him, but 't was to keep him from
being hurt. I'd do the same for a man or a woman, if there was need.
If 't was a child you had tied down here with your blood-stained
straps, cut open to see an innocent heart, your own being black past
all pardon, I'd do the same for the child and all the more quickly if
it was my own. I never had a child--I've never had a woman to love me,
but I've been loved by a dog. I've thought that even yet I might know
the love of a woman, for a man who deserves the love of a dog is worthy
of a woman, and a man who will torture a dog will torture a woman, too.

"Laddie," said the Piper, laying his hand upon the blood-stained body,
"no man ever had a truer comrade, and I'll not insult your kind by
calling this brute a cur. Laddie, it was you and I, and now it's I
alone. Laddie--" here the Piper's voice broke, and, taking up the
knife again, he cut the straps. With the tears raining down his face,
he stumbled out of the laboratory, the mutilated body of his pet in his
arms.

Anthony Dexter looked after him curiously. The mask-like expression of
his face was slightly changed. In a corner of the laboratory, seeming
to shrink from him, stood the phantom black figure, closely veiled.
Out of the echoing stillness came the passionate accusation: "A man who
will torture a dog will torture a woman, too."

He carefully removed the blood stains from the narrow table, and pushed
it back in its place, behind a screen. The straps were cut, and
consequently useless, so he wrapped them up in a newspaper and threw
them into the waste basket. He cleaned his knife with unusual care,
and wiped an ugly stain from his forceps.

Then he took off his linen coat, folded it up, and placed it in the
covered basket which held soiled linen from the laboratory. He washed
his hands and copied the notes he had made, for there was blood upon
the page. He tore the original sheet into fine bits, and put the
pieces into the waste basket. Then he put on his cuffs and his coat,
and went out of the laboratory.

He was dazed, and did not see that his own self-torture had filled him
with primeval lust to torture in return. He only knew that his
brilliant paper must remain forever incomplete, since his services to
science were continually unappreciated and misunderstood. What was one
yellow dog, more or less, in the vast economy of Nature? Was he
lacking in discernment, because, as Piper Tom said, he had never been