cuddly little fur-ball to snuggle down to. It was stupid, with no
one to help her work off her five-months spirits in a romp. And
Lass missed the dozens of visitors that of old had come to the
run.

The kennel-men felt not the slightest interest in her. Lass meant
nothing to them, except the work of feeding her and of keeping an
extra run in order. She was a liability, a nuisance.

Lass used to watch with pitiful eagerness for the attendants'
duty-visits to the run. She would gallop joyously up to them,
begging for a word or a caress, trying to tempt them into a romp,
bringing them peaceofferings in the shape of treasured bones she
had buried for her own future use. But all this gained her
nothing.

A careless word at best--a grunt or a shove at worst were her
only rewards. For the most part, the men with the feed-trough or
the water-pail ignored her bounding and wrigglingly eager welcome
as completely as though she were a part of the kennel
furnishings. Her short daily "exercise scamper" in the open was
her nearest approach to a good time.

Then came a day when again a visitor stopped in front of Lass's
run. He was not much of a visitor, being a pallid and rather
shabbily dressed lad of twelve, with a brand-new chain and collar
in his hand.

"You see," he was confiding to the bored kennel-man who had been
detailed by the foreman to take him around the kennels, "when I