Jan: A Dog and a Romance

JAN'S FIRST FIGHT

Dick Vaughan was away from home a good deal during the next few weeks, and Jan and Finn often missed him, for his frequent visits to Nuthill had been full of interest for them. It may be, too, that Jan's mistress missed Dick Vaughan; but according to the Master, the young man was well employed and by no means wasting his time. And Jan did have at least one useful lesson in the week following Betty's accident on the Downs; and it was a lesson which he never entirely forgot.

Jan was busily doing nothing in particular—"mucking about" as the school-boys elegantly put it—in the little lane which forms a right-of-way across the Downs, between the Nuthill orchard and the westernmost of the Upcroft fields. Betty Murdoch was still nursing her ankle; and, fast asleep in the hall beside her couch, Finn, the wolfhound, was dreaming of a great kangaroo-hunt in which he and the dingo bitch Warrigal were engaged in replenishing their Mount Desolation larder. Suddenly Jan looked up, sniffing, from his idle play, and saw against the sky-line, where the narrow lane rises sharply toward the Downs, a gray-clad man in gaiters, with a long ash staff in his hand and a big sheep-dog of sorts, descending together from the heights.

The man was David Crumplin, the sheep-dealer, and the dog was Grip, whose reputation, all unknown though it was to Jan, reached from the Romney marshes to the Solent; even as his sire's had carried weight from York to the Border. Grip's dam, so the story went, had been a gipsy's lurcher with Airedale blood in her. If so, his size and weight were rather surprising; but his militant disposition may, to some extent, have been explained. At all events, there was no sheep-dog of experience between Winchelsea and Lewes who would have dreamed of treating Grip with anything save the most careful respect and deference, since, while hardly to be called either quarrelsome or aggressive, he was a noted killer, a most formidable fighter when roused. He was also a past-master in the driving of sheep, his coat was of the density of several door-mats, and he had china-blue eyes with plenty of fire in them, but no tenderness.

These things would, of course, have been ample in the shape of credentials and introduction for any dog of ripe experience. For puppy Jan (despite his hundred pounds of weight) they all went for nothing at all. His salutation was a joyous, if slightly cracked, bark; a sort of—

"Hullo! a stranger! Come on! What larks!"

And he went prancing like a rocking-horse up the lane to meet Grip, prepared to make a new friend, to romp, or do any other kind of thing that was not serious. But, as it happened, the dour Grip was far more than usually serious that morning. By over-severity in driving he had lost a lamb that day in rounding up a flock across the Downs. The little beast had slipped, under the pressure of the drive, and broken both fore legs at the bottom of a deep pit. Grip had not made three such blunders in his life, and the lambasting he had received for this one had bruised every bone in his body. But for all this, he might have shown a shade more tolerance toward Jan, since ninety-nine dogs in a hundred, even among the fighters, will show patience and good humor where puppies are concerned.

Jan's actual greeting of the sheep-dog was exceedingly clumsy and awkward.

"Hullo, old hayseed!" he seemed to say as he bumped awkwardly into Grip's right shoulder. "Come and have a game!"

That shoulder ought to have warned him. Its wiry mat of coat stood out like quills upon the fretful porcupine. But the rollicking, galumphing Jan was just then impervious to any such comparatively subtle indication as this.

Grip spake no single word; but his wall-eyes flashed white firelight and his long jaws snapped like a spring trap as Jan rebounded from the bump against his buttress of a shoulder. When those same steel jaws parted again, as they did a moment later, an appreciable piece of Jan's left ear fell from them to the ground. Jan let out a cry, an exclamation of mingled anger, pain, bewilderment, and wrath. He turned, leaning forward, as though to ask the meaning of this outrage. On the instant, and again without a sound, the white-toothed trap opened and closed once more; this time leaving a bloody groove all down the black-and-gray side of Jan's left shoulder.

At that point the sheep-dealer spoke, just a little too late.

"Get out o' that!" he said, with a thrust of his staff at Jan. And—"Come in here, Grip," he added to his own dog. But his orders came too late.

For his part, Jan had lost blood and realized that he was attacked in fierce earnest. As for Grip, he had tasted blood, and found it as balm to his aching ribs. This big blundering black-and-gray thing was no sheep, at all events. Then let it keep away from him, or take the consequences. Life was no game for Grip; but rather a serious routine of work, of fighting to kill, of getting food, of resting when he might, and of avoiding his master's ashen staff. Nothing could be more different from Jan's gaily irresponsible and joyously immature conception of life.

However, Jan was in earnest now; more so than he had ever been since, more than five months earlier, he had flung his gristly bulk upon the vixen fox who slew his sister in the cave. Some breath he wasted in a second cry—all challenge and fury, and no questioning wonder this time—and then, like a Clydesdale colt attacking a leopard, he flung himself upon the sheep-dog, roaring and grappling for a hold. It seemed that Grip was made of steel springs and india-rubber. The shock of Jan's assault was doubtless something of a blow; for Jan weighed more than the sheep-dog; but he tossed it from him with a twist of his densely clad shoulders, and again as the youngster blundered past him he took toll (this time of the loose skin on the right side of the hound's neck) in his precisely worked jaws.

All unlearned though he was in these wolf-like (or any other) fighting tactics, Jan presented an imposing picture of rampant fury as he wheeled again to face his calmly resourceful enemy. David Crumplin had now recognized the young hound as an animal of value and consequence in the world, and in all sincerity was doing his best to separate the pair. But the fight had gone too far now for verbal remonstrances to have any effect, even with disciplined Grip; and as for Jan, he was merely unconscious, alike in the matter of David's adjurations and the thrusts and thwacks of his stave.

In the pages of a correctly conceived romance, one man (providing, of course, that he is a hero) is always able without much difficulty to separate two fighting dogs, even though he be innocent of doggy lore and attired blamelessly, as judged by the illustrator's standards for walking out with the heroine. But in real life the thing is somehow different. Not only are two pairs of strong hands needed, but it is necessary that the possessors of those hands should approach the fray from opposite sides, and be nimble and strong enough to get clear away, one from the other, when each pair has grabbed its dog. No single pair of hands can manage it in the case of big dogs, and a man's feet are not far enough removed from his hands to make them an adequate substitute for a second pair of hands.

David Crumplin, having speedily given up persuasion, yelled for help, and cursed and swore vehemently at the dogs, banging and thrusting at each in turn, without prejudice and without effect. Much they cared for his curses, or his ashen staff. Jan was bleeding now from half a dozen gaping wounds; and Grip, the famous killer, was in an icy fury of wrath, for the reason that this blundering young elephant of a puppy was actually pressing and hurting him—the best feared dog in that countryside. For, be it said, Jan learned with surprising quickness. He could not acquire in a minute or in a month the sort of fighting craft that made Grip terrible; but he did learn in one minute that he could not afford to repeat the blundering rushes which had lost him his first blood.

At first he strove hard to bowl the sheep-dog over by sheer weight and strength. Then he struggled bravely to get his teeth through Grip's coat of mail at the neck. And if all the time he was getting punishment, he also was getting learning; as was proved by the fact that immediately after his own third wound he tore one of Grip's ears in sunder, and, a minute later, got home on the sheep-dog's right fore leg (where the coat of mail was thin) with a bite which would surely mean a week of limping for Grip. It was this last thrust that placed Grip definitely outside his master's reach, by fanning into white flame the smoldering fire of his nature. Indeed, for a minute or two it even made the sheep-dog forgetful of his cunning, so angry was he; with the result that he lost a section from his sound ear and came near to being overturned by the impetuosity of Jan's onslaught.

