ning-camp this story had been reenforced by the chief
collie-teacher--a dour little Hieland Scot named McQuibigaskie, who on
the first day declared that the American dog had more sense and more
promise and more soul "than a' t'other tykes south o' Kirkcudbright
Brae."

Being only mortal, Bruce found it pleasanter to be admired and petted
than ignored or kicked. He was impersonally friendly with the soldiers,
when he was off duty; and he relished the dainties they were forever
thrusting at him.

But at times his soft eyes would grow dark with homesickness for the
quiet loveliness of The Place and for the Mistress and the Master who
were his loyally worshiped gods. Life had been so happy and so sweetly
uneventful for him, at The Place! And there had been none of the awful
endless thunder and the bewilderingly horrible smells and gruesome
sights which here met him at every turn.

The dog's loving heart used to grow sick with it all; and he longed
unspeakably for home. But he was a gallant soldier, and he did his work
not only well, but with a snap and a dash and an almost uncanny
intelligence which made him an idol to the men.

Presently, now, having eaten all he wanted and having been patted and
talked to until he craved solitude, Bruce strolled ever to an empty
dugout, curled up on a torn blanket there, put his nose between his
white paws and went to sleep.

The German artillery-fire had swelled from an occasional explosion to a
ceaseless roar, that made the ground vibrate and heave, and that beat
on the eardrums with nauseating iterance. But it did not bother Bruce.
For months he had been used to this sort of annoyance, and he had
learned to sleep snugly through it all.

Meanwhile, outside his dugout, life was speeding up at a dizzying rate.
The German artillery had sprung to sudden and wholesale activity. Far
to the right of the Here-We-Come regiment's trenches a haze had begun
to crawl along the ground and to send snaky tendrils high in
air-tendrils that blended into a single grayish-green wall as they
moved forward. The hazewall's gray-green was shot by yellow and purple
tinges as the sun's weak rays touched it. To the left of the
Here-We-Comes, and then in front of them, appeared the same wall of
billowing gas.

The Here-We-Comes were ready for it with their hastily donned masks.
But there was no need of the precaution. By one of the sudden
wind--freaks so common in the story of the war, the gas-cloud was c