ill to
quiver protestingly. How long this would have lasted one cannot say:
for towards the end of the first minute it was shattered by a purely
terrestrial uproar. With an abruptness heralded only by one short, low
gurgling snarl, there sprang into being the prettiest dog fight that
Roville had seen that season.

It was the terrier with the black patch who began it. That was Sally's
opinion: and such, one feels, will be the verdict of history. His best
friend, anxious to make out a case for him, could not have denied that
he fired the first gun of the campaign. But we must be just. The fault
was really Sally's. Absorbed in the scene which had just concluded and
acutely inquisitive as to why the shadowy Scrymgeour had seen fit to
dispense with the red-haired young man's services, she had thrice in
succession helped the poodle out of his turn. The third occasion was too
much for the terrier.

There is about any dog fight a wild, gusty fury which affects the
average mortal with something of the helplessness induced by some vast
clashing of the elements. It seems so outside one's jurisdiction. One is
oppressed with a sense of the futility of interference. And this was no
ordinary dog fight. It was a stunning melee, which would have excited
favourable comment even among the blase residents of a negro quarter or
the not easily-pleased critics of a Lancashire mining-village. From all
over the beach dogs of every size, breed, and colour were racing to the
scene: and while some of these merely remained in the ringside seats
and barked, a considerable proportion immediately started fighting one
another on general principles, well content to be in action without
bothering about first causes. The terrier had got the poodle by the
left hind-leg and was restating his war-aims. The raffish mongrel
was apparently endeavouring to fletcherize a complete stranger of the
Sealyham family.

Sally was frankly unequal to the situation, as were the entire crowd of
spectators who had come galloping up from the water's edge. She had been
paralysed from the start. Snarling bundles bumped against her legs and
bounced away again, but she made no move. Advice in fluent French rent
the air. Arms waved, and well-filled bathing suits leaped up and down.
But nobody did anything practical until in the centre of the theatre of
war there suddenly appeared the red-haired young man.

The only reason why dog fights do not go on for ever is that Providence