And then suddenly the sheep-dog completely changed, as though by magic. His flame died down to still, white fire; his jaws ceased to clash; his ferocious snarl died away into deadly silence; he crouched like a lynx at bay. At that moment Jan's number was very nearly up, for Grip had coldly determined to kill. He had practically ceased fighting. He was merely sparring defensively now, with bloody murder in his blue eyes, watching grimly for his opening—the opening through which he was wont to end his serious fights, the opening which would yield him the death-hold.

Jan, who knew naught of death-holds, and was at this moment blind to every consideration in life save that of combat, would assuredly yield the fatal opening within a very few seconds; and that being so, it was a small matter to Grip that in the mean time the youngster should rob him of a little fur and blood and skin. No orders, no suasion, could touch Grip now; neither could any form of attack move his anger. He was about to kill; and, for him, that fact filled the universe.

At last the moment arrived. When the breath was out of Jan's body after a missed rush, he stumbled badly in wheeling, and almost choked as the spume of blood and froth and fur flew from his aching jaws. At that psychological moment Grip, balanced to the perfection of a hair-spring, and calmly calculating, leaped upon him from the side, and brought the youngster's four feet into the air at one time. That was the opening, and, in the same second, Grip's jaws sprang apart to profit by it and to inclose Jan's throat in a final and sufficing hold.

And then, as a medieval observer might have said, the heavens opened and a whirling vision of gray-clad muscle and gleaming fangs descended from the high hedge-top, landing fairly and squarely athwart Grip's back. For a moment the sheep-dog sprawled, paralyzed by this inexplicable event. In that moment his last chance was lost. The new arrival had whirled his huge body clear and gripped the sheep-dog's neck in jaws longer and more powerful than those of any other dog in Sussex. Grip weighed close upon ninety pounds; but he was shaken and battered now from side to side, very much as a rat is shaken by a terrier. And, finally, with one tremendous lift of the greatest neck the hound world has known, Grip was flung clear to the far side of the lane, at the very feet of his master, who promptly grabbed him by the collar and, as though to complete Finn's prescription, hammered him repeatedly upon the nose with his clenched fist.

"I'll larn'ee to answer me—by cripes, I will!" quoth David.

By this time the sorely trounced Jan was on his feet and Finn had begun to lick his son's streaming ears. From the inside of the high hedge came hurrying footsteps; and in another moment the Master appeared at the white gate, twenty paces lower down the lane. David Crumplin was offered the hospitality of the scullery for the examination of his dog, but preferred to get Grip away with him after an admission that—

"Your puppy there will do some killin' in his day, sir, if he lives to see it. But as for this other fellow"—pointing to Finn—"he could down any dog this side o' Gretna Green, an' you can say as I said so. I know most of 'em."

That was how Jan learned his first big lesson, and the good of it never left him, and often saved his life; just as surely as his father's great speed and strength saved it on this morning, in the very breathless nick of time when his throat had been bared to the knife that was between Grip's killing jaws.

In the beginning of Jan's first fight Finn had been dreaming of a hunt in the Australian bush. Once or twice, as David Crumplin cursed and ranted in the lane, Finn's dark ears had twitched as though in semi-consciousness of the trouble. Later, as Jan had snarlingly roared in his fourth or fifth attack, his sire's brown eyes had opened wide and he had lain a moment with ears pricked and head well up, at Betty's feet. And then with a long, formidable growl he had leaped for the porch. Half a dozen great bounds took him through the garden. A leap which hardly broke his stride carried him across the iron fence into the orchard, and a score of strides from there brought him to the hedge-side. The hedge was six feet high here. In the lane, which lay low, it was ten feet high. There was a gate twenty yards away. Finn scorned this and went soaring through the bramble-ends at the top of the hedge, and thence, a bolt of fire from the blue, to Grip's shoulders.

There was that in Finn's preliminary growl which told Betty serious things were toward. She dared not try to walk; but she shouted to the Master, and he very speedily was in the orchard upon Finn's trail.

A Fellow of the Royal Society, with a score of letters after his name and a reputation in two hemispheres, stitched the worst of Jan's wounds that morning, on the couch in the Master's study. Even Dr. Vaughan could not replace the missing section of Jan's right ear; but, short of that, he made a most masterly job of the repairs. And all the while wise, gray old Finn sat erect on his haunches beside the writing-table, looking on approvingly, and reflecting, no doubt, upon the prowess of the youngster who had caused all this pother.

GOOD-BY TO DICK

On a day in February, Dr. Vaughan and his son Dick ate their dinner at Nuthill, and spent most of the evening there, around the hall fire. On the flanks of the big recessed fireplace, one on either side, Finn and Jan lay stretched, dozing happily. Jan's wounds were long since healed now, and the rapid growth of his thick coat had already gone far toward hiding the scars, though it could not quite mask the fact that a piece of his right ear was missing. Jan was more than eight months old now, and scaled just over a hundred and twenty pounds.

Late in the evening Dick Vaughan (who had honorably held to his pact with the Master where Betty Murdoch was concerned) had a little chat with Jan, whose ears he pulled affectionately, while the youngster sat with muzzle resting on Dick's knee.

"Don't much like saying good-by to you, Jan, boy," said Dick Vaughan.

"Ah, well, there need not be any good-bys to-night, Dick," said the Master. "We'll all be at the station in the morning, Finn and Jan as well."

"Ha! that's good of you," said Dick. "But you'll never let that youngster run five miles behind a carriage, will you? Isn't he too gristly in the legs yet, for the weight he carries?"

The Master smiled. "Trust me for that, Dick. I've reared too many big wolfhound pups to make that mistake. A few such road trips as that, and Master Jan would never again show a real gun-barrel fore leg. Why, he weighs a hundred and twenty pounds! No; old Finn will lope alongside of us, but Master Jan can have a seat inside. I have seen some of the best and biggest hounds ever bred spoiled for life by being allowed to follow horses on the road in their first year. There was Donovan, by Champion Kerry, you know. He might have beaten Finn, I believe, if they hadn't ruined him in his sixth month, trying to harden his feet behind a dog-cart on the great north road. The result was, when he was shown at the Palace in his eleventh month, his fore legs had gone for ever—like a dachshund's."

"Ah! When I get back," said Dick, musingly, you'll be pretty nearly a two-year-old, Jan, boy."

"And if all goes well, he will be as strong a hound as any in England; won't he, Betty? You'll see to that."

"I will if you'll help to keep us going the right way," said Betty, smiling at the Master.

And so, directly after an early breakfast, the Nuthill party drove to the station, with Jan on the floor of the wagonette and Finn pacing easily beside it. There was quite an assembly on the platform of the little station to see "young Mr. Vaughan" off. For he was bound for Liverpool that day, where he was to meet Captain Will Arnutt, of the Royal North-west Mounted Police of Canada, with whom he was to embark for Halifax, en route for Regina, in Saskatchewan, the headquarters of the R.N.W.M.P., for which fine service Dick Vaughan had enlisted, after a stiff course of training under Captain Arnutt's personal supervision.

"Between ourselves," the captain had told the Master, in Lewes, a week or two earlier, "neither I nor the Royal North-west have much to teach young Vaughan in the matter of horsemanship, and I look to see him make as fine a trooper as any we've got. But there's one thing we can give him, and that's discipline. We can teach him to face the devil himself at two o'clock in the morning without blinking—and I think he'll take it well. I don't mind a scrap about his having been a bit wild. He's got the right stuff in him; and, man, he's got as pretty a punch, with the gloves on, as ever I saw in my life. An archangel couldn't make better use of his left than young Vaughan."

