h. It was
coming noisily toward her. But she was going too fast and too blindly
to swerve. And she met it, headlong; throwing her vast weight forward
in an attempt to smash through it. At the same time, Wolf and Bruce
left off harrying her flanks and sprang aside.

Dugan had reached the garage unseen. There, he had backed out the car,
by hand; shoving it into the open, lest the motor-whirr give premature
announcement of his presence. Then, as he boarded the machine and
reached for the self-starter, all bedlam broke loose, from somewhere in
the general direction of the house, fifty yards away.

Dugan, glancing up apprehensively, beheld the first phases of the
fight. Forgetting the need of haste and of secrecy, he sat there,
open-mouthed, watching a scrimmage which was beyond all his sporting
experience and which thrilled him as no prize-fight had ever done.
Moveless, wide eyed, he witnessed the battle.

But the arrival of the two other dogs and the flight of the sow roused
him to a sense of the business which had brought him thither. The
Mistress and the maids had no eyes or ears for anything but the wounded
Lad. Dugan knew he could, in all probability, drive to the main road
unnoticed; if he should keep the house between him and the women.

He pressed the self-starter; threw off the brake and put the car into
motion. Then, as he struck the level stretch of driveway, back of the
house, he stepped hard on the accelerator. Here, for a few rods, was
danger of recognition; and it behooved him to make speed. He made it.

Forward bounded the car and struck a forty-mile gait. And around the
house's far corner and straight toward Dugan came flying the sow and
the two collies. The dogs, at sight of the onrushing car, sprang aside.
The sow did not.

In the narrow roadway there was no room for Dugan to turn out. Nor did
he care to. Again and again he had run over dogs, without harming his
car or slackening its pace. And of course it would be the same with a
pig. He stepped harder on the accelerator.

Alf Dugan came to his senses in the hospital ward of the Paterson jail.
He had not the faintest idea how he chanced to be there. When they told
him the car had turned turtle and that he and a broken-necked pig had
been hauled out of the wreckage, he asked in all honesty:

"What car? What pig? Quit stringing me, can't you? Which of my legs did
you say is bust, and which one is just twisted? They both feel as bad
as each other.