within sight of the lights of the avenue. I heard master say, “Hello! Baron Ledgar, jump right in. We’re open to inspection,” and he stopped suddenly.

A powerful German police dog stepped in cautiously beside me, and nosed my bundle of wraps.

“So,” he said in a deep foreign voice, “you are the dogling there has been such a stir about. If you want to get stolen again, it won’t be at night. I’m on guard then.”

“_Danke_,” I murmured, “you are a good fellow; I can tell by the sound of your voice.”

“No compliments,” he said gruffly, “just work, work--Boo, hoo! boo hoo!” and he howled like a siren.

Master burst out laughing, and stopped to let him out. “I never saw such zeal,” he exclaimed. “You want to be on guard all the time. A short drive would not take up too much time.”

Baron Ledgar, with an exceedingly intense manner, leaped out before the machine stood still, and went on with his work of examining every inch of ground about the estate.

“He’s a treasure,” said master enthusiastically; “doesn’t hurt any one but keeps every stranger under surveillance. You other dogs can sleep o’ nights now. If any wanderers come, the Baron and his brother policeman dog will take care of them.”

I whined to let him know I was listening, and he went on gaily, “There’s a great fashion of giving double sir-names and handles to dogs and horses’ names. You’re Boy of Pleasant River now, if it please you. You’re too distinguished for just plebeian Boy.”

I gave a kind of dog chuckle. How little I cared what I was called, as long as I was permitted to live with him.

It seemed to me my heart would burst with joy when the car drew up before the big hall door and dogs and human beings rushed out to greet me.

Good King Harry was there, and Cannie and Czarina, all barking and jumping with excitement and pleasure.

“Make way there, make way there for the distinguished hero--Boy of Pleasant River,” called master, and taking me in his arms, he carried me into the hall and laid me on the settle.

Mistress was about to lay hold of me, but drew back at the sight of my blackness.

“Oh! Rudolph,” she said, “I didn’t realise what the dark colour would be. It isn’t our Boy.”

“Yes, it is your Boy,” I squealed, and I reached my tongue far out and licked her hands.

“You poor, poor doggie,” she said, “how you have suffered,” and she patted and caressed me, and then examined her hands to see if the black came off.

“We’ll have it all washed off in a few days,” said master. “He’s a sick dog yet.”

Just here, I gave a sharp bark of excitement. Master had hinted at a surprise waiting for me, and now I knew what it was. The surprise was Beanie.

That dear dog was on his hind legs beside the settle, licking me, nosing me, assuring me that he loved me as well as he did the mournful day two years ago, when he had to go down South with Ellen.

I should, perhaps, have explained before, that the reason why Beanie never saw young George, and never came to Pleasant River, was on account of Ellen receiving sudden news of the illness of her only sister down in Virginia.

She had started off for that state in a great hurry, taking Beanie with her. The sister had died leaving her some money, and she had come back to New York to see her son Robert Lee, who was now married, and master had invited her to come out to Pleasant River.

“Beanie, Beanie,” I gasped, “how handsome you look--and if I’m not glad to see you. Where’s old Ellen?”

“There,” he exclaimed, looking over his shoulder, and lifting my head a little more, I saw Ellen coming down the staircase, leading young George. Bessie had gone away to care for a sick mother, and Ellen was taking care of our baby.

Wasn’t that good old woman glad to see me! “Why didn’t you run to old Ellen,” she said lovingly, “the way you did when you was lost before?”

My mind harked back to the time I first saw her, but I could not very well explain that this affair had been different from my voluntary running away.

Young George’s face was a study. He had heard that his playmate had come back, and he had his fresh young mouth wide open, as if he were going to swallow something nice.

At first, I felt sorry that they had allowed him to see me in my present state. He was only a baby. My colour would frighten him, and he would think I was a strange dog.

That is where I miscalculated. I might have known how he would take the thing, and I might have remembered how often I have said, that children are cleverer than grown people.

