confused. "For we'd sold her, that same day, to a kid in our
town. I ought to know. Because the kid kept on pestering us every
day for a month afterward, to find if she had come back to us. He
said she ran away in the night. He still comes around, once a
week or so, to ask. A spindly, weak, sick-looking little chap, he
is. I don't get the point of this thing, from any angle. But we
run our kennels on the square. And I can promise the boss'll
either send back your check or send Rothsay Princess to you and
take Lass back."

Two days later, while all The Place was still mulling over the
mystery, a letter came for the Master from Lass's home town. It
was signed "Edw'd Hazen," and it was written on the cheap
stationery of his employer's bottling works. It read:

Dear Sir:

"Six months ago, my son bought a dog from the Rothsay Kennels. It
was a she-dog, and his ma and I didn't want one around. So I put
it aboard a freight-car on the sly. My boy went sick over losing
his dog. He has never rightly got over it, but he peaks and mopes
and gets thinner all the time. If I had known how hard he was
going to take it, I would of cut off my hand before I would of
done such a thing. And my wife feels just like I do about it. We
would both of us have given a hundred dollars to get the dog back
for him, when we saw how bad he felt. But it was too late.
Somehow or other it is most generally too late when a rotten
thing has been done.

"To-day he went again to the Rothsay Kennels to ask if she had