happened, the dour Grip was far more
than usually serious that morning. By over-severity in driving he had
lost a lamb that day in rounding up a flock across the Downs. The little
beast had slipped, under the pressure of the drive, and broken both fore
legs at the bottom of a deep pit. Grip had not made three such blunders
in his life, and the lambasting he had received for this one had bruised
every bone in his body. But for all this, he might have shown a shade
more tolerance toward Jan, since ninety-nine dogs in a hundred, even
among the fighters, will show patience and good humor where puppies are
concerned.

Jan's actual greeting of the sheep-dog was exceedingly clumsy and
awkward.

"Hullo, old hayseed!" he seemed to say as he bumped awkwardly into
Grip's right shoulder. "Come and have a game!"

That shoulder ought to have warned him. Its wiry mat of coat stood out
like quills upon the fretful porcupine. But the rollicking, galumphing
Jan was just then impervious to any such comparatively subtle indication
as this.

Grip spake no single word; but his wall-eyes flashed white firelight and
his long jaws snapped like a spring trap as Jan rebounded from the bump
against his buttress of a shoulder. When those same steel jaws parted
again, as they did a moment later, an appreciable piece of Jan's left
ear fell from them to the ground. Jan let out a cry, an exclamation of
mingled anger, pain, bewilderment, and wrath. He turned, leaning
forward, as though to ask the meaning of this outrage. On the instant,
and again without a sound, the white-toothed trap opened and closed once
more; this time leaving a bloody groove all down the black-and-gray side
of Jan's left shoulder.

At that point the sheep-dealer spoke, just a little too late.

"Get out o' that!" he said, with a thrust of his staff at Jan.
And--"Come in here, Grip," he added to his own dog. But his orders came
too late.

For his part, Jan had lost blood and realized that he was attacked in
fierce earnest. As for Grip, he had tasted blood, and found it as balm
to his aching ribs. This big blundering black-and-gray thing was no
sheep, at all events. Then let it keep away from him, or take the
consequences. Life was no game for Grip; but rather a serious routine of
work, of fighting to kill, of getting food, of resting when he might,
and of avoiding his master's ashen staff. Nothing could be more
different from Jan's gaily irresponsible and joyously immature