His dear mother was shrinking a little bit from me. George, after getting off the staircase, trotted up to me, and threw his arms round my neck. He didn’t hesitate an instant. He knew I was his own Borsie.

“Bad man,” he said after he had nearly hugged me to death, “bad man--make Dordie’s Borsie brack!” and seizing a corner of his little pajama jacket, he spat on it, and tried to rub some of my dye off.

His mother exclaimed, “How primitive--George, my darling, don’t spit on things.”

“’Pittin’s easy,” he said, and he started to polish me off again, when his father interfered, and promising him the pleasure of properly washing some of the colour off the next day, sent him back to bed.

As he climbed upstairs, holding tight to Ellen’s hand, I heard a gentle noise such as a cat might make, and leaning my head over the settle, saw Amarilla toddling toward me.

What a little skeleton!--I was terribly shocked.

“Poor girlie,” said mistress, “now you will get fat,” and she lifted her up beside me.

Amarilla never said a word. She gave me a perfectly heart-rending glance from her big frightened eyes, and cuddled up close to me. She lay there till they carried me up to master’s room, when she followed behind like a little mourner.

“Amarilla!” called mistress later on, when I had been placed on my own bed which was a big French _bergère_ in master’s dressing-room, “aren’t you coming to sleep in my room?”

I heard a little stirring beside my chair, but she did not go to mistress.

“Claudia,” said master, “I advise you to leave her in the same room with Boy for a day or two. She has had a great fright about him. She will go back to you later.”

“Very well,” said mistress in her pretty voice, and master bending down took the trembling Amarilla, and put her on a cushioned bench close to my chair. “You mustn’t touch his bandaged feet, doggie,” he said to her, but there was no need of warning her. The anxious little dog just wished to be near me. She was dazed from suffering, and was afraid that I would go away again. What a faithful little heart!

“Amarilla,” I said, “I missed you and Gringo more than any other of the dogs.”

She still said nothing, but she stretched out her tiny pink tongue, and licked my bandages very softly.

“Go to sleep,” I said, “we shall have some fine romps on the lawn when my feet get better.”

She drew a long, pitiful sigh, and closed her eyes. How could any one ever ill-treat a timid shrinking thing like that. I can understand how a man can beat a fox-terrier but a toy-spaniel--never!

I did not go to sleep for some time, for there was something on my mind. I wanted to see Gringo. I wondered that the dear old fellow had not been over to welcome me. Surely he knew that I had come home. I thought he would be the first to greet me. Surely that lie would not be bothering him yet.

## CHAPTER XXIX

MY OWN DEAR HOME

Bright and early the next morning, I heard a sniffling at master’s dressing-room door, followed by a knock.

Master opened the door, and there stood Mr. Bonstone and Gringo.

They both came toward me, and Mr. Bonstone fondled my head. “Fine Boy,” he said, “you did some good foot-work.”

Then he began talking to master who was brushing his hair vigorously with his military brushes. The two men were like brothers.

Gringo came close to my chair.

“Hello, old boy,” I said, then we stared at each other.

There was a most beautiful expression in his dark eyes. “Gringo,” I said in a low voice, “you missed me.”

“I’ve not had a minute’s peace since you left,” he said. “I’ve suffered more than you did.”

“Forget it,” I returned hastily.

“I can’t,” he said. “I was a brute. The morning after you disappeared, I went over to Greenlands and got Reddy O’Mare. ‘Make yourself at home,’ I said, and he’s been over to our place every day since, and I don’t boss the youngsters so much. I have to a bit, seems as if it’s in my blood.”

“You’re a great old dog,” I said admiringly, “but don’t think of the past. We’re going to have lots of good times in the future.”

“So long,” he said abruptly. “My boss has to get to town.”

I watched him rocking out of the room. How the old dog had aged. I was quite shocked.

My convalescence was rapid. Not many days later, I had my bandages off, and was able to limp about the place.

The first day I was strong enough to get up to the orchard, I received what the newspapers call an “ovation.” It was a lovely day, and not too cold. The dogs formed a circle about me on the snow, and I had to relate the story of my capture.