This rather tickled the Master, who up till then had never considered archangelic possibilities in boxing.

"I was certain the boy was all right," he said.

There was a rousing cheer from the group on the platform as the up-train moved off, with Dick Vaughan leaning far out from one of its windows.

"I'll be home in eighteen months," Dick had said when he bade Betty Murdoch good-by. And the Master, who was beside her, nodded his sympathy and approval.

"You'll lose nothing by the five-thousand-mile gap, old chap, and you'll gain a whole lot," he said.

"You'll larn 'em about 'osses, Master Dick," shouted old Knight, the head groom, to the M.F.H. And the farmers' sons roared lustily at that. Jan barked once as the train began to move, and the Master's hand fell sharply over Betty's upon his collar; for Jan, though not yet half so strong as his sire, was a deal harder to hold when anything excited him. Like his friend Dick Vaughan, he was of good stuff, but had not as yet learned much of discipline.

As the Nuthill party walked down the station approach to their wagonette, among quite a crowd of other people, Betty felt Jan's collar suddenly tighten—his height, even now, allowed her to hold the young hound's collar easily without using a lead, for he stood over thirty-one inches at the shoulder—and, glancing down, saw the hair all about his neck and shoulder-bones rise, stiffly bristling. In the same moment came a low growl from Finn, who walked at large on the far side of Jan and a little behind the Master. There was no anger in this growl of Finn's; but it was eloquent of warning, and magisterial in its hint of penalties to follow neglect of warning.

"Why, what's wrong now, old—Ah! I see!" exclaimed the Master.

On the opposite side of the approach was David Crumplin, walking toward the goods-shed of the little station, and followed closely by the redoubtable Grip. Grip's hackles were well up, too, for the three dogs had seen one another before their human friends had noticed anything out of the ordinary. But though Grip's bristles had risen just as stiffly as Jan's, and though the sensitive skin over his nostrils had wrinkled harshly and his upper lip lifted slightly, the gaze of his wall-eyes was fixed straight before him upon his master's gaiters. He saw Finn and Jan just as plainly as they saw him, but he never turned a hair's-breadth in their direction, or betrayed his recognition by a single glance.

Grip was no swashbuckler, and he never played. Life, as he saw it, was too serious a business for that. But and if fighting was toward, well, Grip was ready; not eager, but deadly ready, and nothing backward. Grip had his black cap either in place on his head or very close at hand all the time. It was doubtless with a sufficiently sardonic sneer that he presently saw Jan jump obediently into the wagonette. Grip had seen to the carting of thousands of lambs and sick ewes; but for himself to climb into a horse-drawn vehicle at the bidding of a lady!—one can imagine how scornfully Grip breathed through his nostrils as he saw Jan driven off, with Finn, as escort, trotting alongside.

He bore no particular malice against Jan, and in his hard old heart probably thought rather well of the bellicose youngster. But, given reasonable excuse for the fray, he had been blithe to tear out the same youngster's jugular; and, be the odds what they might, he would quite cheerfully have stood up to mortal combat with Finn himself. But as things were, the first meeting of these three since the fight in the lane passed off quite peacefully.

All the same, there was a ragged fringe to one of Grip's ears, and for weeks he had limped sorely on his near fore leg. It was written in his mind that Jan must pay, and pay dearly, for those things, when a suitable occasion offered. He was no swashbuckler, and did not know what it meant to ruffle it among the peaceably inclined for the fun of the thing; but, or it may be because of that, Grip never forgot an injury, and, if he had known what forgiveness meant, would have regarded it as an evidence of silly weakness unworthy any grown dog.

It is certain that Finn bore Grip no malice. That was not his way. Grip had offended by his ruthless onslaught upon a half-grown pup, and Finn had trounced him soundly for that. Now that they met, some months afterward, Finn thought it wise to give warning, by way of showing that he, in his high place, was watchful. Hence his long, low growl. In his adventurous life Finn had many times killed to eat, as he had frequently killed in fighting and as an administrator of justice. But he never had borne malice and never would, for that would have been clean contrary to the instincts of his nature and breeding.

As for Jan, it would not be easy nor yet quite fair to analyze his feelings toward the wall-eyed sheep-dog. Jan's mind, like his big frame, was not yet half developed. It may be that he could never be quite so fine a gentleman as his sire; and in any case it were foolish to look for old heads on puppy shoulders. He did not think at all when he saw Grip. But in that instant he tugged at his collar, without conscious volition, just as his hackles rose, just as sharp consciousness penetrated every part of him, of the wounds he had sustained under Grip's punishing jaws. It was not malice, but a sudden heady rush in his veins of the lust of combat, that kept his thick coat so erectly bristling, the soft skin about his nostrils wrinkling so actively, for several minutes after his recognition of the sheep-dog. Unlike Grip, it might be that Jan would, as he developed, learn easily to forgive; but it was already tolerably obvious that he was not of the stuff of which those dogs who forget are made.

"They don't forget the affair in the lane, either of them," said the Master, with a smile, after the wagonette had started. It may be Jan understood the words had reference to his first fight. In any case, he looked eagerly up into the Master's face, and from that to Betty's; and in that moment he was living over again through the strenuous rounds of his struggle with Grip.

"Silly old Jan," said Betty, as her hand smoothed his head affectionately.

"Truculent infant," laughed the Master. "Take note of the easy sedateness of your father in the road there." (The round trot of the Nuthill horses—and they frequently did the trip to the station in twenty-five minutes—was no more than a comfortable amble for Finn.)

"Jan," said Betty Murdoch to her favorite, as they walked together on the Downs some three or four hours later; "he's gone away to Sas-sas-katchewan; and—he never said a word, Jan! I wonder if he thought—what he thought."

If Jan had been human, he might so far have failed, as a companion, as to have reminded Betty that, in fact, Dick had said a good many words before starting for "Sas-sas-katchewan." Being only a dog, Jan failed not at all in the sympathy he exchanged for Betty's confidence. He just gently nuzzled her hand, thrusting his nose well up to her coat-cuff, and showed her the loving devotion in his dark hazel eyes.

JAN BEFORE THE JUDGES

Eighteen months went by before Dick Vaughan returned to England; and this period was one of happy and largely uneventful development for Jan, the son of Finn and Desdemona. (It brought high honors to the Lady Desdemona, by the way, both as a champion bloodhound and as the dam of some fame-winning youngsters.) It brought no very marked signs of advancing age to Finn, for the life the wolfhound led, while admittedly devoid of any kind of hardship, was sufficiently active in a moderate way, and very healthy. Jan made no history during this time, beyond the smooth record of happy days and healthy growth.

"Just for the fun of the thing," he was entered in the "variety" class at the Brighton dog-show, when twenty months old, and that was certainly a memorable experience for him. There were bloodhound men at the show who vowed he would have won a card in their section; and there were wolfhound breeders who said the same thing of Jan with reference to their particular division. Be that as it may, Finn's son won general admiration when led out into the judging ring with the other entrants of the "variety" class.

The judge was a specially great authority on bulldogs and terriers; but it was admitted that there was no better or fairer all-round dog judge in the show, and his experience in the past at hound field trials and such like events proved him qualified to judge of such an animal as Jan. Still, his special association with bulldogs and terriers was regarded as something of a handicap by the exhibitors of other kinds of dogs in this class, which, as it happened, was an unusually full one.

