kitchen. And while they talked to him and bragged about what a nice
regular pile he had made, he would stand with wagging tail, his
sightless eyes raised to their faces as if he saw.

Another summer passed, a summer of other thunderstorms, of which he was
afraid no more. Another bird season rolled around. And then, one day, he
begged so hard with his unseeing eyes that Tom let him go. After that
Tom always let him go. For a wonderful thing had happened. Blind Mac was
no longer useless! He could hunt birds!

First he seemed to be backstanding Nell, the pointer; that is, when she
set, he advanced slightly in front of Tom and set, too. But since he
could not see, it was plain that it was the birds themselves he was
setting and not Nell. Then, a little later in the same day, and while
Nell was nowhere in sight, he suddenly trotted ahead and came to a
beautiful stand. All excited, Tom advanced, and a covey of birds rose.
The gun barked twice and two birds tumbled. "Fetch, Mac!" cried Tom. And
straight to the dead birds the unerring nose took him, and he retrieved
them both, trembling with joy.

From this time he was an object of charity no more. Had Tom Jennings
not been a man of tender heart, but only a hunter out after meat, he
still would have taken Mac along. Just as in people when one sense is
destroyed others grow more than normally keen, so with Mac. Never,
declared Tom, could a dog smell birds so far; never did bird dog have a
nose that told him so exactly where they were.

Fortunately, the route over which Tom hunted lay in extensive river
bottoms, cultivated in corn. There were few fences and Mac soon learned
where they were. There were no woods, and only an occasional thicket
that Mac could circle with a fair degree of safety. The pointer did all
the wide ranging.

Now and then Mac fell into a ditch or creek. It was always pitiful to
Tom Jennings to see this. But each time the blind dog found his way out
and went on undaunted, head high, tail wagging as if with a perpetual
and inward joy.

"I've seen some blind folks," said Tom once to his wife, "that looked
happier than folks with eyes. Mac looks happier to me than dogs that can
see. It's funny."

So the years passed, and blind Mac came to be a familiar figure, and the
children grew, and Tom Jennings worked hard on his farm to give them an
education.

First Frank, the lad, outgrew the country schools, just as he outgrew
his clothes. He was a hardworkin