s face cleared. Now she knew in which direction
Dorcas was going. That fork led to the Glen. And the Glen was a
favorite Sunday afternoon ramble for Link and Chum. Olive knew that,
because she and Dorcas more than once had walked thither to meet them.

Olive was pleasantly forgetful of her parents' positive command that
she refrain from walking alone on the motor-infested Sunday roads. She
set off at a fast jog trot over the nearby hill, on whose other side
ran the Glen road.

Link Ferris, with Chum at his heels, was tramping moodily toward the
Glen. As he turned into the road he paused in his sullen walk. There,
strolling unconcernedly, some yards in front of him, was a tall girl in
white. Her back was toward him. Yet he would have recognized her at a
hundred times the distance. Chum knew her, too, for he wagged his tail
and started at a faster trot to overtake her.

"Back!" called Link.

Purposely he spoke as low as possible. But the dog heard and obeyed.
The girl, too, started a little, and made as if to turn. Just then
ensued a wild crackling in the thick roadside bushes which lined the
hillside from highway to crest. And a white-clad little bunch of
humanity came galloping jubilantly out into the road, midway between
Dorcas and Link.

At the road edge Olive's stubby toe caught in a noose of blackberry
vine. As the youngster was running full tilt, her own impetus sent her
rolling over and over into the center of the dusty turnpike.

Before she could get to her feet or even stop rolling, a touring car
came round the bend, ten yards away--a car that was traveling at a
speed of something like forty-five miles an hour, and whose four
occupants were singing at the top of their lungs.

Link Ferris had scarce time to tense his muscles for a futile
spring--Dorcas's scream of helpless terror was still unborn--when the
car was upon the prostrate child.

And in the same fraction of a second a furry catapult launched itself
across the wide road at a speed that made it look like tawny blur.

Chum's mad leap carried him to the baby just as the car's fender hung
above her. A slashing grip of his teeth in the shoulder of her white
dress and a lightning heave of his mighty neck and shoulders--and the
little form was hurtling through the air and into the weed-filled
wayside ditch.

In practically the same instant Chum's body whizzed into the air again.
But this time by no impetus of its own. The high-powered car's fende