s hearing re-enforced his scent. He could
catch the pad-pad-pad of running feet. And the increasing of the sound
told him he was gaining fast.

But in another bound his ears told him something else--something he
would have heard much sooner, had not the night wind been setting so
strongly in the other direction. He heard not only the pounding of his
prey's heavy-shod feet, but the soft thud of hundreds--perhaps
thousands--of other army shoes. And now, despite the adverse wind, the
odor of innumerable soldiers came to his fiercely sniffing nostrils.
Not only was it the scent of soldiers, but of German soldiers.

For the first time, Bruce lifted his head from the ground, as he ran,
and peered in front of him. The moon had risen above the low-lying
horizon vapors into a clear sky, and the reach of country was sharply
visible.

Bruce saw the man he was chasing,--saw him plainly. The German was
still running, but not at all as one who flees from peril. He ran,
rather, as might the bearer of glad tidings. And he was even now
drawing up to a group of men who awaited eagerly his coming. There must
have been fifty men in the group. Behind them--in open formation and as
far as the dog's near-sighted eyes could see--were more men, and more,
and more--thousands of them, all moving stealthily forward.

Now, a collie (in brain, though never in heart) is much more wolf than
dog. A bullterrier, or an Airedale, would have charged on at his foe,
and would have let himself be hacked to pieces before loosing his hold
on the man.

But--even as a wolf checks his pursuit of a galloping sheep when the
latter dashes into the guarded fold--Bruce came to an abrupt halt, at
sight of these reenforcements. He stood irresolute, still mad with
vengeful anger, but not foolish enough to assail a whole brigade of
armed men.

It is quite impossible (though Mahan and Vivier used to swear it must
be true) that Bruce had the reasoning powers to figure out the whole
situation which confronted him. He could not have known that a German
brigade had been sent to take advantage of the "Here-We-Comes"
temporarily isolated position--that three sentries had been killed in
silence and that their deaths had left a wide gap through which the
brigade hoped to creep unobserved until they should be within striking
distance of their unsuspectingly slumbering victims.

Bruce could not have known this. He could not have grasped the
slightest fraction of the idea, be