I looked round on their faces--our Pleasant River dogs, the Green Hill dogs, Reddy O’Mare and many other neighbour dogs, and a sudden shyness fell upon me.

Gringo was chairman, and to give me a chance to recover, he began to tell how I was caught, and purposely related it in a wrong way.

“No, it wasn’t like that,” I interrupted, and the old dog, with a smile, told me to go on, and finish the story properly.

I got excited, and talked for an hour. Then we had a jubilation. The dogs all ran round and round, and frisked and barked, and watching them, I shouted suddenly, “Hurrah for American dogs--we beat the world!”

They all barked a chorus of approval, then we separated. Gringo and I kept together, and had one of our old-time walks and talks.

“Let’s go over to your place,” I said. “I don’t believe it would be too much for me.”

“Lean on me, if it hurts you to walk,” he said affectionately.

I pressed close to the dear old fellow, and as we sauntered along, we gossiped.

“I can’t tell you,” I said, “what a pleasure it is to have Beanie here.”

“He had a great time down South,” said Gringo, “but he was glad to get back to little old New York.”

“Strange to say, I’ve been on that big estate he visited,” I said, “used to be an old plantation that belonged to one of the F. F. V.’s.”

“Who are they?” asked Gringo.

“First Families of Virginia--Ellen’s sister was a mammy on the place.”

“Ellen’s going to stay with you, I guess,” said Gringo.

“Is that so?” I said. “Why, she’s only supposed to be visiting.”

“I know, but I heard your master tell my boss that he is pleased to have a Southern mammy for young George. She has ideas about flowers and animals that your boss likes.”

“Won’t that be splendid,” I said. “Beanie is frightfully worried about leaving Mrs. Granton.”

“He is a regular steady and true dog,” said Gringo. “When he came, he didn’t know which to follow, old Ellen, or your mistress, so he settled it, by tracking one of them for half a day, and the other for the next half.”

I laughed at this, and Gringo went on. “The other day, I saw your boss watching Ellen with joy on his face. It was in your greenhouse, and young George had yanked a hyacinth from a pot. Ellen half cried, and said the poor mother hyacinth had been in prison in the black earth, and finally she worked her way out, and shook her curls at the sun, and then George came along, and tore her all to bits. The youngster sniffed too, and helped Ellen tie mother hyacinth up with a bit of string. Your boss liked that. He hates to see his boy destroy life.”

“Good,” I said, “I hope she’ll stay. Do you suppose, Gringo, if those two young scamps that stole me had had the same chance that George has, they would be so bad?”

“’Course not,” said the old dog.

“Then why in heaven’s name,” I said, “don’t human beings give all the boys and girls an equal chance?”

“Give it up,” said Gringo.

“I believe it’s selfishness,” I said, blinking my eyes in the bright sunlight on the snow, for my sight had got weak in my prison.

“There’s Sir Walter,” said Gringo, “giving his hens a last run before sundown. He keeps them in fine shape. See him nose them along. He’s a wise dog.”

As he waited to speak to Sir Walter, Arnulf the police dog trotted by. He did not stop--just gave us a rapid wag of his tail.

Walter Scott gazed after him. “It fatigues me to watch him,” he said. “He’s never still.”

“No matter about that,” said Gringo, “he’s here to keep strangers off the place, and he does it. They used to be always poking about, when us other dogs ruled. We were too polite by a long way. We never drove strangers away, unless they were rampageous.”

Sir Walter smiled, and said, “I daresay you are right. I saw him the other day get in front of a woman who persisted in coming up through the open gates. She thought he looked kind, and began to tear ivy from the wall. Arnulf growled at her, but she went on. Then he took her skirt between his teeth, and tore it. She was in a rage, and started throwing some ivy in his face. He opened his mouth, and bellowed so angrily, that she hurried away, looking over her shoulder--Pardon me, I must keep my hens moving.”

“Come on,” said Gringo, “the sun will soon be going down.”

We went on, via the rock walk, and Gringo hung his head as we passed the place where the two men had lassoed me.

