read the Master, from his catalog. "H'm! That's
Colonel Osbourne's greatest pup. Remember, we saw him at Westminster?
It's nip-and-tuck, between him and Lad; with a little in this dog's
favor. Tough luck!"

"Oh, this has been just one of those days nobody wants!" mourned the
Mistress. "First, our forgetting to bring along Laddie's suitcase,
though I could have sworn I saw you lift it aboard,--and then the judge
not being here; and now this horrid collie with his wonderful coat!
What next, I wonder?"

Like a well-staged bit of mechanism, the reply to her rhetorical
question came down to her from heaven. It came in the shape of a
thunder-roll that began far off and reverberated from mountain to
mountain; then muttered itself into silence in the more distant hills.
The Mistress, like everyone else, looked skyward.

The hazy blue of the summer noon was paling to dirty gray and black. Up
from the Hudson, a fast-mounting array of dun and flame-shot clouds
were butting their bullying way. No weather-prophet was needed to tell
these hillcountry folk that they were in for a thunderstorm;--and for
what one kennel-man described as "a reg'lar ol' he-one," at that.

Now, under right conditions, an open-air dogshow is a thing of beauty
and of joy. At such places as Tuxedo and one or two others it is a
sight to be remembered. But in rainy weather,--especially in a
tumultuous thunderstorm, it has not one redeeming feature.

The Beauville Show Committee,--like all experts in such matters, had
taken this chance into account. Down the aisles of benches and through
the questioning and scared groups of exhibitors ran attendants and
officials; shouting that the Country Club polo stables and the wide
spaces under the clubhouse verandas had been fitted up for emergency
quarters, where the dogs might be housed, dry and safe, until the
passing of the storm.

Up to the Master hurried a club page-boy.

"This way, sir!" he panted. "I saved a special box stall, in the first
stable, for your collie."

"YOU saved it?" queried the puzzled Master, while the Mistress began to
unfasten Lad's leash. "How did you happen to do that?"

"I was told to, sir," answered the boy. "A--a gentleman told me to,
just now. One of the of'cers of the club. I don't know his name. He
showed me the stall; and he told me to take your dog there."

"That's mighty, decent; whoever did it," said the Master, whistling the
freed dog to him and setting forth in the boy'