enever the
family was absent at night Jan had kept her company in her room, and she
always had cookies there for him. John, her husband, had been the old
stableman.

The broom waved nearer. He looked into the woman's angry face, then
walked down the front steps.

"I'll go to the stable till Elizabeth comes home," he thought as he went
toward the back of the house.

But, John, the stableman, who had cared for the handsome horses of the
Pixleys until automobiles filled the carriage house, had gone away to
another place where people still used horses. John had been Jan's loyal
friend. The new man, William Leavitt, had not made friends with Jan, but
there were many nice dark places, out of William's sight, where Jan
often took a nap during the heat of the day, and William never knew it.

Jan was making for a favorite spot under the old family carriage, when
William saw him.

"Get out!" he shouted furiously.

The dog stopped. William came closer and lifting his hand, threw a
monkey-wrench at Jan. It missed him, and the dog hurried away to the
garden, where many trees made dense shadows. There was a spot under a
low-hanging pepper tree where Jan dug into the cool, moist earth until
he had made a nice, big hole. Then he lay down and uttered a sigh of
content. His eyes closed and soon he was sound asleep.

A vicious kick wakened him, and he leaped to his feet to see the
gardener standing over him swearing. Jan ran away, but stood a short
distance off, watching the man fill up the hole under the tree. As the
man finished the work, he saw the dog and hurled a stone which struck
above Jan's eye, making a jagged cut that started to bleed.

Half-mad with pain, Jan ran until he found a place in the orange grove,
far back from the house, and trembling, he huddled down. His heart
thumped and again he suffered from the fear of things he did not
understand just as he had felt when his mother howled on the day he had
been led from the Hospice.

"If only Elizabeth will come back soon," he thought, "everything will
be right again, and the servants won't be cross to me any more."

The excitement of abuse for the first time in his life and the pain from
the wounded eye, which was swollen shut, made him feverish, but he kept
hidden all day, suffering from thirst rather than risk further
ill-treatment, and all the time he was listening for the sound of wheels
and the voice of Elizabeth calling him.

The sun went down, but the fami