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His Dog by Albert Payson Terhune
page 86 of 105 (81%)
innermost heart; and he knelt before her image there.

If Ferris found her different from the other Hampton girls,
Dorcas found him equally different from the local swains she
knew. She recognized his hidden strength. The maternal element in
her nature sympathized with his loneliness and with the marks it
had left upon his soul.

For the rest--he was neither a village cut-up like Con Skerly,
nor a solemn mass of conceit like Royal Crews; nor patronizing
like young Lawyer Wetherell; nor vaguely repulsive like old Cap'n
Baldy Todd, who came furtively a-courting her. Link was
different. And she liked him. She liked him more and more.

Once her parents took Dorcas and her five-year-old sister, Olive,
on a Sunday afternoon ramble, which led eventually to the Ferris
farm. Link welcomed the chance callers gladly, and showed them
over the place. Dorcas's housewifely eye rejoiced in the
well-kept house, even while she frowned inwardly at its thousand
signs of bachelor inefficiency. The stock and the crops, too,
spoke of solid industry.

But she shrank back in sudden revolt as a huge tawny collie came
bounding toward her from the fold where he had just marshaled the
sheep for the night. The dog was beautiful. And he meant her no
harm. He even tried shyly to make friends with the tall and
grave-eyed guest. Dorcas saw all that. Yet she shrank from him
with instinctive fear--in spite of it.

As a child she had been bitten--and bitten badly--by a
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