said the Master, "is that your boss is mistaken. I've had
Rothsay Princess for the past six months. And she's the last dog I'll
ever get from the Rothsay Kennels. I was stung, good and plenty, on
that deal.

"My wife wanted to keep her, or I'd have made a kick in the courts for
having to pay two hundred dollars for a cheeky, apple-domed, prick
eared--"

"Prick-eared!" exclaimed the foreman, aghast at the volleyed sacrilege.
"Rothsay Princess has the best ears of any pup we've bred since
Champion Rothsay Chief. Not a flaw in that pup. She--"

"Not a flaw, hey!" sniffed the Master. "Come down to the kennel and
take a look at her. She has as many flaws as a street-cur has fleas."

He led the way to the kennel. At sight of the stranger Lass growled and
showed her teeth. For a collie mother will let nobody but proven
friends come near to her newborn brood.

The foreman stared at the hostile young mother for a half-minute,
whistling bewilderedly between his teeth. Then he laughed aloud.

"That's no more Rothsay Princess than I am!" he declared. "I know who
she IS, though. I'd remember that funny mask among a million. That's
Rothsay Lass! Though how she got HERE--!

"We couldn't have shipped her by mistake, either," he went on,
confused. "For we'd sold her, that same day, to a kid in our town. I
ought to know. Because the kid kept on pestering us every day for a
month afterward, to find if she had come back to us. He said she ran
away in the night. He still comes around, once a week or so, to ask. A
spindly, weak, sick-looking little chap, he is. I don't get the point
of this thing, from any angle. But we run our kennels on the square.
And I can promise the boss'll either send back your check or send
Rothsay Princess to you and take Lass back."

Two days later, while all The Place was still mulling over the mystery,
a letter came for the Master from Lass's home town. It was signed
"Edw'd Hazen," and it was written on the cheap stationery of his
employer's bottling works. It read:

Dear Sir:

"Six months ago, my son bought a dog from the Rothsay Kennels. It was a
she-dog, and his ma and I didn't want one around. So I put it aboard a
freight-car on the sly. My boy went sick over losing his dog. He has
never rightly got over it, but he peaks and mopes and gets thinner all
the time. If I had known how hard he was going to take it, I would of
cut off my hand before I would of done such a thing. And my wife feels
just