“Boy,” he said hoarsely, “do you see that spot there, all pressed down?”

I stuck my head in the alders, and saw a matted place in the grass quite free from snow.

“I always keep it clean,” he said. “I used to sit there when you were gone and think what a good dog you are, and what an old crosspatch I am.”

I began to laugh. I was so happy I couldn’t help it. “Don’t be too humble,” I said, “we may have another falling out.”

Gringo was quite shocked, and stopped short.

“Why not,” I said gaily. “Fight, and forgive, and make up--fight, and forgive, and make up. That’s life.”

“I don’t believe in fighting,” said Gringo soberly.

“Nor do I,” said I, “but if fights come, don’t dodge them. Dogs aren’t perfect, nor are human beings.”

“My boss don’t fight his wife,” said Gringo.

“Nor does mine,” I retorted, “but sometimes they are just a little sharp with each other. Then they kiss and make up. You and I have kissed, and made up. I don’t want you to go mourning all your days, because you once snapped at me. It was partly my fault. I got on your dog nerves.”

Gringo grinned at me. Then he said, “You’re a comic dog--trouble runs off you like water off a duck’s back--Good land! how I’ve missed you. Come on, let’s trot a bit. It won’t hurt you.”

“Cows first,” I said when we struck Green Hill, and I limped into the stable. I loved Mr. Bonstone’s Jerseys, and the big fragrant creatures, chewing their cud, boo-hooed at me, for they knew I liked them, and they had heard of my adventures.

I went from stall to stall and greeted them, then rejoined Gringo, who was fussing about the stable door because I was so long.

“Come on up to see the horses,” he said. “I see my boss just going up with an S. P. C. A. man he brought out from the city to-day.”

I limped gleefully after him. The Green Hill stables always reminded me of the Leland Stanford stables in California, which are kept so quiet for the horses, and where they have the same intelligent care as they do here.

The S. P. C. A. gentleman was quite old, and he was standing beside Mr. Bonstone, and staring about him with great interest.

The stable doors were wide open. Each horse or colt had a good-sized box-stall to himself, and every one of them was turned head toward the door, watching Thomas who was repairing a cement combination drinking-fountain in the middle of the stable yard. It was for human beings, horses, birds and dogs. Something had gone wrong in the foundation, and Thomas was on his knees on the ground, with a pail of cement beside him, and a hammer and chisel.

“Thomas,” said Mr. Bonstone, “talk a bit to the horses, will you?”

Thomas touched his cap, and was about to get up but Mr. Bonstone said, “Keep on with your work, and call them about you as I have seen you do.”

Thomas, who is a very quiet, but a very intelligent, man of English ancestry, said, “All right, sir,” and seizing the hammer, he threw it to one side and called out, “Fernbrook Deputy, bring me the big hammer from the tool-box.”

The old gentleman in the big fur coat turned his spectacles in the direction of the stable.

Fernbrook, who is a powerful bay horse, was lifting up the bar of his stall with his teeth. Afterward, he pounded the whole length of the stable with his heavy hoofs, bent over a tool-box, took out a large hammer, and dropped it beside Thomas.

Mr. Bonstone smiled proudly, and the old gentleman said, “Magnificent!”

“Dollie Whitehead, bring me my coat,” called Thomas, going on with his pounding.

A dapper little white mare let herself out of her stall, went up to a hook where an overcoat was hanging, and carried it out to the yard, holding it high so it would not drag on the snow.

As she stood dangling it from her mouth, Thomas jumped up and said rebukingly, “Why don’t you help her put it on me, Fernbrook?”

To the old gentleman’s surprise--Mr. Bonstone, Gringo and I had, of course, seen these performances many times before--the two sagacious animals held the coat by the back of the neck, while Thomas slipped his arms in it.

“Major Golderay,” called Thomas, “I want you.”

A roan horse--a perfect beauty--came stepping daintily out.

“Also Duchess of Normandy,” said Thomas, “Lady Jane Grey, and Poor Polly.”

