bared fangs and bristling hair. Nevertheless he remained, sleeping
and resting by the spring, and eating the food they gave him after
they set it down at a safe distance and retreated. His wretched
physical condition explained why he lingered; and when he had
recuperated, after several days' sojourn, he disappeared.

And this would have been the end of him, so far as Irvine and his
wife were concerned, had not Irvine at that particular time been
called away into the northern part of the state. Riding along on
the train, near to the line between California and Oregon, he
chanced to look out of the window and saw his unsociable guest
sliding along the wagon road, brown and wolfish, tired yet
tireless, dust-covered and soiled with two hundred miles of travel.

Now Irvine was a man of impulse, a poet. He got off the train at
the next station, bought a piece of meat at a butcher shop, and
captured the vagrant on the outskirts of the town. The return trip
was made in the baggage car, and so Wolf came a second time to the
mountain cottage. Here he was tied up for a week and made love to
by the man and woman. But it was very circumspect love-making.
Remote and alien as a traveller from another planet, he snarled
down their soft-spoken love-words. He never barked. In all the
time they had him he was never known to bark.

To win him became a problem. Irvine liked problems. He had a
metal plate made, on which was stamped: RETURN TO WALT IRVINE,
GLEN ELLEN, SONOMA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA. This was riveted to a
collar and strapped about the dog's neck. Then he was turned
loose, and promptly he disappeared. A day later came a telegram
from Mendocino County. In twenty hours he had made over a hundred