shadows. The bit of forest filled a cup-like depression in the
plain, and was possibly half a rifle-shot distance from end to
end--but to Peter it was as vast as life itself. And something
urged him to go in.

And as he lay there, desire and indecision struggling for mastery
within him, no power could have told Peter that destinies greater
than his own were working through the soul of the dog that was in
him, and that on his decision to go in or not to go in--on the
triumph of courage or cowardice--there rested the fates of lives
greater than his own, of men, and women, and of little children
still unborn. A glass of wine once lost a kingdom, a nail turned
the tide of a mighty battle, and a woman's smile once upon a time
destroyed the homes of a million people. Thus have trivial things
played their potent parts in the history of human lives, yet these
things Peter did not know--nor that his greatest hour had come.

At last he rose from his squatting posture, and stood upon his
feet. He was not a beautiful pup, this Peter Pied-Bot--or Peter
Club-foot, as Jolly Roger McKay--who lived over in the big cedar
swamp--had named him when he gave Peter to the girl. He was, in a
way, an accident and a homely one at that. His father was a blue-
blooded fighting Airedale who had broken from his kennel long
enough to commit a MESALLIANCE with a huge big footed and peace-
loving Mackenzie hound--and Peter was the result. He wore the
fiercely bristling whiskers of his Airedale father at the age of
three months; his ears were flappy and big, his tail was knotted,
and his legs were ungainly and loose, with huge feet at the end of
them--so big and heavy that he stumbled frequently, and fell on
his nose. One pitied him at first--and then loved him. For Peter,