the keen, shrewd brain of his Airedale father
developed inside Peter's head, the flesh and blood development of his
big, gentle, soft-footed Mackenzie hound mother kept pace in his body.
His legs and feet began to lose their grotesqueness. Flesh began to
cover the knots in his tail. His head, bristling fiercely with wiry
whiskers, seemed to pause for a space to give his lanky body a chance
to catch up with it. And in spite of his big feet, so clumsy that a few
weeks ago they had stumbled over everything in his way, he could now
travel without making a sound.

So it came to pass, after a time, that when Peter heard footsteps
approaching the cabin he made no effort to reveal himself until he knew
it was Jolly Roger who was coming. And this was strangely in spite of
the fact that in the five weeks since Nada had brought him from Cragg's
Ridge no one but Jolly Roger and Nada had set foot within sight of the
shack. It was an inborn caution, growing stronger in him each day.
There came one early evening when Peter made a discovery. He had
returned with Jolly Roger from a fishing trip farther down the creek,
and scarcely had he set nose to the little clearing about the cabin
when he caught the presence of a strange scent. He investigated it
swiftly, and found it all about the cabin, and very strong close up
against the cabin door. There were no doubts in Peter's mind. A man had
been there, and this man had gone around and around the cabin, and had
opened the door, and had even gone inside, for Peter found the scent of
him on the floor. He tried, in a way, to tell Jolly Roger. He bristled,
and whined, and looked searchingly into the darkening edge of the
forest. Jolly Roger quested with him for a few moments, and when he
failed to find marks in the ground he began cleaning a fish for supper,
and said.

"Probably a wolverine, _Pied-Bot_. The rascal came to see what he could
find while we were away."

But Peter was not satisfied. He was restless all that night. Sounds
which had been familiar now held a new significance for him. The next
day he was filled with a quiet but brooding expectancy. He resented the
intrusion of the strange footprints. It was, in his process of
instinctive reasoning, an encroachment upon the property rights of his
master, and he was--true to the law of his species--the guardian of
those rights.

The fourth evening after the stranger's visit to the cabin Jolly Roger
was later than usual in returning f