galloping new mate.

When Shawe, late in January, followed the kennelman into the corner of a disused stall and stared down at Nina, his face was creased in a frown of disgust.

There, deep in a pile of bedding, lay the big young cross-bred dog. She looked up at the visitors with a welcoming glint of her round brown eyes and a thumping wag of her bushy tail. She was happy at their notice. She was inordinately proud of what they had come to see.

Snuggled close against her side squirmed seven puppies. They were three days old. A more motley collection could not have been found in dogdom.

Two were short-haired and bullet-headed, and were white except for a brindle spot or two on head and hip. Throwbacks, these, to their warlike grandsire, Upstreet Butcherboy. Three more were intermediate of aspect, and might or might not be going to have long coats. A sixth was enough like a thoroughbred collie to have passed muster in almost any newborn collie litter.

Over this harlequin sextette Shawe’s contemptuous glance strayed. Then his gaze focused on the seventh pup. And the frown was merged into a look of blank incredulity.

The pup was lying an inch or two away from his dam, and several inches from the huddle of brothers and sisters. Every line of him was clearly visible and distinct from the rest.

To a layman, he looked like any three-day-old collie. To Shawe he did not. Any collie expert will tell you that at the age of three days a pup gives far truer promise of his future appearance—to the trained eye—than he gives at three months. To the man who knows, there is a look—to the head, especially—that foreshadows the lines of maturity.

Later, all this foreshadowing vanishes. At two or three months it is next to impossible to predict what the pup is going to turn into. But in that one brief phase of babyhood the future often is writ clear.

Shawe noticed the coffin-shaped skull, the square muzzle, the full foreface, the set of the tiny ears, the general conformation. Unbelieving, he stared. He picked up the wiggling morsel of fur and flesh and looked more closely at those prophetic head-lines.

“Good Lord!” he mumbled, bewildered, “why,—why, that’s a—a dog! He’s the living image of what King was, at three days. And I picked out King for a great collie when he was this youngster’s age. I’ve never known it to fail. Never, up to now. What’s this measly mongrel doing with the head and build of a winner?”

“Well,” ruminated the kennelman, “we know he’s three-quarter bred, don’t we? King’s his sire. And Shawemere Queen was his dam’s mother. Best blood anywhere in colliedom, ain’t it? And it had to come out, somewheres, didn’t it? Cross-breeding ain’t like mixing feed. You don’t get the same mixture, every measureful you dip out. Some is all one kind and some is all another, and some ain’t neither. Look at them two white fellows! They’re straight bull-pup. (Wherever they got it!) Not a trace of collie to ’em. It’s got to be av’raged up, somewheres. And it’s av’raged up in that little cuss you’re holding there. He’s all collie. Just like the two whitish ones is all bull. It’s——”

“I’ve—I’ve heard of such cases,” muttered Shawe wonderingly, as he laid the tiny pup back at the mother’s side. “But—oh, he’ll most likely develop a body that’ll give him away! Or else the head won’t live up to its promise. Well, leave him, anyhow, when you drown the rest. That can’t do any harm.”

Sheepishly, he gave the order. Still more sheepishly, as he left the stall, he stooped and patted Nina’s lovingly upraised head—the first caress he had ever wasted on the lonely cross-breed.

Thus it was that a great dog was born; and that his promise of greatness was discovered barely in time to save him from death in earliest babyhood. For the collie—or near-collie—pup was destined to greatness, both of body and of brain.

Shawe named him “Buff.” This, of course, without the honorary prefix of the kennel name, “Shawemere.” For Buff could never be registered. His spotty pedigree could never be certified. He could claim no line in the American Kennel Club’s Studbook. He was without recognised lineage; without the right to wear a number after his name.

A dog, to be registered, must come of registered parents. These parents, in turn, must come of registered stock; since no dog, ordinarily, is eligible to registration unless both his sire and dam have been registered. That means his race must have been pure and his blood of unmingled azure since the beginning of his breed’s recognition by the studbooks.

Buff’s sire could have traced his genealogy back, in an unbroken line, for centuries. King’s nearer ancestors had been the peerless noblemen of dogdom. Nina’s sire and dam—though of widely different stock—were born to the purple. Despite all this, their descendant was a mongrel, and barred by kennel law from any bench show.

The nameless pup grew to beautiful doghood. To all outward appearance, he was a pure-bred collie of the very highest type. The head was classic in its perfection. The body had the long, wolf-like lines of the true collie. The coat was a marvel. The chest was deep and broad, the body powerfully graceful. No collie judge, unhung, could have detected the bar-sinister.

The mind and the soul and the heart, too, were of the true collie sort. But, blended with the fiery gaiety and dash of his predominant breed, ran unseen the steadfastness, the calm, the grimness, the stark warrior spirit of the pit-bull terrier.

This same strain ran, equally unseen, through the physique as well; giving un-collielike staunchness and iron strength and endurance to the graceful frame; imparting an added depth of chest, a gripping and rending quality to the jaw muscles; a mystic battling genius to body and to spirit.

Yes, old Upstreet Butcherboy was present in this collie grandson of his. So were a hundred mighty bull-terrier ancestors. It was a strange blend. Yet it was a blend; not a mixture. Nature, for once, had been kind, and had sought to atone for the cruel joke she had played in the making of poor, neglected Nina.

The first half year or more of Buff’s life passed pleasantly enough at Shawemere. At the age of three months he was moved from the stables and put in one of the puppy runs. Nina was miserable at her baby’s abduction. Whenever she was loose she would rush up to the puppy-runs and canter whimperingly around their wire boundaries, seeking to attract her little son’s attention.

And always, at first sight or sound or scent of her, Buff would leave his fellow pups and come hurrying to the wire to greet her. Through the wide meshes their noses would meet in a sniffing kiss; and with wagging tails they would stand in apparent converse for minutes at a time. It was a pretty sight, this greeting and talk between the young aristocrat and his mongrel mother. But, at Shawemere, dogs were bred for points and for sale; not for sentiment.

At first, Buff was wretchedly lonely for Nina. In the daytime it was not so bad. For there was much to amuse and excite him in the populous puppy-run. But at night, when the rest were asleep, he missed his mother’s warm fur and her loving companionship. To some extent, this homesickness for her wore off. But never entirely. Always Buff sought means to get back to her. And their frequent meetings, on opposite sides of the wire meshes, kept the impulse alive in his heart.

The run contained a nine-pup litter, a couple of months older than little Buff. The biggest pup