, in another and kindlier world. These people did not
notice his growing restlessness, his furtive glances, his panting
breaths, the burning light in his eyes. For steps had come up on the
porch; somebody had knocked at the door; the night of their fortune was
here!

The burly man hurried to answer, shaking the floor. The open door showed
a Negro who handed in a paper. Somebody had sent it from town, he
explained, and was gone. The woman snatched the paper. Heads close
together, the three stood about a smoking kerosene lamp. The woman was
reading in a whiny, excited drawl: "'One thousand dollars reward
for----'"

"I told you so!" burst from the burly man.

"Shut up! Listen!" cried the other.

"'Irish setter,'" she read. "'Answers to name Frank. Notify R. A.
Lancaster'--Oh, here's a lot of streets and numbers--'New York City.'"

"I told you!" the burly man was shouting. "I told you I knew a dog when
I saw one! Look at him, Sam! Look at that head! Look at that dome above
the ears! Look at that hair--like silk! The mould that dog was made in
is broke!"

"One thousand dollars!" gasped the woman. "One thousand dollars!"

When the two men came out with him to his prison the excitement was
still rising. The woman had already gone into another room, and the men
had got out a bottle. Their voices as they bolted his door and propped a
pole against it sounded loud and thick. They stamped up the steps, and
he could hear them laughing and shouting in the shack. Surely they could
not hear him gnawing--gnawing frantically at his board behind the boxes.
They could not hear him jerking at the end of the board, freed at last
from the sleeper below. They could not hear the board give way, throwing
him on his haunches. Surely they could not hear the little bark that
escaped him when the floor opened.

But out in the yard, free at last, he sank suddenly down flat, head
between his paws, very still. The back door of the shack had opened and
the light shone out across the littered yard, up the walls of his
prison, into his very eyes. The burly man had stepped out on the porch.

It was one of those hollow nights when sounds carry far, when a spoken
word is a shout.

"I don't hear nothin', Sam."

The other man staggered out.

"Maybe it was a rat," he said.

He could almost hear them breathing.

"Guess I imagined," said Sam.

"Sure," said the other.

Their figures darkened the doorway. The burly man clapped the other on
the