hairs occupied by the congregation. At
one end of this last row the Master sat, with Finn beside him on
the deck. Among the children, one, a curly-headed rascal of a boy
named Tim, aged eight, was everybody's favourite, and the leader of
the rest in most kinds of mischief. Exactly how he managed it was
never rightly understood, but when the piercing sound of a childish
scream smote upon the Master's ears, through the droning periods of
the captain's read sermon, Tim was in mid-air, half-way between the
ship's rail and the sea, and the other children were staring,
horror-stricken, at the place he had occupied a moment before, with
his chubby arms about the stem of a boat's davit, and his brown
legs astride the rail.

The Master was a man given to acting swiftly upon impulse. Finn had
leaped to his feet at sound of the scream. The Master followed on
the instant, and reached the ship's side within a second
or two of Finn's arrival there. Finn's muzzle was thrust out
between the white rails, and he saw the tiny figure of Tim in the
smoothly eddying water a little abaft of the ship's beam. The
Master saw it, too, and, turning, with one urgent hand on Finn's
neck, he shouted--

"Over and fetch him, Finn! Over boy! Over!"

There was no mistaking his meaning. Finn had instant understanding
of that. But Finn was no water dog. The sea was very far below. He
let out two short nasal whimpers. The Master swung one arm
excitedly.

"Over, boy! Fetch Tim! Over, then!"

Then the growing love of the past few weeks spoke strongly in Finn,
overriding instinct in him, and, with a whining sort of bark of
protest against the order his new love forced him to obey, he
leaped over the white rail, and down, down, down through
five-and-thirty feet of space into the smooth, blue sea, where it
swirled and rippled past the high steel walls of the ship.

This exhausted the Master's first impulse. Instantly then there
flashed through his mind knowledge of the fact that Finn was no
water dog; that he had never been trained to fetch from the water,
or to handle human beings gently with his teeth. The Master had
never even seen Finn swim. That was a great love, a wonderful trust
which had shone out from Finn's eyes, when, instinct protesting in
his whining bark, he had leaped the rail in obedience to orders
given on the impulse, and without thought. Would Finn be able to
help the child who had often played with him about the deck? And
how if tha