As Jan had never before been shown and was quite unaccustomed to being at close quarters with numbers of strange dogs, Betty asked the Master to take him into the ring for her. (Jan weighed one hundred and forty-eight pounds now, and a pretty strong arm was required for his restraint among strangers, the more so as he was quite unaccustomed to being led.) So Betty and the Mistress secured stools for themselves outside the ring and the Master led in Jan to a place among no fewer than twenty-seven other competitors, ranging all the way from a queer little hairless terrier from Brazil, to a huge, badly cow-hocked animal, of perhaps two hundred pounds in weight, said to combine St. Bernard and mastiff blood in his veins.

There was also an Arab hunting-dog, a slogi from Morocco, two boarhounds of sorts, some Polar dogs, several bulldogs and collies, and a considerable group of terrier varieties in one way or another exceptional. One of the bulldogs was a really magnificent creature of the famous Stone strain, whose only fault seemed to be a club-foot. There was also a satanic-looking creature of enormous stature; a great Dane, with very closely cropped prick ears, and a tail no more than five inches long. This gentleman was further distinguished by wearing a muzzle, and by the fact that his leader carried a venomous-looking whip. The lady with the hairless terrier was particularly careful to avoid the proximity of this rather ill-conditioned brute, and of the weedy-looking little man in a frock-coat who led him.

In the course of ten or fifteen minutes, during which the ring was uncomfortably crowded, the judge managed to reduce his field of selection down to a group of six, which did not include the crop-eared Dane or exclude Jan.

"Well, come," said the Mistress to Betty, "this does not look like prejudice against the larger breeds: Jan, and two other big dogs, with one bulldog and two terriers." Betty only nodded. She was too much excited on Jan's behalf for conversation; and her bright eyes missed no single movement in the ring. It was all very well to say that Jan was only shown "for the fun of the thing," and because "a one-day show is rather a joke, and not long enough to bore him." But from the moment her Jan had entered that ring with the Master, Betty knew that in all seriousness she badly wanted him to—well, if not to win outright, at all events to "get a card"; to come honorably through the ordeal.

The dogs now left in the ring were the Moorish hound—a creature full of feline grace and suppleness, with silky drop-over ears and a tufted tail—an exceptionally fine cross-bred collie, the Stone bulldog, a Dandie Dinmont, and a Welsh terrier, the last extraordinarily small, bright, shapely, and game. The slogi had apparently been most carefully trained for the ring. He entirely ignored the other dogs, stood erect on his hind feet at his master's word of command, jumped a chair with exquisite grace and agility, and in a variety of other ways exhibited both wonderful suppleness and remarkable docility. The collie was handsome, beautifully groomed, and rather snappish. The Stone bulldog made a picture of good-humored British stolidity, and if his hind quarters had been equal to his superbly massive front and marvelously "smashed-up" face he would have been tolerably sure of a win in any class. The Dandie Dinmont had the most delightful eyes imaginable, and was a good-bodied dog, faulty only in tail and in a tendency to be leggy. The Welshman was a little miracle of Celtic grace—the very incarnation of doggy sharpness.

The only member of this select company whose presence was really distasteful to Jan was the collie. This lady's temper was clearly very uncertain; she had a cold blue eye, and in some way she reminded Jan strongly of Grip, a fact which served to lift his hackles markedly every time he passed the bitch. The Master quickly noticed this, and did his best to keep a good wide patch of ring between them.

The six were each favored with a long and careful separate examination by the judge, upon a patch of floor space which, fortunately, was right opposite to Betty Murdoch's seat. Betty rustled her show catalogue to call Jan's attention when his turn came, and kept up direct telepathic communication with him during the whole operation. This, combined with the Master's studious care in handling—a business of which he had had considerable experience—served to keep Jan keyed up to concert-pitch while in the judge's hands.

When these individual examinations were ended, the collie and the Dandie were allowed to leave the ring. Their leaders creditably maintained the traditional air of being glad that was over, as they escorted their entries back to their respective benches; and then the judge settled down to further study of the bulldog, the Welshman, the Moor, and Jan.

Long time the judge pondered over the honest, beautifully ugly head of the bulldog, while that animal's leader did his well-meaning but quite futile best to distract attention from his charge's hind quarters. He would jam the dog well between his own legs, and with a brisk lift under the chest, endeavor to widen the dog's already splendid frontage. But, gaze as he might into Bully's wrinkled mask, the judge never for an instant lost consciousness of the weak hind quarters, the sidelong drag of the club-foot.

Very nippily the clever little Welshman went through his nimble paces, dancing to the wave of his master's handkerchief on toes as springily supple as those of any ballerina. For the admiration of the judge and his attendants, the Moorish hound performed miracles of sinuous agility. With the size of a deerhound the Moor combined the delicate graces of an Italian greyhound.

Jan offered no parlor tricks. Indeed, in these last minutes his young limbs wearied somewhat—the morning had been one of most exceptional stress and excitement for him—and while the other three were being passed in a final review, Jan lay down at full length on his belly in the ring, his muzzle outstretched upon his paws, neck slightly arched, crown high and nose very low—a pose he inherited from his distinguished mother, and in part, it may be, from his paternal grandam, old Tara, who loved to lie that way. The position was so beautiful, so characteristic, and so full of breeding that, rather to Betty's consternation, the Master refrained from disturbing it, unorthodox though such behavior might be in a judging ring. The Master nodded reassuringly to anxious Betty, and, after all, he knew even when the judge paced slowly forward, pencil in mouth, Jan was not disturbed.

"I suppose he's hardly done furnishing yet?" asked the judge.

"No, he still has, perhaps, half a year for that; four months, anyhow," replied the Master. "He is only twenty months, and weighs just on a hundred and fifty pounds."

"Does he indeed? A hundred and fifty. Now, I put him down as twenty pounds less than that."

"A tribute to his symmetry, sir," said the Master, with a smile.

"Ye—es, to be sure. May I see him on the scale?"

So Jan was carefully weighed by the judge himself, and scaled one hundred and forty-eight and one-half pounds. And then he was carefully measured for height—at the shoulder-bone—and touched the standard at a fraction over thirty-two and one-half inches.

"Re—markable," said the judge; "especially in the weight. He certainly is finely proportioned. Would you mind just running him across the ring as quickly as you can?"

The owners of the other three dogs wore during this time an expression of inhuman selflessness of superhumanly kind interest in Jan and his doings.

"It's a thousand pities he's so very coarse," murmured one disinterested admirer, the owner of the Welsh terrier. A moment later the Master had to hide a smile as he heard the owner of the bulldog whisper: "Nice beast. Pity he's so weedy. A little less on the fine side and one could back him as a winner."

To run well while on the lead is an accomplishment rare among large dogs, and one which demands careful training. So the Master took chances. He signaled Betty to call Jan to her, and then loosed Jan's lead. This was a signal of delight for Jan. He was tired of the judging now and thought this ended it. Not only did he canter very springily across the ring, but he cleared the four-foot barricade as though it had not been there and greeted Betty with effusion. A moment later, at her urgent behest, and in response to the Master's call, he returned as easily to the ring. Then the judge, thoughtfully tapping his note-book with his pencil, bowed to the exhibitors, and said:

"Thank you, gentlemen; I think that will do."

The order of the awards was:

which meant that the Welshman was highly commended—and deserved it—the Moor took third prize, the bulldog second prize, and Jan, the son of Finn and Desdemona, first prize. And so, in the only show-ring test to which he had been submitted, Jan did every credit to both the noble strains represented in his ancestry. Finn was never beaten. The Lady Desdemona had never lowered her flag to any bloodhound. Jan had passed his first test at the head of the list, among twenty-seven competitors, and despite his judge's special predilection for terriers and bulldogs.

