he office of the nearest veterinary. Dr.
Halding, with a shattered shoulder-blade and a fractured nose and jaw
and a mild case of brain-concussion,--was received as a guest of honor
at the village hospital.

Bruce, his left foreleg broken and a nasty assortment of glass-cuts
marring the fluffiness of his fur, was skillfully patched up by the
vet' and carried back that night to The Place.

The puppy had suddenly taken on a new value in his owners' eyes--partly
for his gallantly puny effort at defending the Mistress, partly because
of his pitiful condition. And he was nursed, right zealously, back to
life and health.

In a few weeks, the plaster cast on the convalescent's broken foreleg
had been replaced by a bandage. In another week or two the vet'
pronounced Bruce as well as ever. The dog, through habit, still held
the mended foreleg off the ground, even after the bandage was removed.
Whereat, the Master tied a bandage tightly about the uninjured foreleg.

Bruce at once decided that this, and not the other, was the lame leg;
and he began forthwith to limp on it. As it was manifestly impossible
to keep both forelegs off the ground at the same time when he was
walking, he was forced to make use of the once-broken leg. Finding, to
his amaze, that he could walk on it with perfect ease, he devoted his
limping solely to the well leg. And as soon as the Master took the
bandage from that, Bruce ceased to limp at all.

Meanwhile, a lawyer, whose name sounded as though it had been culled
from a Rhine Wine list, had begun suit, in Dr. Halding's name, against
the Mistress, as a "contributory cause" of his client's accident. The
suit never came to trial. It was dropped, indeed, with much haste. Not
from any change of heart on the plaintiff's behalf; but because, at
that juncture, Dr. Halding chanced to be arrested and interned as a
dangerous Enemy Alien. Our country had recently declared war on
Germany; and the belated spy-hunt was up.

During the Federal officers' search of the doctor's house, for
treasonable documents (of which they found an ample supply), they came
upon his laboratory. No fewer than five dogs, in varying stages of
hideous torture, were found strapped to tables or hanging to
wall-hooks. The vivisector bewailed, loudly and gutturally, this cruel
interruption to his researches in Science's behalf.

One day, two months after the accident, Bruce stood on all four feet
once more, with no vestige left of scars o