The animals all came out, and formed a line-up before him.

“Lady Jane,” said Thomas, “where is your friend Joe?”

Lady Jane whinnied several times, and shook her head in the direction of the barn.

“I know he’s bedding the cows,” said Thomas, “but you go tell him I want him.”

Lady Jane galloped away, and presently returned with her teeth in the shoulder of the woolen sweater worn by the grinning Joe, who bobbed his head at his employer and guest.

The old gentleman began to speak. “This is almost equal to the thinking horses of Elberfeld.”

“Can you state to me,” asked Mr. Bonstone, “any reason why an American horse should not have as much brains as a German horse?”

“None whatever,” said the old gentleman. “Horses, like men, are created equal. Tell me, stableman, what is your system?”

“Haven’t any, sir,” said Thomas. “I treat ’em as if they had horse sense, and I find they’ve got it.”

“Cultivation, cultivation,” said the old gentleman several times, as he nodded his head. Then he asked, “Can they count?”

“Duchess of Normandy,” said Thomas, “when is Dicky Bill coming from town?”

“Dicky Bill is one of the stable boys,” explained Mr. Bonstone.

The Duchess was scratching ten times in the snow with her hoof.

“Hille ho, hille ho, hille ho,” sounded a sudden ringing voice.

We all turned, and there was Dicky Bill tearing up the asphalt path from the electric car line.

He didn’t see us, and he rushed into the stable yard, and threw his arm round the glossy neck of the Duchess--“Hello! old girl.”

“Just look at that boy’s colour,” whispered Gringo, “and six months ago, he was a washed-out rag.”

Dicky Bill was pulling at his cap in confusion. He had just discovered Mr. Bonstone.

“You’ve made the Duchess tell a lie,” said Thomas.

“I told her I was coming back at ten,” said Dicky Bill, “but I changed my mind. There’s nothin’ doin’ in town.”

Mr. Bonstone put up his hand to his face, to conceal a smile. His plan was to make country life so interesting, that town life seemed dull.

The old gentleman was speaking to Thomas. “You gave that mare some sign, didn’t you?”

“If I did, I didn’t know it,” said Thomas. “They may get something I don’t get myself, for they watch me closely. If I walk down by those stalls, and say to myself, ‘That black mare is off her feed, I’ll give her an extra ration of oats,’ she’ll whinny, and look toward the oat bin.”

“My wife says,” remarked Mr. Bonstone, “that when she gives a special feed of hemp to her hens, in order to catch one, they’ll all eat out of her hand but the one she has her mind on.”

“Wonderful,” said the old gentleman, “looks as if we were the brutes, and the animals the reasoning beings--I’ll have to catch my train--Thank you, my man. I’m going to send you a book about the Elberfeld horses.”

Gringo and I travelled slowly along after Mr. Bonstone and his friends on their way to the house, but stopped on the way to speak to Czarina, Yeggie, Weary Winnie and the Frenchmen who had had their early dinner, and were coming up to the stables for the night.

As we were talking, the old gentleman and Mr. Bonstone retraced their steps. They wanted to ask something further about the horses from Thomas.

The gentleman paused to look at us. “What a jolly lot of dogs,” he said--“they’re talking just as we are. I wonder what they’re saying. Just look at those intelligent faces. They understand us, but we can’t understand them.”

We dogs all gave each other knowing glances.

“’Pon my word,” growled Gringo, “it seems as if more human beings were beginning to find out that we’re something more than lumps of flesh.”

“Gringo,” I said, “my leg is beginning to ache. I must get home, but first I want to look in on your family.”

“Good night, dogs,” we said to the stable bunch, and we went on the way to the Bonstones’ big living-room, where everybody gathered at this time of day.

Old Mrs. Resterton sat in a corner by the fireplace, knitting and talking to an old lady friend who had her chair close beside hers. A nurse-maid was bringing in Cyria and the twins from a frolic on the lawn, and Master Carty, who had just arrived from town straight as a major, was helping his young nephew and nieces to take off their wraps.

