going to release her. But that was not so easy. Pull as I would I could
not bring the teeth of the trap apart.

"I shall have to go for help, Dido," I said, after a few minutes,
trusting to her sense to understand. But as I rose to go and she saw
that I was leaving her, she began immediately a loud, almost hysterical
barking, interspersed with little piteous moans and whimpers which were
most painful to hear.

I did not know what to do, so I began to cry myself, and then I knelt
down beside her and began again my useless effort to release her.

The sun by now was sinking low, although there would be light for an
hour or two yet. I guessed that it must be seven o'clock, and I knew
that my grandmother would be uneasy about me, and that presently my
grandfather would have to be told, and the whole household would be
anxious. What was I to do? I could not even think that they would come
this way looking for me, since they had not known of my intention of
coming home by Daly's Wood and the postern.

I was in the greatest perplexity and distress, and I never was so glad
in my life as when I heard a shout close at hand. I believe that if it
had been Richard Dawson himself I should have welcomed him at that
moment.

"Come this way, please," I called out. "My dog is caught in a trap and I
cannot leave her."

I heard some one come as I had come, on hands and knees, through the
undergrowth; then he emerged into the little glade and stood upright,
the grass and the leaves about his clothing.

He did not look at me at first, but came, with that clucking of the
tongue against the palate which we use in Ireland as a sound of pity and
concern, to the rescue of the dog. His hands, fine and long and slender,
tore the trap apart as though it had been paper.

"Poor beast!" he said, "she is very little the worse. The teeth of the
trap had grown blunt, although they were strong enough to hold her."

I thought him the very finest gentleman I had ever seen or ever hoped to
see, and that is to say a good deal, since it would not be easy to find
a finer gentleman than my grandfather. And I had the portrait of Uncle
Luke and my childish memory of him. And Theobald is as fine and gallant
a young gentleman as you would wish to see.

But this stranger was finer than any of them.

Suddenly he looked at me for the first time, and I saw his face change.
Some wave of emotion passed over it, troubling its gay serenity. His
lips trembled. An