n exultant bark re-echoed through the silence of the sunset.
Chum, who had been trotting demurely up the walk, sprang gleefully in
pursuit of the ball, and presently came galloping back to the dazedly
incredulous Link, with the many-colored sphere of rubber between his
jaws.

Chum had had no trouble at all in catching his master's trail and
following it home. He would have overtaken the slow-slouching Ferris,
had he been able to slip out of the clubhouse sooner. And now it
pleased him to be welcomed by this evident invitation to a game of ball.

Link gave a gulping cry and buried both hands in the collie's ruff,
staring down at the dancing dog in an agony of rapture. Then, all at
once, his muscles tensed, and his newly flushed face went green-white
again.

"I--I guess we got to play it square, Chum!" he muttered aloud, with
something like a groan. "I was blattin' to 'em, up there, how you'd
made a white man of me. An' a reg'lar white man don't keep what ain't
his own prop'ty. Come along, Chummie!"

His jaw very tense, his back painfully stiff, Link strode heavily down
the lane and out into the highroad. Chum, always eager for a walk with
his god, frisked about him in delight.

He had traversed the bulk of the distance to Craigswold, the dog beside
him, when he remembered that he had left his horse and buggy at the
livery stable there in the morning. Well, that would save his aching
feet a four-mile walk home. In the meantime--

He and Chum stepped to the roadside to avoid a fast-traveling little
motor car which was bearing down on them from the direction of
Craigswold.

The car did not pass them. Instead, it came to a gear-racking halt
close beside Ferris. Link, glancing up in dull lack of interest, beheld
Gault and the latter's daughter staring down at him.

"Chum came home," said Ferris, scowling at them. "He trailed me. Don't
lick him fer it! He's only a dog, an' he didn't know no better. I was
bringin' him back to you."

The girl looked sharply at her father. Gault fidgeted uneasily, as he
had done once or twice that afternoon in the clubhouse. And he avoided
his daughter's gaze. So she turned her level eyes on Link.

"Mr. Ferris," she said very quietly, "do you mean to say, when this dog
came back to you, you were actually going to return him to us, instead
of hiding him somewhere till the search was over?"

"I'm here, ain't I?" countered Ferris defiantly.

"But why?" she insisted. "WHY?"

"Becaus