Mrs. Bonstone had just got out of her coupé at the door. She had been calling on a neighbour, and pretty soon she came in, smiling and holding out her hands to the blaze. She greeted all her family in a loving way, and did not forget to congratulate me on my restoration to health.

“They’re all happy,” I said to Gringo, “now I must skip home.”

“I’ll go with you,” said Gringo. “We dogs have all sworn that you’re to go nowhere without an escort.”

This amused me, and I tried to toss up my head and show off a bit, as we ran out into the hall and down the avenue. I could not, and had to go soberly.

“Will you come in, Gringo?” I said when I got home.

“Certainty,” he said. “I’ll stay to dinner with you.”

I wasn’t taken aback. My kind mistress never objects when I bring home a dog friend. Some women are very fussy about entertaining.

We went into the library, where mistress was alone, looking over the mail that lay on the big table. She had been out walking, and still had on her warm coat and cloth hat. She never wore furs now.

“Good dogs,” she said absently, “come close to the fire,” and she went on reading a letter.

Gringo and I lay down on my hearth-stone, and presently in came master from town.

He kissed his wife--“How rosy you look,” he said.

She let the letter slip to the table.

“Do I?” she said slowly.

“Yes--this life in the country is a thousand times better for you than the city.”

“Oh, Rudolph,” she said, “I met Stanna just now in her coupé. Really, that woman is resplendent. She looked like a tropical flower in a glass box. I wish I were half as handsome.”

“Half as handsome,” repeated master in a kind of innocent, wondering way. “Do you really think you are not as good-looking as Stanna?”

“I don’t think it,” said mistress almost impatiently, “I know it.”

Master stared at her in amazement.

Mistress burst out laughing. “I really believe, you dear, foolish man, that you think I eclipse Stanna.”

“I don’t think it, I know it,” he said decidedly.

“The boys in the street don’t stare after me as they do after Stanna,” she said.

“That rejoices me,” he said gravely. “I shouldn’t care to have them staring at you.”

Mistress broke into a delighted peal of laughter, and I think was about to embrace him, but she wheeled round and held out her arms to young George who was entering the room, followed by Ellen and Beanie.

Beanie, in spite of a warm dog sweater he had on, was shivering with cold and held his breast-bone so close to the fire, that Gringo said gravely, “I smell you scorching, Beans.”

He moved back a bit, and I said, “How you do feel the cold.”

“Too much F. F. V.,” said Gringo soberly.

“It does seem cold up here,” said Beanie, “after that southern winter air.”

“Have you been to see Mrs. Waverlee?” asked Gringo.

“Yes, she’s fine,” said Beanie enthusiastically, “and I love Patsie. Oh! dogs, we’re going to stay here. I’m crazy with pleasure. I didn’t want to go back to New York.”

We both congratulated him, then Ellen called him to go upstairs, to have his sweater off.

Master and mistress went back to the topic of the looks of ladies and gentlemen.

“Claudia,” master was saying, “if you were to tell me that I wasn’t as handsome as Norman, I would understand you.”

Mistress turned her back on him, and began to gather up her mail from the table.

“No one would look at me twice, if Norman were in the room,” said master. “He’s what I call a really handsome man.”

“Look at Mrs. Granton’s shoulders shaking,” muttered Gringo. “She thinks that’s a joke on my boss.”

Mistress turned round--her face perfectly convulsed with amusement. “Rudolph,” she said, “you old goose.”

“Gander,” corrected master. “Do the animal kingdom justice.”

“Gander then,” said mistress. “Norman Bonstone can’t be compared with you. You are the handsomest man I ever saw.”

Master gave her a quizzical smile. “It looks as if we were both satisfied, doesn’t it?” he said.

“I am a very happy woman,” she said with emphasis. “I used not to be. I am now.”

“Isn’t much more to be added to that,” said Gringo, as the two went arm in arm from the room. “It’s fine to have all the bosses happy. Makes things easier for us dogs--but who comes here?”