"Wouldn't Dick Vaughan have been proud of him!" said the Master. And when Betty nodded her excited assent, he added: "I'll tell you what, we'll send him a cable."

And so it was that, a few hours later, a trooper in the Regina Barracks of the R.N.W.M. Police, five thousand miles away, read, with keen delight, this message:

FIT AS A TWO-YEAR-OLD

Outside the highly beneficial advantages of very healthy surroundings and a generous, well-chosen dietary, Jan's development during all this time was largely influenced by two factors—the constant companionship of Finn, and the fact that all the human folk with whom he came into contact, barring a largely negligible under-gardener, loved him.

His mistress, fortunately for Jan, was not alone a cheery, wise little woman, but also a confirmed lover of out of doors. But all the same, if it had not been for Finn's influence, Jan would probably have been somewhat lacking in hardihood, and too great a lover of comfort. The circumstances of his birth had all favored the development of alert hardiness; but his translation to the well-ordered Nuthill home had come at a very early stage. The influence of Finn, with his mastery of hunting and knowledge of wild life, formed a constant and most wholesome tonic in Jan's upbringing; a splendid corrective to the smooth comforts of Nuthill life.

From his memorable struggle in the lane with Grip, Jan had learned much regarding general deportment toward other dogs. Under Finn's influence, and his own inherited tracking powers, Jan became proficient as a hunter and confirmed as a sportsman. But experience had brought him none of those lessons which had given Finn his prudent reserve, his carefully non-committal attitude where human strangers were concerned.

For example, supposing Finn and Jan to be lying somewhere in the neighborhood of the porch at Nuthill when a strange man whom neither had ever seen before appeared in the garden, both dogs would immediately rise to their feet. Jan would probably give a jolly, welcoming sort of bark. Finn would make no sound. Jan would amble amiably forward, right up to the stranger's feet, with head upheld for a caress. Finn would sooner die than do anything of the sort. He would keep his ground, motionless, showing neither friendliness nor hostility; nothing but grave unwinking watchfulness. If that stranger should pass the threshold without knocking and without invitation from any member of the household, Finn might safely be relied upon to bark and to follow closely the man's every step. Jan would probably gambol about him with never a thought of suspicion.

If a tramp on the road carried a big stick, that fact would not deter Jan from trotting up to make the man's acquaintance, whereas Finn, without introduction, never went within reach of any stranger with any amiable intent. Again, if any person at all, with the exception of Betty, the Master, or the Mistress, approached Finn when he was in a recumbent position, he would invariably rise to his feet. Jan would loll at full length right across a footpath when he felt like taking his ease, even to the point of allowing people to step across his body. On the strength of a ten minutes' acquaintance he would go to sleep with his head under your foot, if it chanced that he was sleepy at the time.

Yet, for all his trustfulness, Jan probably growled a score of times or more for every one that Finn growled, and no doubt barked more often in a day than Finn barked in a month. Jan hunted with joyous bays; Finn in perfect silence. Jan trusted everybody and observed folk—when they interested him and he felt like observing. Finn, without necessarily mistrusting anybody, observed everybody watchfully and trusted only his proven friends. Jan, in his eagerness for praise and commendation, sought these from any one. Finn would not seek praise even from the Master, and was gratified by it only when it came from a real friend.

By the same token Finn was far more sensitive to spoken words than Jan. It was not once in three months that the Master so much as raised or sharpened his voice in speaking to Finn. If Finn were verbally reproached by a member of the household, one saw his head droop and his eyes cloud. Jan would wag his tail while being scolded, even vehemently, and five minutes later would require a second call, and in a sharp tone, before turning aside from an interesting scent or a twig in the path.

Withal, Jan's faults, such as they were, were no more seriously objectionable than the faults of a well-bred, high-spirited, good-hearted English school-boy. Finn's disposition was knightly; but it was the disposition of a tried and veteran knight and not of a dashing young gallant. Under his thick black-and-gray coat Jan did carry a few scars, so shrewdly had Grip's fangs done their work; but life had hardly marked him as yet; certainly he carried none of life's scars. Also, good and sound as his heart was, clean and straight though he was by nature, he never had that rare and delicate courtliness which so distinguished his sire among hounds. Even Desdemona, great lady that she undoubtedly was, had not the wolfhound's grave courtesy. Neither had Jan. He was more bluff. The bloodhound in him made him look solemn at times; but he was not naturally a grave person at all.

On the other hand, Jan was no longer a puppy. The hardening and furnishing process would continue to improve his physique till after the end of his second year; but he had definitely laid aside puppyhood in his eighteenth month and had a truly commanding presence. He was three inches lower at the shoulder than his sire—the tallest hound in England—yet looked as big a dog because built on slightly heavier lines. He had the wolfhound's fleetness, but with it much of the massy solidity of the bloodhound. His chest was immensely deep, his fore legs, haunches, and thighs enormously powerful. And the wrinkled massiveness of his head, like the breadth of his black saddle, gave him the appearance of great size, strength, and weight.

As a fact he scaled one hundred and sixty-four pounds on his second birthday, and that was eight pounds heavier than his sire; a notable thing in view of the fact that he was in no way gross and carried no soft fat, thanks to the many miles of downland he covered every day of his life in hunting with Finn and walking with Betty Murdoch.

Taking him for all in all, Jan was probably as finely conditioned and developed a hound as any in England when he reached his second birthday, and it is hardly likely that a stronger hound could have been found in all the world. It may be that for hardness and toughness and endurance he might have found his master without much difficulty; for hardship begets hardihood, and Jan had known no hardship as yet. But at the end of his second year he was a very splendid specimen of complete canine development, and, by reason of his breeding, easily to be distinguished from all other hounds.

And then, two months after that second birthday, Dick Vaughan came home on short furlough, a privilege which, as Captain Will Arnutt wrote to Dr. Vaughan, he had very thoroughly earned.

DISCIPLINE

Dick Vaughan's home-coming was something of an event for the district, as well as for Dr. Vaughan and the Upcroft household, and for Betty Murdoch and the Nuthill folk. He was a totally different person from the careless, casual, rather reckless Dick Vaughan who had left for Canada eighteen months before. Every one had liked the old Dick Vaughan who had disappeared; yet nobody now regretted the apparently final loss of him, and all were agreed in admiring the new Dick with more or less enthusiasm.

Already he had won promotion in the fine corps to which he belonged, and his scarlet uniform coat had a stripe on one sleeve. But this was a small matter —though Dr. Vaughan was prouder of it than of any of his own long list of learned degrees and other honors—by comparison with the other and unofficial promotion Dick had won in the scale of manhood. No uniform was needed to indicate this. One became aware of it the moment one set eyes upon him. It showed itself in the firm lines of his thin, tanned face, in the carriage of his shoulders, the swing of his walk, the direct, steady gaze of his eyes, and the firm, assured tone of his voice.

Always a sportsman and a good fellow, Dick Vaughan was now a full man, a man handled and made; a strong, disciplined man, decently modest, but perfectly conscious of his strength, and easily able to control other men. This was what Canada and membership of the Royal North-west Mounted Police had done for Dick Vaughan in a short eighteen months.

For young and healthy men there is perhaps no other country which has more to give than Canada in the shape of discipline; of that kind of mental, moral, and physical tonic which makes for swift, sure character-development, and the stiffening and bracing of the human fibers. In English life there has been of late years a rather serious scarcity of this tonic influence. Canada is very rich in her supply of it; but the tonic is too potent for the use of weaklings.

