on, and then
its shrill yelp of pain went startlingly through the room. It pulled the
three grown-ups out of their thoughts; it brought Joan scampering across
the room with a little happy cry.

The puppy would have escaped if it could, for it had in mind the dark,
warm, familiar corner in Li's kitchen where no harm ever came near, but
the agile hands of Joan caught him; he was swept into her arms. That
little wail of helpless pain, the soft fluff of fur against her cheek,
wiped all other things from Joan's mind. Out the window and across
the gloomy hills she had been staring at the picture of the cave, and
bright-eyed Satan, and the shadowy form of Bart, and the swift, gentle
hand of Daddy Dan; but the cry of the puppy blotted the picture out. She
was no longer lonely, having this small, soft body to protect. There sat
her mother, leaning a little toward her with a glance at once misted and
bright, and she forgot forthwith all the agency of Kate in carrying her
away from that cave of delight.

"Look, munner! He's burned his nose!"

The puppy was licking the injured nose industriously and whimpering the
while. And Joan heard no answer from her mother except an inarticulate
little sound somewhere deep in Kate's throat. Over her child mind,
vaguely, like all baby memories, moved a recollection of the same sound,
coming deeply from the throat of the mother and marvelously soothing,
reassuring. It moved a fiber of trust and sympathy in Joan, an emotion
as real as the sound of music, and with the puppy held idly in her arms
for a moment, she looked curiously into Kate's face. On her own, a faint
smile began in the eyes and spread to the lips.

"Poor little puppy, munner," said Joan.

The hands of Kate trembled with desire to bring Joan closer to her, but
very wisely she merely stroked the cringing head of the dog.

"Poor little puppy," she echoed.

Chapter XXXIX. Victory

The entrance of the puppy, to liken small things to great, was the
coming of Blucher in Kate's life, for the battle turned, and all in five
minutes she had gone from defeat to victory. She sat by the fire with
Joan sleeping in her arms, and the puppy in turn in the arms of Joan. It
was such a foolish trick of chance that had given her all this, she was
almost inclined to laugh, but something of tragedy in the faces of Buck
and Lee Haines made her thoroughly serious. And she readily saw the
truth for after all a child's brain is a small affair; i