the guns were barking in the woods, and the hounds were
baying along the ridges, I would be with them.

I looked right at the girl when I said it. I was boasting. She knew
it. She must see, too, what a woful figure I should make with
strong-limbed fellows like Tim there, and strong-limbed hounds like old
Captain, who was lying at my side. But somehow she liked my vaunting
speech. I knew it when our eyes met.

III

The gate latch clicked. From the road Henry Holmes called a last
good-night, and Tim and I were alone. We sat in silence, watching
through the window the old man's lantern as he swung away toward home.
Then the light disappeared and without all was black. The village was
asleep.

By the stove lay my hound, Captain, snoring gently. He had tried to
keep awake, poor beast! For a time he had even struggled to hold one
eye open and on his master, but at last, overcome by weariness, his
head snuggled farther and farther down into his fore paws, and the
tired tail ceased its rhythmic beating on the floor.

What is home without a dog! Captain is happy. He smiles gently as he
sleeps, and it seems that in that strange dog-dreamland he and I are
racing over the ridges again, through the nipping winds, on the trail
of a fox or a rabbit. His master is home. He has wandered far to
other hunting grounds, but now that the tang is in the air that
foretells the frost and snow, he has come again to the dog that never
misses a trail, the dog that never fails him.

The hound raised his head and half opened one eye. He was sure that I
was really there, and the gleam of white teeth showed a broadening
dog-smile. And once more we were away on the dreamland trail--Captain
and I.

"He's been counting the days till you got home, Mark," said Tim,
holding a burning match over my pipe. "It was a bit lonely here, while
you were gone, so Captain and I used to discuss your doings a good deal
after the rest of the place had gone to bed. And as for young Colonel,
why he's heard so much of you from Captain there, I'm afraid he'll
swallow you when he gets at you in the morning."

Young Colonel was the puppy the returning soldier had never seen. He
had come long after I had gone away, and as yet I knew him only by his
voice, for I had heard his dismal wails down in the barn. In the
excitement of the evening I had forgotten him, but now I raised a
warning finger and listened, thinking that I might catch the appe