holding him thus momentarily safe, and pressed the self-starter
button.

There was a subdued whir. A move of Halding's foot and a release
of the brake, and the car started forward.

"Stand clear!" he ordered. "I'm going."

The jolt of the sudden start was too much for the Mistress's
balance on the running-board. Back she toppled. Only by luck did
she land on her feet instead of her head, upon the greasy
pavement of the street.

But she sprang forward again, with a little cry of indignant
dismay, and reached desperately into the moving car for Bruce,
calling him eagerly by name.

Dr. Halding was steering with his left hand, while his viselike
right arm still encircled the protesting collie. As the Mistress
ran alongside and grasped frantically for her doomed pet, he let
go of Bruce for an instant, to fend off her hand--or perhaps to
thrust her away from the peril of the fast-moving mud-guards. At
the Mistress's cry--and at the brief letup of pressure caused by
the Doctor's menacing gesture toward the unhappy woman--Bruce's
long-sleeping soul awoke. He answered the cry and the man's blow
at his deity in the immemorial fashion of all dogs whose human
gods are threatened.

There was a snarling wild-beast growl, the first that ever had
come from the clownlike puppy's throat,--and Bruce flung his