g experience, but he's
immensely strong and fit, and--No, I don't much think Sourdough could do
him any permanent harm; but one can't be certain. Sourdough is
practically a wolf, so far as fighting goes. He and his forebears have
fought ever since their eyes were opened. Whereas, I suppose there's
hardly been a fighter in a hundred generations of Jan's ancestors."

Dick Vaughan was probably thinking of the Lady Desdemona when he said
this. And, of course, it was true that, even on Finn's side, Jan had had
no fighting ancestors for very many generations. But Finn had been a
mighty fighter, and in the wild at that. And Jan had been born in a cave
and in his first weeks had tasted the wild life. Also he had fought
Grip, who fought like a wolf. Also he had learned many things from Finn
on the Sussex Downs; he did not know the meaning of fear, and his
hundred and sixty-four pounds of perfect development consisted almost
entirely of fighting material. There was no waste matter in Jan. Still,
Sourdough was a veritable wolf in combat, and for so long as he could
prevent a breach of the peace Dick decided he would do so. Accordingly,
while in barracks, Jan was kept pretty closely to sentinel duty in
Paddy's stall.

XXII

MURDER!

A day or so after Jan's first meeting with Sourdough a thing occurred in
Regina which, for a little while, occupied the minds of most people, to
the exclusion of such matters as the relations between any two dogs.

A woman and her husband were found murdered in a little fruiterer's and
greengrocer's shop. Evidence showed that the murder must have occurred
late at night. It was discovered quite early in the morning, and before
the first passenger-trains of the day stopped at Regina the line was
closely watched for a good many miles. It was believed that the murderer
could not be very far away. Suspicion attached to a compatriot of the
murdered pair, a Greek, who was found to be missing from his lodging.
Within three hours Sergeant Moore had rounded this man up a few miles
from the city, and placed him under arrest. But the man had been found
in the act of fishing, and there was not a tittle of evidence of any
kind against him.

Then a neighbor called at the R.N.W.M.P. barracks with word of an
Italian, now nowhere to be found, who had done some casual work for the
murdered couple, and had more than once been seen talking with the woman
in the little yard behind their shop. As it happened, t