ever do. Nan would come
out and he would be discovered. Moreover, what right had he to shoot
anybody's dog until it attacked him? The thing to do would be to put
some strychnine on a piece of meat--no, no, that would never do. The
person who would poison a dog--any kind of a dog--

It was a good dog. The animal certainly was acting within its legal
rights. Yes, he knew now where Nan had gotten it. The dog had belonged
to First Sergeant Daniel J. O'Leary of the Fifth Marines; he had
doubtless given it to Nan to keep for him when he went to the war; The
Laird knew Dan thought a great deal of that dog. His name was Jerry
and he had aided Dirty Dan in more than one bar-room battle.

Jerry, like his master, like the master of the woman he protected, was
a Devil-dog, and one simply cannot kill a soldier's dog for doing a
soldier's duty. Should Jerry charge there would be no stopping him
until he was killed, so The Laird saw very clearly that there was but
one course open to him. If he marched through that gate and straight
to the door, as if he meant business, as if he had a moral and legal
right to be there on business, Jerry would understand and permit him
to pass. But if he snooped in, like a thief in the night, and peered
in at a window--

"I wish I had a suit of Fifteenth Century armour," he thought. "Then
Jerry, you could chew on my leg and be damned to you. You're a silent
dog and I could have a good look while you were wrecking your teeth."

He went back to the Sawdust Pile at dusk the next evening, hoping
Jerry would be absent upon some unlawful private business, but when he
approached the gate slowly and noiselessly Jerry spoke up softly from
within and practically said: "Get out or take the consequences."

The following night, however, The Laird was prepared for Jerry. He did
not halt at the dog's preliminary warning but advanced and rattled the
gate a little. Immediately Jerry came to the gate and stood just
inside growling in his throat, so The Laird thrust an atomizer through
the palings and deluged Jerry's hairy countenance with a fine cloud of
spirits of ammonia. He had once tried that trick on a savage bulldog
in which he desired to inculcate some respect for his person, and had
succeeded beyond his most sanguine expectations. Therefore, since
desperate circumstances always require desperate measures, the memory
of that ancient victory had moved him to attempt a similar
embarrassment of the dog Jerry.