Atlantic. He could do his bit, to more effect than the average
human. There are hundreds of thousands of men for the ranks, but
pitifully few perfect courier-dogs."

The Mistress was listening with a tensity which momentarily grew
more painful. The Master's forehead, too, was creased with a new
thought that seemed to hurt him. To break the brief silence that
followed the guest's words, he asked:

"Are the dogs, over there, really doing such great work as the
papers say they are? I read, the other day--"

" 'Great work!'" repeated the guest. "I should say so. Not only
in finding the wounded and acting as guards on listening posts,
and all that, but most of all as couriers. There are plenty of
times when the wireless can't be used for sending messages from
one point to another, and where there is no telephone connection,
and where the firing is too hot for a human courier to get
through. That is where is the war dogs have proved their weight
in radium. Collies, mostly. There are a million true stories of
their prowess told, at camp-fires. Here are just two such
incidents--both of them on record, by the way, at the British War
Office

"A collie, down near Soissons, was sent across a bad strip of
fire-scourged ground, with a message. A boche sharpshooter fired
at him and shattered his jaw. The dog kept on, in horrible agony,
and delivered the message. Another collie was sent over a still
hotter and much longer stretch of territory with a message. (That
was during the Somme drive of 1916.) He was shot at, a dozen