“Our unhappy ghost,” I said as Amarilla sneaked into the room.

“How de do, dogsie,” said Gringo amiably. “Do you think I am handsome?”

Amarilla hesitated, and looked at me in her timid way.

“Weary Winnie and Reddy think I’m a beauty,” said Gringo encouragingly, and with a hoarse laugh.

“I don’t think you’re exactly pretty,” began Amarilla shyly, then she stopped.

Gringo rolled over and over on the hearth-rug, in his amusement. “Oh! Amarilla! Oh!” he said chokingly.

“Feel any happier to-day, girlie?” I asked as she stretched herself out on the fender stool.

“Yes,” she said cheerfully, “missie weighed me to-day and I’m back to normal. Now you’re home, I’ve nothing to fret about.”

“Human beings happy, dogs happy,” said Gringo, “looks as if there was a green old age getting ripe for us. Boy, I wish every animal in the world had as good homes as we have.”

“Gringo,” I said enthusiastically, “that goes to my heart. Happiness for everybody, say I.”

“Write it down,” said the good old dog. “You know dog hearts pretty well. Say your say to the human beings. Maybe you’ll make it easier for some of the unhappy dogs.”

I took his remark to heart. I had already written part of the story of my life, and for the other dogs’ sake, I, Boy of Pleasant River, give the rest of this little sketch to the world.

THE END

* * * * *

THE NOVELS OF MARY ROBERTS RINEHART

May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list.

_“K.”_ Illustrated.

K. LeMoyne, famous surgeon, drops out of the world that has known him, and goes to live in a little town where beautiful Sidney Page lives. She is in training to become a nurse. The joys and troubles of their young love are told with that keen and sympathetic appreciation which has made the author famous.

_THE MAN IN LOWER TEN._

Illustrated by Howard Chandler Christy.

An absorbing detective story woven around the mysterious death of the “Man in Lower Ten.” The strongest elements of Mrs. Rinehart’s success are found in this book.

_WHEN A MAN MARRIES._

Illustrated by Harrison Fisher and Mayo Bunker.

A young artist, whose wife had recently divorced him, finds that his aunt is soon to visit him. The aunt, who contributes to the family income and who has never seen the wife, knows nothing of the domestic upheaval. How the young man met the situation is humorously and most entertainingly told.

_THE CIRCULAR STAIRCASE._ Illus. by Lester Ralph.

The summer occupants of “Sunnyside” find the dead body of Arnold Armstrong, the son of the owner, on the circular staircase. Following the murder a bank failure is announced. Around these two events is woven a plot of absorbing interest.

_THE STREET OF SEVEN STARS._

Illustrated (Photo Play Edition.)

Harmony Wells, studying in Vienna to be a great violinist, suddenly realizes that her money is almost gone. She meets a young ambitious doctor who offers her chivalry and sympathy, and together with world-worn Dr. Anna and Jimmie, the waif, they share their love and slender means.

GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK

* * * * *

BOOTH TARKINGTON’S NOVELS

May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list.

_SEVENTEEN._ Illustrated by Arthur William Brown.

No one but the creator of Penrod could have portrayed the immortal young people of this story. Its humor is irresistible and reminiscent of the time when the reader was Seventeen.

_PENROD._ Illustrated by Gordon Grant.

This is a picture of a boy’s heart, full of the lovable, humorous, tragic things which are locked secrets to most older folks. It is a finished, exquisite work.

_PENROD AND SAM._ Illustrated by Worth Brehm.

Like “Penrod” and “Seventeen,” this book contains some remarkable phases of real boyhood and some of the best stories of juvenile prankishness that have ever been written.

_THE TURMOIL._ Illustrated by C. E. Chambers.

Bibbs Sheridan is a dreamy, imaginative youth, who revolts against his father’s plans for him to be a servitor of big business. The love of a fine girl turns Bibb’s life from failure to success.

_THE GENTLEMAN FROM INDIANA._ Frontispiece.

A story of love and politics,--more especially a picture of a country editor’s life in Indiana, but the charm of the book lies in the love interest.

