whatever, and sprang into a room beyond. It was the kitchen he entered in this whirlwind fashion. And he saw, as his nose had told him, that it was already occupied. A mattress had been hauled hither from one of the bedrooms. Sprawled thereon were two men. One of them was snoring, the other was puffing at a clay pipe.

On the floor beside them lay a full sack. Piled in a corner of the room was a heterogeneous stack of household articles—a clock, a silver candlestick, three gilt picture-frames, a plated soup-tureen, some spoons, and similar loot. Trent had scarce time to note these facts and a heap of empty bottles in another corner, before the smoker had dropped his pipe with a grunt and sprung scramblingly to his feet. The sleeping man, roused by his companion’s noise, sat up and blinked.

“H’m!” mused Trent, as the two stared owlishly at him. “I see. You boys didn’t reckon on my time off for good behaviour, eh? Thought I wasn’t due home for another month or so; and in the meantime this was a dandy place to hide in and to keep the stuff you steal? Clever lads! H’m!”

The two still blinked dully at him. Evidently their density was intensified by the contents of some of the empty bottles lying near the mattress.

“I’m beginning to understand things,” pursued Trent evenly. “You two testified you saw me take away those boxes from Fales’ store. I went to prison on your testimony. You had lived hereabouts all your lives, and there was nothing known against either of you. So your word was good enough to send me up—while you pinched the boxes, and plenty of other things. Since then“—with a glance at the plunder—“you seem to have gone into the business pretty extensively. And you picked the safest place to keep it in. Now, suppose you both——”

He got no further. By tacit consent, the two lurched to their feet and flung themselves upon him.

But, careless as had been his pose and his tone, Trent had not been napping. Even as he spoke, he realised what a stroke of cleverness it would be for the men to overpower him and to claim that they had found him in his own house surrounded by these stolen goods. It would be so easy a way to fix the blame of such recent robberies as had scourged Boone Lake on some unknown accomplice of Trent’s! The craft that had once made them take advantage of his joke on Fales would readily serve them again.

But as they flung themselves on Trent, he was no longer there. In fact, he was nowhere in particular. Also he was everywhere. Agile as a lynx, he was springing aside from their clumsy rush, then dashing in and striking with all his whalebone strength; dodging, blocking, eluding, attacking; all in the same dazzlingly swift set of motions. It was a pretty sight.

A prolonged carouse on raw whisky is not the best training for body or for mind in an impromptu fight. And the two trespassers speedily discovered this. Their man was all over them, yet ever out of reach. Too stupidly besotted to use teamwork, they impeded rather than reinforced each other. Up and down the broad kitchen raged the trio.

Then, ducking a wild swing, Trent darted in and uppercut one of his antagonists. The man’s own momentum, in the swing, added fifty per cent. to the impetus of Trent’s blow. Trent’s left fist caught his enemy flush on the jaw-point. The man’s knees turned to tallow. He slumped to the floor in a huddled heap.

Not so much as waiting to note the effect of his uppercut, Trent was at the other thief; rushing him off his feet and across the room with a lightning series of short-arm blows that crashed through the awkward defence and landed thuddingly on heart and wind. In another few seconds the fight must have ended—and ended with a second clean knock-out—had not one of Trent’s dancing toes chanced to light on a smear of bacon fat on the smooth floor.

Up went both of his feet. He struck ground on the back of his head, after the manner of a novice skater. And, half stunned, he strove to rise. But the impact had, for the moment, knocked the speed and the vigour out of him. Before he could stagger half-way to his feet his opponent had taken dizzy advantage of the slip. Snatching up one of the big bottles by the neck, the thief swung it aloft, measuring with his eye the distance and force needful to a blow over the head of the reeling and dazed Trent.

Then the blow fell. But it did not fall upon Trent. It missed him by an inch or more, and the bottle smashed into many pieces on the boards. This through no awkwardness of the assailant, but because a new warrior had entered the fray.

A flash of gold and white spun through the air, as the bottle was brandished aloft; and a double set of white teeth buried themselves in the striking arm.

Buff, from the doorway, had been watching the battle with quivering excitement. In his brief life he had never before seen prolonged strife among humans. And he did not understand it. To him it seemed these men must be romping, as he and the other inmates of the puppy run had been wont to romp. And he watched the wild performance in breathless interest.

But, all at once, his master was down. And, above him, his foe was brandishing something. Thus menacingly had been raised the farm-hand’s arm when Buff was struck. Surely this was not a romp! His master was threatened. And into the fight gallant young Buff hurled himself—attacking the arm that menaced the quiet-voiced man he was learning to adore.

Just below the elbow he found his grip. Deep drove the sharp white teeth; not slashing, collie fashion, but with the grim holding power that had won a score of battles for old Upstreet Butcherboy. On the swung canvas strip, a hundred of his bull-terrier ancestors had been made to strengthen the crushingly powerful jaw muscles they had bequeathed to Buff.

The pup’s forty pounds of squirming weight deflected the blow’s aim, and saved Trent’s skull from certain fracture.

The thief, in pain and terror, tore at the clinging furry body in frantic rage. But the bulldog jaws were locked, and the fearless collie spirit refused to unlock them at the yells and the hammerings of the panic-stricken thief.

All this for the merest second. Then, still dizzy, but himself again, Trent was up and at his foe.

The rest was conquest.

Hampered by the ferocious beast that clung to his right arm—weak from pain and exertion—the man was ridiculously easy to overcome.

“You’ve won your welcome, Buff, old chum!” panted Trent, as he trussed up his prisoners, before marching them to the village. “And you’ve saved a life I don’t value overmuch. But you’ve done a lot more. You’ve let me clear myself of the other charge. These men will have to talk when the police sweat them. And that will make life worth while for me again. Yes, you’ve paid your way, all right! Something tells me you and I are going to be the best pals ever. But—where in blue blazes did a thoroughbred collie ever pick up that bulldog grip?”

CHAPTER TWO: “THE HUNT IS UP!”

MICHAEL TRENT stood knee-deep in a grey-white drift that eddied and surged about him in tumultuous, soft waves, almost threatening to engulf him.

The grey-white drift filled the tiny field in whose centre Trent was standing. Its ragged edges were spilling in irregular driblets into the adjoining fields and the road, scattering thence athwart the nearer countryside.

To descend to bare fact, Michael Trent was in the middle of a milling and unruly flock of merino