Then, too, there were the R.N.W.M.P. influences, representing a concentrated distillation of the same tonic. The traditions of this fine force form a great power for the shaping and making of men. First, they have a strongly testing and selective influence. They winnow out the weeds among those who come under their influence with quite extraordinary celerity and thoroughness. Those who come through the selective process satisfactorily may be relied upon as surely as the grain-buyer may rely on the grade of wheat which comes through its tests as "No. 1, hard." The trooper who comes honorably out of his first year in the R.N.W.M.P. is quite certainly "No. 1, hard," as much to be relied upon as any other single product of the prairies.

"It is not only that the man in any way weak is quite unable to stand the steady test of R.N.W.M.P. life. Apart from that, no blatherskite can endure it; no vain boaster, no aggressive bully, no slacker, and no humbug of any kind can possibly keep his end up in the force." So wrote a widely experienced and keen-witted "old-timer," in 1908, and he was perfectly right.

For example, the R.N.W.M.P. man who made an unnecessary use or display of weapons, by way of enforcing his authority, would be laughed and ridiculed out of the force. The thing has been done, and will be done again, if necessary. Aided only by the weight of the fine traditions belonging to his uniform, the R.N.W.M.P. man is expected to be capable, without any fuss at all, of arresting a couple of notorious toughs, and, with his naked hands, of taking them away with him from among the roughest sort of crowd of their associates.

And in the R.N.W.M.P., if a man does not show himself consistently capable of doing that which the traditions of the force say is to be expected of him, his place in the force will know him no more. There are no failures in the R.N.W.M.P.—they are not allowed. The force could not afford to allow them, because their existence—the existence of any of them—would weaken R.N.W.M.P. prestige; and that prestige is the armor without which the work of the force would be utterly impossible; not merely for the average trooper, but even for an individual possessed of the combined genius of a Napoleon, a Sherlock Holmes, and an Admirable Crichton.

As things stand, the maintenance of law and order in the western and north-western prairies, with their vast, trackless stretches of as yet almost uninhabited territory, is fully equal to the level attained in London or New York. The law is quite as much respected there; infractions of it are quite as surely punished; peace and security are to the full as well preserved. This truth is speedily understood even by the least desirable brand of foreign immigrant. The fugitive from justice reckons his chances considerably better in any other place than the territory of the Riders of the Plains. And all this because of a handful of mounted men in red coats.

"The fact is," said a Minnesota farmer to the present writer, "it don't matter a cent what sort of a pull a man has, how many guns he carries, or how many dollars are behind him; if he breaks the law up there in the North-west, he knows he's just got to be jailed for it, sure as he's alive. It may take a day, or it may take a year. It may cost the authorities a dollar, or it may cost 'em a million, and a life or two thrown in. But that tough is just going to be jailed, and he durned well knows it. That's what the R.N.W.M.P. means to the North-west; and you take it from me, it's a pretty big thing to mean."

It is a big thing. And what makes it possible for that handful of redcoats is not money, or guns, or numbers, but a solid, four-square foundation of irreproachable prestige; an unspotted tradition of incorruptible honesty, tirelessness, braveness, fairness, and real decency. This is the reason why no failures are allowed in the R.N.W.M.P.; this is the reason why eighteen months of service in that corps, of a sort that earns promotion, means so much for the man who accomplishes it. It demands a great deal of him. It gives him an indisputable title to complete manhood.

Though the point was often discussed, it never was made quite clear who first suggested that Jan should accompany Dick Vaughan when, after three short weeks at home, he set out again for the West. The Master privately believed the first suggestion came from him. Dick was sure he had begun by begging for the privilege. Betty cherished the idea that her gift was unsought and quite spontaneous. At all events, once the thing was decided, nobody concerned doubted for a moment the fitness of it. Betty's own arrangements may have had something to do with it. For the Master and the Mistress had set their hearts upon Betty having a season in London and a month or two on the Continent, in part with her Nuthill friends, and, for a portion of the time, with another relative. This made the prospect of parting for a time with Jan a good deal easier.

Then, again, Dick Vaughan had certainly "said a word" to Betty now. He had, indeed, said a good deal to her. And there was one little affirmative word she had given him which he held more preciously significant than all the rest of the world's oratory put together. It was Dick Vaughan's own suggestion that he should serve a further probationary term. It was his own idea that he should earn the Master's blessing by winning sergeant's rank in the R.N.W.M.P.; and that not till then should he allow his father to set him up in England. His decision in this delighted Dr. Vaughan and confirmed the Master in his faith. It meant a further term of absence, but Betty Murdoch was sensible enough to be proud of the pride behind Dick's plan; and thus all were agreed.

Jan's opinion in the matter could hardly be ascertained; but no one who had ever seen Dick and Betty on the Downs with Jan and Finn, and noted the wonderful responsiveness of the young hound to Dick's control, would have entertained any doubt about this. Dick's mastery of animals had always been remarkable; his hold upon their affections had been one of the most striking characteristics of his life. And in this, as in other matters, his experiences in the West had taught him a good deal.

At home in Sussex, and even as a youngster, it had been recognized that Dick Vaughan could get rather more out of an average horse than any one else in the district. On the prairies he had so far developed this gift of his that his charger would lie down on the ground at a word from him, and remain lying, as though dead, without ever injuring or displacing his saddle, until given the word to rise; and this even though his neck were used as a gun-rest, and Dick's rifle fired from it.

Dick's horses in Canada—and he trained many—required no tethering. They would remain, all day if need be, upon the exact spot at which he bade them stand. They would push and nuzzle a man along a road, and never upset him. They would gallop, unridden, in any given direction, at the word of command, and halt as if shot at the sound of Dick's voice. He actually taught a mare to leave her foal and come to him at the word of command. Not the wildest and most vicious of broncos could resist him when he set his mind to their subjugation, yet he wore drilled sixpences in place of rowels in his spurs, and rarely carried a whip; though on certain occasions he might borrow one for a specific use.

During his walks on the Downs with Betty and the two hounds he taught Jan to lie down, stand to attention, gallop in any direction, wheel and return without hesitation; and all this upon the instant of the word of command, or in obedience to a wave of the hand. He arranged for Betty to take Jan away with her for, say, a quarter of a mile, and then, short of holding him, to use every persuasion she could to keep him beside her. Then Dick would give a long call, and then another. It was almost uncanny to see, from the expression on his face, the struggle going on in Jan's mind. But the end was always the same. The second call took him away at the gallop, even from Betty. Then Jan was taught to remain on guard over any object, such as a stick, a glove, or a cap, while Dick and Betty, and Finn, too, went right away out of sight for, it might be, half an hour.

Jan learned these things readily, and with apparent ease. Yet his only rewards were an occasional caress and words of praise. And, apparently, there were no punishments in Dick's educational system. At least he never struck Jan. He really seemed so to influence the young hound that the withholding of praise became a sharp rebuke. Jan himself had no notion why he allowed Dick to school him, or why he yielded this man a measure of obedience and instant devotion that he had given to no one else. The basis of Dick's power was the exceptional gift of magnetism he had—the special kind of magnetism which makes for the subjugation of their wills and personalities, be they human or animal.

But, over and above this gift, Dick had faultless patience with animals. He never gave an order without making perfectly certain that it was understood. And he never betrayed the smallest hint of indecision or lack of assured confidence.

