of eagerness on the leather seat-cushion.

On reeled the black mongrel; crazed by noise and pain. His
bleared eyes caught a flash of the Mistress's white dress, on the
walk, fifteen feet in front of him and a yard or more to one
side.

In a frame of mind when every newcomer was a probable tormenter,
the mongrel resolved to meet this white-clad foe, head-on. He
swerved, with a stagger, from his bee-line of travel; growled
hideously, and sprang full at her.

The Mistress paused, for an instant, in the middle of the
sidewalk, to find out the reason for the sudden din that had
assailed her ears as she emerged from the post-office. In that
brief moment, she caught the multiple-bellowed phrase of "Mad
dog!" and saw the black brute charging down upon her.

There was no time to dart back into the shelter of the building
or to gain the lesser safety of the car. For the charging mongrel
was not five feet away.

The Mistress stood stock-still; holding her hands at a level with
her throat. She did not cry out; nor faint. That was not the
Mistress's way. Like Lad, she was thoroughbred in soul as well as
in body. And neither she nor her dog belonged to the breed of
screamers. Through her mind, in that briefest fraction of a
second whizzed the consoling thought

"He's not mad, whatever else he is. A mad dog never swerves from