f that dog. And you must do it before you marry me. I won't set
foot in your house until your dog is gone--and gone for good. I am
sorry to speak so, but it had to be said."

She paused to give her slave a chance to wilt. But Link only sat,
blank-faced, staring at her. His mind was in a muddle. All his narrow
world was upside down. He couldn't make his brain grasp in full the
situation.

All he could visualize for the instant was a shadowy mental image of
Chum's expectant face; the tulip ears pricked forward, expectant; the
jaws "laughing"; the deepset brown eyes abrim with gay affection and
deathless loyalty for the man who was now asked to get rid of him. It
didn't make sense. Half under his breath Link Ferris began to talk--or
rather to ramble.

"There was one of the books over to the lib'ry," he heard himself
meandering on, "with a queer story in it. I got to reading it through,
one night last winter. It was about a feller named 'Fed'rigo.' A wop of
some kind, I guess. He got so hard up he didn't have anything left but
a pet falcon. Whatever a falcon may be. Whatever it was, it must'a
been good to eat. But he set a heap of store by it. Him and it was
chums. Same as me and Chum are. Then along come a lady he was in love
with. And she stopped to his house for dinner. There wasn't anything in
the house fit for her to eat. So he fed her the falcon. Killed the pet
that was his chum, so's he could feed the dame he was stuck on. I
thought, when I read it, that that feller was more kinds of a swine
than I'd have time to tell you. But he wasn't any worse'n I'd be if I
was to--"

"I'm sorry you care so little for me," intervened Dorcas, her voice
very sweet and very cold, and her slender nose whitening a little at
the corners of the nostrils. "Of course if you prefer a miserable dog
to me, there's nothing more to be said. I--"

"No!" almost yelled the miserable man. "You've got me all wrong,
dearie. Honest, you have. Can't you understand? Your little finger
means a heap more to me than ev'rything else there is--except the rest
of you--"

"And your dog," she supplemented.

"No!" he denied fiercely. "You got no right to say that! But Chum's
served me faithful. And I can't kick him out like he was a--"

"Now you are getting angry again!" she accused, pale and furious. "I
don't care to be howled at. The case stands like this: You must choose
whether to get rid of that dog or to lose me. Take your choice. If--"

"I r