"Stay—right—there—Jan," he would say. "Guard—that." His voice was low, his speech slow, emphatic, distinct. It was a compelling form of speech, and yet, withal, hardly ever harsh or even peremptory. And when, in the earlier stages, he had occasion to say: "No, no; that's no good. That won't do at all, Jan"; or, "You've got to do a heap better than that, Jan," the words or their tone seemed to cut the dog as it might have been with a whip-lash. You could see Jan flinch; not cowed or disheartened, as the dogs trained by public performers often are, but touched to the very quick of his pride, and hungrily eager to do better next time and win the low-voiced: "Good dog! That's fine! Good dog, Jan!" with, it may be, a caressing pat on the head or a gentle rubbing of both ears.

Jan did not know why he learned, why he loved the lessons and the teacher, why he obeyed so swiftly, or why praise filled him to the throat with glad, swelling pride, while the withholding of it, or an expression of disapproval, sent his flag down between his hocks, and his spirits with it, to zero. Jan did not know, but he was merely exemplifying a law as old as the hills. The Israelites found out that righteousness was happiness, and that no joy existed outside of it. Righteousness—do ye right—is another word for discipline. The proudest and the happiest people in the world are the best disciplined people. Perfect discipline is righteousness for righteousness' sake. According to his lights, obedience to Dick was righteousness for Jan. Hence his joyous pride in the progress of his education. No form of self-indulgence could yield Jan (or any one else) a tithe of the satisfaction he derived from this subordination of himself.

His greatest trial, and, by that token, once he really understood it, his greatest source of pride, came in the severe lesson of being sent home in the early stages of a morning's walk. First it was from the garden gate; then from the orchard gate in the lane; and later from the open Down, perhaps half a mile or more away. He would be gamboling to and fro with Finn, exulting in the joy of out of doors, and swift and unanswerable would come the order to return home and wait. Finn was to go on and enjoy the ramble. Jan, for no fault, was to go home alone to wait. And in the end he did it with no pause for protest or hesitation, and at length with no regret, all that being swallowed up by his immense pride in his own understanding and perfect subordination.

He might have to wait ten minutes or an hour or more on the door-step at Nuthill; but it was notable that he never went unrewarded for this particular performance of duty. He was always specially commended and caressed for this; and he never altogether lost a ramble by it, for Dick would make a point of taking him out again, either at once or at some time during the same day. It was a stiff lesson to learn, this; and that was why, once learned, the practice of it was highly stimulating to Jan's self-respect and dignity of bearing.

Upon the whole, in the course of those three crowded weeks of holiday happiness and courting Dick Vaughan managed to pass on to Jan a quite appreciable simulacrum of all the benefits which had made so markedly for his own development during the preceding eighteen months. And most notably was Jan developed in the process.

"We gave Jan a good physique, didn't we, Betty?" said the Master, admiringly; "but in three weeks this wizard has made a North-west Mounted Policeman of him, absolutely fully equipped, bar speech and a uniform!"

"Oh, well," replied Dick, with a laugh, "we don't reckon to be very much as speakers out West, you know; and for uniform, Jan's black and iron-gray coat is good tough wear, and will outlast the best of tunics, and turn snow or hail or rain a deal better. Won't it, Jan?"

SUSSEX TO SASKATCHEWAN

In the absence of that three weeks' schooling, there is no doubt the journey to Regina would have been a pretty dismal business for Jan. It occupied close upon a fortnight, and there was very little liberty for Jan during that time.

Unlike his great sire, Jan had never been stolen, and had learned nothing of the dire possibilities connected with confinement behind iron bars. He tasted some tolerably close confinement during this journey; but he thought each day would bring an end to it; and, meantime, nobody ill-treated him, and, what was more to the point, he had some converse with Dick each day.

As the habit of his kind is, he had, of course, parted with Finn and the Nuthill folk without the slightest premonition regarding the duration of their separation. In the confinement of the cupboard beside the butcher's shop which he occupied while crossing the Atlantic, Jan thought a good deal of Finn, of Betty, and of Nuthill; yet not with melancholy. While at sea he had several visits each day from Dick Vaughan, and during the preceding few weeks Dick had become very securely established as Jan's hero and sovereign lord.

Jan would never cease to love Betty Murdoch; but in the nature of things it was impossible for gentle, merry Betty to give this big hound quite all that masterful Dick Vaughan could give him. His heart had often swelled in answer to a caress from Betty; but his whole being thrilled again to the touch of Dick's strong hand or to a word of command or praise or deprecation from him. Jan was a grown hound now, and newly initiated to the joys of disciplined service.

The train was worse, far worse, than the ship; but it came after the major part of a day at large with Dick in the picturesque streets of Quebec. And even on the train, with its demoniacal noises, and groaning, jarring, jolting lack of ease, each day brought its glimpses of Dick, and its blessed respites of ten minutes or so at a time on station platforms. Jan had traveled before in an English train; but that had been as a passenger, and with passengers, in an ordinary compartment. In the dark, cramped, and incredibly noisy hole of a dog-box on "No. 93" (as this particular west-bound train was called) Jan realized that railway traveling could be a very unpleasant business for a hound. A month earlier the experience would have exhausted him, because he would have frittered away his energies in futile fretting and fuming, and in equally futile efforts to force his way out through steel walls. Now his cramped quarters were made tolerable by the fact that quiet submission to them represented obedience to a personal order from his sovereign. What had otherwise been wretchedness and misery was now willingly accepted discipline, the earning of a substantial reward: his sovereign's approval and his own pride of subordination—a totally different matter from mere painful imprisonment.

Captain Will Arnutt had heard all about Jan by letter from Nuthill. One would not altogether say that so important a person as the captain went to Regina station expressly to meet Dick and Jan; but it certainly did happen that he was admiring the flower-beds in the station's garden when No. 93 hove in sight from the eastward; and being there, he decided to stroll on to the platform and watch the train's arrival, along with every one else who happened to be in sight at the time.

It might, perhaps, lead to awkward consequences if every non-commissioned man of the R.N.W.M.P. took to keeping animals in barracks. Both Dick and Captain Arnutt had thought of this, and, accordingly, Jan, the son of Finn and Desdemona, was welcomed upon his first appearance in the capital of Saskatchewan as Captain Arnutt's hound, brought from England by Dick Vaughan, and to be looked after for Captain Arnutt by the same man. Jan would have been tickled could he have perceived this harmless piece of human deception; but it was just as well he did not understand, since he would never have lent himself to it very convincingly.

By reason of his breeding Jan was, as a matter of fact, unique among hounds. Apart from this, no hound of his size or splendid development had ever before been seen upon Regina station platform. The people of the West are a forthright, plain-spoken, and enterprising folk, and before he left the station Captain Arnutt was offered fifty dollars for Jan. Nothing damped by the captain's smiling refusal of his offer, the sporting stranger said:

"Well, an' I don't blame ye, Colonel, neither. But, say, it's a pity to miss a good deal. I like the looks o' that dog, and"—drawing out a fat wallet from his hip-pocket—"we'll make it a hundred dollars, an' the deal's done."

As Dick subsequently explained to Captain Arnutt, two thousand dollars had been offered, and refused, for Jan's mother. "And I'm dead sure twenty thousand wouldn't buy his sire."

But these figures were for private consumption, of course. Dick had no wish to invite the attention of the predatory; and, in any case, buyers and sellers of dogs do not talk in thousands of dollars on the prairie.

