nodded Trent. “And a good little name at that. A good little name for a good little dog. And now that I’ve gone broke, in buying you, will you please tell me what I’m going to do with you? I’m an outcast, you know, Buff. An Ishmaelite. And I’m on my way back to my home-place to live things down. It’ll be a tough job, Buff. All kinds of rotten times ahead. Want to face it with me?”

Much did Trent talk to the dog during that long and bumpy drive. His voice was pleasant, to his little chum. And it was the first time in Buff’s six months of life that a human had troubled to waste three sentences of speech on him. The attention tickled the lonely pup. His heart was warming more and more to this tired-eyed, quiet-voiced new master of his.

Closer he cuddled to the man’s knee, looking up into the prison-pale face with growing eagerness and interest. There was a wistfulness in Buff’s deep-set eyes as he gazed. With tense effort he was trying to grasp the meaning of the unknown words wherewith from time to time Trent favoured him. The man noted the pathetic eagerness of look, and his own desolate heart warmed to this first interested listener he had encountered in more than a year. He expanded under the flattering attention, and his talk waxed less disjointed.

“Yes,” he said presently, stroking the puppy’s head as it rested against his knee, “we’ve a tough row to hoe, you and I, Buff. Just as I told you. Since you’re so different from two-footed curs, that you’re willing to associate with a jail-bird, perhaps it’d amuse you to hear how I came to be one. Eh, Buff?”

At each repetition of his name, Buff wagged his tail in delight at hearing at least one word whose meaning he knew.

“Not to take up too much of your time, Buff,” proceeded Trent, trying to negotiate a rutted bit of road with one hand while with the other he sought to ease the bumping of the car for the dog, “here’s the main idea: I’d just got that farm of mine on a paying basis, and changed it from a liability to something like an asset, when the smash-up came. Just because I chose to play the fool. It was down at the Boone Lake store one night. I had walked into town for the mail. It was being sorted. And on the mail stage had come two biggish boxes of goods for Corney Fales. He’s the storekeeper and postmaster there, Buff.”

Again, at his name, Buff wagged his tail and thrust his cold nose into Trent’s free hand.

“The boxes were left on the store porch while Fales sorted the mail,” went on Trent. “It struck me it would be a corking joke to carry them out behind a clump of lilacs to one side of the store, where it was black dark that night. I hid them there for the fun of hearing old Fales swear when he found them gone. Well, he swore, good and plenty. And by the time he’d sworn himself out, I’d had about enough of the joke. And I was just going to tell him about it and help him carry the boxes back to the store, when a couple of chaps—that I’d ordered off my land the week before—stepped up and told him they’d seen me lug the boxes away in the dark. So I went out to the lilac clump to get the stuff and carry it back to Fales.

“And, Buff, the boxes weren’t there. They’d been stolen in dead earnest while I had been standing in the store laughing at Fales’s red-hot language. It had been a silly joke, at best, for a grown man to play, Buff.

“And, anyhow, nobody but a born fool ever plays practical jokes. Always remember that, Buff. But you know how a fellow will limber up sometimes after a lonely day’s work, and how he’ll do silly things. Well, that’s how it happened, Buff.

“Of course I owned up, and offered to pay the sixty dollars Fales said the goods were worth. But he wouldn’t have it that way. It seemed he’d been missing things for quite a while. And his pig-headed brain got full of the idea I had taken them all, and that I’d pretended it was a joke when I was caught at last. So he prosecuted. And the county attorney was looking for a record. And he got it, Buff. He sure got it.

“I was sent up for eighteen months. Just for being a fool. And perhaps I’m a fool to go back now and pick up life again in a place where everyone thinks I’m a thief. But that’s what I’m going to do, Buff. I’m going to win through. It’ll take a heap of time and a heap more nerve to do it. But—well, we’re headed for Boone Lake. The sooner we begin the fight the sooner we’ll win it.”

He paused, half ashamed of his babbling, yet half relieved at being able to speak out at last to some listener who did not greet the tale with a grin of incredulity. Buff snuggled the closer to him, and licked his clenched hand as the pain underlying the light speech struck upon the collie’s sensitive perceptions.

“Good little pal!” approved Trent, touched at the wordless sympathy and feeling somehow less desolate and miserable than he had felt for many a long month.

It was mid-afternoon when they drove through the edge of a rambling village and on for a mile or so to a lane that led into a neglected farm.

“This is home, Buff!” announced Trent, his eyes dwelling with sharp unhappiness upon the tumbledown aspect of the deserted place. “Home—including the mortgage that went on to it to pay for my lawyer. Did you notice how those village people stared at us, and how they nudged each other? Well, that’s just the first dose. A sort of sample package. Are you game to stand for the rest of it? I am, if you are.”

Running the battered car into a shed, Trent lifted Buff to the ground and set off towards the closed and forbidding house. Buff capered on ahead of him, trotting back at every ten paces to make sure his master was following.

Trent paused for a moment in the dooryard, to grope in his pocket for a key. Buff had gained the summit of the low veranda. As Trent halted, the pup took advantage of the delay to rest his car-cramped muscles by stretching out at full length on the narrow strip of porch. Trent took a step forward, then stopped again; this time to stare in bewildered surprise at the collie. For he noted that Buff was lying like a couchant lion, so far as his forequarters were concerned, but that his hind-legs were both stretched out straight behind him.

Now, as Trent’s dog-lore told him, that is a position in which no collie lies. Nor does any dog lie with his hind legs out behind him, unless he has in his make-up a strong admixture of bulldog blood. Yet, Trent’s dog-knowledge also told him that this was apparently a pure-bred collie; perfect in every point. Wherefore, he stared in wonder at the phenomenon of Buff’s position.

Then, giving up the problem, he advanced into the house. Buff, springing up at once, followed Trent inquisitively through the doorway, as the key turned noiselessly in the lock and the front door swung open under the pressure of the man’s knee. Out gushed the musty odour that haunts unused country houses. It filled Trent’s nostrils and deepened his sense of desolation. But, mingled with the smell of emptiness and disuse, another and more definite scent assailed Trent’s nose. It was the reek of tobacco—of rank pipe tobacco, at that. Nor was it stale.

At the whiff of it Trent stiffened like a pointing dog. His lips had been parted in a careless word to Buff. Now he choked back the unborn syllables.

Treading on tiptoe, he made his way from room to room. Buff, sensing the other’s efforts at silence, padded quietly at his heels. As they moved along, Trent paused from time to time, to sniff the heavy air.

Presently he flung open a door, with no caution