ed in a crumpled heap, with one foreleg stuck
awkwardly out in front of him at an impossible angle. His tawny mass of
coat was mired and oil streaked. In his deep-set brown eyes burned the
fires of agony.

Yet, as he looked up at the man who bent above him, the dog's gaze was
neither fierce nor cringing. It held rather such an expression as,
Dumas tells us, the wounded Athos turned to D'Artagnan--the aspect of
one in sore need of aid, and too proud to plead for it.

Link Ferris had never heard of Dumas, nor of the immortal musketeer.
None the less, he could read that look. And it appealed to him, as no
howl of anguish could have appealed. He knelt beside the suffering dog
and fell to examining his hurts.

The dog was a collie--beautiful of head, sweepingly graceful of line,
powerful and heavy coated. The mud on his expanse of snowy chest frill
and the grease on his dark brown back were easy to account for, even to
Link Ferris's none-too-keen imagination.

Link, in his own occasional trudges along this bit of state road, had
often seen costly dogs in the tonneaus of passing cars. He had seen
several of them scramble frantically to maintain their footing on the
slippery seats of such cars; when chauffeurs took the sharp curve, just
ahead, at too high speed. He had even seen one Airedale flung bodily
from a car's rear seat at that curve, and out into the roadway; where a
close-following motor had run over and killed it.

This collie, doubtless, had had such a fall; and, unseen by the front
seat's occupants, had struck ground with terrific force--a force that
had sent him whirling through mud and grease into the ditch, with a
broken front leg.

How long the beast had lain there Link had no way of guessing. But the
dog was in mortal agony. And the kindest thing to do was to put him out
of his pain.

Ferris groped around through the gloom until, in the ditch, his fingers
closed over a ten-pound stone. One smashing blow on the head, with this
missile, would bring a swift and merciful end to the sufferer's
troubles.

Poising the stone aloft, Link turned back to where the dog lay.
Standing over the victim, he balanced the rock and tensed his muscles
for the blow. The match had long since gone out, but Link's
dusk-accustomed vision could readily discern the outlines of the
collie. And he made ready to strike.

Then--perhaps it was the drink playing tricks with Ferris's mind--it
seemed to him that he could still see th