At the entrance to the R.N.W.M.P. barracks the unsuspecting Jan was violently attacked by a fox-terrier, the pet of one of the senior officers of the corps. This pugnacious little chap wasted no time over preliminaries, and apparently had no desire whatever to examine the new-comer. He just flew straight at Jan's throat, snarling furiously. Captain Arnutt was distressed, for he made sure the terrier would be killed, and that Jan would thereby make an enemy of one of the senior officers. But his fears were groundless, thanks to Jan's few weeks of discipline and training before leaving Nuthill.

"Come in here—in—here—Jan, boy. Don't touch him. Come—in—here!"

Jan stood for one moment, listening, his hackles bristling resentment of the terrier's insolence. And then he walked obediently to Dick's side, the snarling, yapping terrier literally pendent from his neck.

"That was stupid of you, little chap," said Dick, when he had detached the terrier and was holding him firmly in both his hands, still snarling angrily. "If you were mine, you'd probably get a hiding, my son. As it is, you'll stop that snarling. You—hear—me? Stop it!"

And reluctantly the terrier did cease his snarling. One could see the little beast slowly calming down in Dick's strong hands, like an excited patient under the spell of some mild anesthetic. And then, having calmed him, Dick very carefully showed the terrier to Jan.

"Look at him, Jan, boy. He's privileged—not to be hurt. Never touch him, lad. He belongs to us, you see. Never hurt him."

Then, rather ostentatiously stroking the terrier in full view of Jan, Dick put the little beast down and bade it run away.

"No more snarling at Jan, mind. He belongs to us, you see."

And whether or not the terrier understood, he did, at all events, walk off toward the veranda of his master's quarters without further demonstrations of belligerency. Captain Arnutt joined enthusiastically with Dick in bestowing praises upon Jan for his forbearance and docility.

"I made sure the little fellow's number was up," said the captain. "One good bite from this chap would have about settled his business. And, mind you, he bit hard, too. There's blood on Jan's coat—look. A fine welcome we've given you, old chap."

Dick had noticed the fleck of blood on the gray of Jan's dewlap, which showed that the terrier had been very much in earnest. Jan's dense coat was thinner just there than in most spots; but even there a good deal of energy was required to yield flesh-hold to a terrier's jaws. But the wound was trifling, and Dick, knowing his hound, wasted no sentiment over a scratch of this sort.

"It's just as well, sir," said he to Captain Arnutt. "There are some pretty tough huskies hanging about our quarters, and this little start will warn Jan to keep a sharp lookout. He has to get used to more warlike conditions than he knew in Sussex, and the sooner he understands, the better for him—and for the others. I fancy he can take care of himself."

"He's certainly got the first essential—discipline. I never saw a more obedient dog."

Dick looked his pleasure at this, and ventured upon the hope that Captain Arnutt would pass on this testimonial among his brother officers; for well Dick knew the value to a dog like Jan of a good reputation, more particularly in so well-ordered a little world as that of the R.N.W.M.P. barracks.

This opening incident ended, Dick was free to take Jan down to the stables and introduce him to his own horse and the other chargers in that division, as well as to their riders. Dick devoted considerable time and care to this introductory process, because he realized its importance. He had obtained permission to quarter Jan with his horse; and an hour's work provided a rough bench for Jan at one end of Paddy's manger—Paddy being Dick's charger. Dick had another day and a half before having to report himself for duty, and had made up his mind so to instruct Jan during that period as to make it unnecessary that the hound should ever be called upon to suffer the indignity of being tethered, even during his, Dick's, absence.

The task proved an easy one, and Dick was given every kind of assistance by his comrades, most of whom were at once attracted by Jan, and inclined to regard him as an acquisition to be proud of. Before the day was out Jan had successfully passed through a number of tolerably severe tests of trustworthiness, and Dick was satisfied that he might safely be spared the indignity of the chain.

For example, being left on his rough bench with an old dandy-brush to guard, Jan was approached in turn by half a dozen of Dick's comrades, who exhausted their ingenuity in trying to entice, frighten, or persuade him from his post. Jan eyed them all quite good-humoredly, wagging his tail in response to enticements, and growling a little, very quietly, when they tried harsher tactics, but remaining throughout immovably in charge of his post.

Then Dick went well out into the barrack-yard, and called quietly to Jan. Instantly the long, silky ears lifted. Snatching up his dandy-brush and gripping it firmly between his jaws, Jan rushed out into the yard, there to be rewarded with the assurance of Dick's affectionate approval and the enthusiastic plaudits of the other troopers.

"You've put the Indian sign on him, all right," said French, the Devonshire man. "It must have taken some doing to lick him into that shape."

"There's no Indian sign about it, old man," said Dick. "It isn't any lambasting Jan's afraid of. You watch his face now, when I lift this stick."

The men all watched, and noted that Jan did not move so much as an eyelid in response to the lifting of a stick.

"Well, that's queer," said old Cartier, the French-Canadian dealer, who was visiting a friend in the barracks. "Don't seem as though that dog ever was licked."

"And so far as I know," said Dick, "he never has been. But, mind you, that's not to say he never will be. I'd never hesitate to thrash a dog if he deserved it, and thrash him good and hard, too. But so far Master Jan has never asked for lickings. Have you Jan? That's why he's not afraid of a stick; for I'd never hit a dog or a horse unless really to punish him, so that he'd know it was a thrashing—not just a bit of bad luck for him, or temper in me."

"H'm! I believe you could get two hundred an' feefty dollar for that dog, up north," said Cartier, musingly; "maybe three hundred, if you broke him to harness."

Dick smiled quietly, and nodded.

"No, no," said O'Malley, the man of Cork; "he's going to stay right here an' be our mascot. Aren't ye, Jan?" And Jan affably signified his agreement.

"That's all right," said French, knocking his pipe out against the heel of his boot. "But what's going to happen to-morrow when Sergeant Moore gets back with his Sourdough? You'll see some fun then, I fancy. Old Sourdough's been boss dog around here a goodish while now, you know. He won't stand for having this chap put his nose out of joint. And, mind you, there's no dog in Regina can cock his tail at Sourdough. I saw him knock the stuffing out of that big sheep-dog of MacDougall's last year, and I tell you he'd have buried the sheep-dog before he left him, if Sergeant Moore hadn't managed to get a halter through his collar and pretty near choked him. It was a close thing; an' they reckoned the sheep-dog had never met his master till then."

"Yep, that's a fact," said another man. "There'll be trouble with Sourdough if you're not careful, Vaughan. He's a demon of a dog, an', by gee! he's sourer than his boss, an' that's saying something."

"Well, yes, I'd thought about Sourdough," said Dick; "and I'm glad his quarters are the other side of the yard."

"The other side!" said French. "Why, man, he owns the whole place. You see how the other dogs kow-tow to him. He's sour, all right, and a fighter from way back; but the way he's built he somehow doesn't seem to make trouble with any dog that kow-tows to him. But God help the husky that don't kow-tow. Sourdough will have his salute as boss, or he'll have blood. That's the sort of a duck Sourdough is."

"Ah! Well, he'll get civility from us, won't he, Jan? and if that's all he wants, there'll be no trouble. But I'll tell you what, you fellows: if Jan's in the stable there with Paddy any time when I'm not about, don't you let Sourdough come into our quarters at all."

"It'd take a hefty chap to keep Sourdough out, if he meant coming in," said O'Malley. "But I guess we'll do our best—eh, boys? I reckon our Jan's a better mascot than the sergeant's tyke."

"But there mustn't be any fighting," added Dick; "and there won't be if we're careful; for there's nothing sour about Jan here, and you've seen he's obedient."