er own obstinacy. No, she would not
let Rox have his way; she would not allow him to triumph over her for a
single moment. She would neither be forced nor tricked into yielding a
single point however small. She would be mistress of the situation.

By the end of half an hour she had him well in hand, and was bowling
smoothly along a level stretch of road at the foot of an abrupt rise of
land covered with scrub oak and broken with outcroppings of granite of a
curious formation. Just beyond here the road crossed the canal by a
narrow--in fact, a much too narrow--plank bridge without guard-rails.
The wide-axled dog-cart had just sufficient room on either hand, and
Lloyd, too good a whip to take chances with so nervous a horse as Rox,
drew him down to a walk as she approached it. But of a sudden her eyes
were arrested by a curious sight. She halted the cart.

At the roadside, some fifty yards from the plank bridge, were two dogs.
Evidently there had just been a dreadful fight. Here and there a stone
was streaked with blood. The grass and smaller bushes were flattened
out, and tufts of hair were scattered about upon the ground. Of the two
dogs, Lloyd recognised one upon the instant. It was Dan, the "liver'n
white" fox-hound of the farmhouse--the fighter and terror of the
country. But he was lying upon his side now, the foreleg broken, or
rather crushed, as if in a vise; the throat torn open, the life-blood in
a great pool about his head. He was dead, or in the very throes of
death. Poor Dan, he had fought his last fight, had found more than his
match at last.

Lloyd looked at the other dog--the victor; then looked at him a second
time and a third.

"Well," she murmured, "that's a strange-looking dog."

In fact, he was a curious animal. His broad, strong body was covered
with a brown fur as dense, as thick, and as soft as a wolf's; the ears
were pricked and pointed, the muzzle sharp, the eyes slant and beady.
The breast was disproportionately broad, the forelegs short and
apparently very powerful. Around his neck was a broad nickelled collar.

But as Lloyd sat in the cart watching him he promptly demonstrated the
fact that his nature was as extraordinary as his looks. He turned again
from a momentary inspection of the intruders, sniffed once or twice at
his dead enemy, then suddenly began to eat him.

Lloyd's gorge rose with anger and disgust. Even if Dan had been killed,
it had been in fair fight, and there could be no