grass of the wayside ditch. The grass was stirring spasmodically,
too, as with the half-restrained writhings of something lying
close to earth there.

Link struck a match. Shielding the flame, he pushed the tangle of
grass to one side with his foot.

There, exposed in the narrow space thus cleared and by the
narrower radius of match flare, crouched a dog.

The brute was huddled in a crumpled heap, with one foreleg stuck
awkwardly out in front of him at an impossible angle. His tawny
mass of coat was mired and oil streaked. In his deep-set brown
eyes burned the fires of agony.

Yet, as he looked up at the man who bent above him, the dog's
gaze was neither fierce nor cringing. It held rather such an
expression as, Dumas tells us, the wounded Athos turned to
D'Artagnan--the aspect of one in sore need of aid, and too proud
to plead for it.

Link Ferris had never heard of Dumas, nor of the immortal
musketeer. None the less, he could read that look. And it
appealed to him, as no howl of anguish could have appealed. He
knelt beside the suffering dog and fell to examining his hurts.

The dog was a collie--beautiful of head, sweepingly graceful of
line, powerful and heavy coated. The mud on his expanse of snowy
chest frill and the grease on his dark brown back were easy to
account for, even to Link Ferris's none-too-keen imagination.