_THE FLIRT._ Illustrated by Clarence F. Underwood.

The “Flirt,” the younger of two sisters, breaks one girl’s engagement, drives one man to suicide, causes the murder of another, leads another to lose his fortune, and in the end marries a stupid and unpromising suitor, leaving the really worthy one to marry her sister.

_Ask for Complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction_

GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK

* * * * *

THE NOVELS OF GRACE LIVINGSTON HILL LUTZ

May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list.

_THE BEST MAN_

Through a strange series of adventures a young man finds himself propelled up the aisle of a church and married to a strange girl.

_A VOICE IN THE WILDERNESS_

On her way West the heroine steps off by mistake at a lonely watertank into a maze of thrilling events.

_THE ENCHANTED BARN_

Every member of the family will enjoy this spirited chronicle of a young girl’s resourcefulness and pluck, and the secret of the “enchanted” barn.

_THE WITNESS_

The fascinating story of the enormous change an incident wrought in a man’s life.

_MARCIA SCHUYLER_

A picture of ideal girlhood set in the time of full skirts and poke bonnets.

_LO, MICHAEL!_

A story of unfailing appeal to all who love and understand boys.

_THE MAN OF THE DESERT_

An intensely moving love story of a man of the desert and a girl of the East pictured against the background of the Far West.

_PHOEBE DEANE_

A tense and charming love story, told with a grace and a fervor with which only Mrs. Lutz could tell it.

_DAWN OF THE MORNING_

A romance of the last century with all of its old-fashioned charm. A companion volume to “Marcia Schuyler” and “Phoebe Deane.”

_Ask for Complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction_

GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK

* * * * *

B. M. BOWER’S NOVELS

May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset and Dunlap’s list.

_CHIP OF THE FLYING U._ Wherein the love affairs of Chip and Della Whitman are charmingly and humorously told.

_THE HAPPY FAMILY._ A lively and amusing story, dealing with the adventures of eighteen jovial, big hearted Montana cowboys.

_HER PRAIRIE KNIGHT._ Describing a gay party of Easterners who exchange a cottage at Newport for a Montana ranch-house.

_THE RANGE DWELLERS._ Spirited action, a range feud by two families, and a Romeo and Juliet courtship make this a bright, jolly story.

_THE LURE OF THE DIM TRAILS._ A vivid portrayal of the experience of an Eastern author among the cowboys.

_THE LONESOME TRAIL._ A little branch of sage brush and the recollection of a pair of large brown eyes upset “Weary” Davidson’s plans.

_THE LONG SHADOW._ A vigorous Western story, sparkling with the free outdoor life of a mountain ranch. It is a fine love story.

_GOOD INDIAN._ A stirring romance of life on an Idaho ranch.

_FLYING U RANCH._ Another delightful story about Chip and his pals.

_THE FLYING U’S LAST STAND._ An amusing account of Chip and the other boys opposing a party of school teachers.

_THE UPHILL CLIMB._ A story of a mountain ranch and of a man’s hard fight on the uphill road to manliness.

_THE PHANTOM HERD._ The title of a moving-picture staged in New Mexico by the “Flying U” boys.

_THE HERITAGE OF THE SIOUX._ The “Flying U” boys stage a fake bank robbery for film purposes which precedes a real one for lust of gold.

_THE GRINGOS._ A story of love and adventure on a ranch in California.

_STARR OF THE DESERT._ A New Mexico ranch story of mystery and adventure.

_THE LOOKOUT MAN._ A Northern California story full of action, excitement and love.

GROSSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK

* * * * *

Transcriber’s Notes:

The author of this book is Margaret Marshall Saunders.

Illustrations have been moved to paragraph breaks near where they are mentioned.

Punctuation has been made consistent.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in the original publication, except that obvious typos have been corrected.

The dog breed name Dachshund is capitalized in this book, while other breed names are not capitalized.

End of Project Gutenberg's "Boy" the Wandering Dog, by Marshall Saunders