ng. He had been born in the paintless shack
which his father had built with his own rheumatic hands. He had worked
for more than a quarter century, in and out of the hill fields and the
ramshackle barns. From babyhood he had toiled there. Scant had been the
chances for schooling, and more scant had been the opportunities for
outside influence.

Wherefore, Link had grown to a wirily weedy and slouching manhood,
almost as ignorant of the world beyond his mountain walls as were any
of his own "critters." His life was bounded by fruitless labor, varied
only by such sleep and food as might fit him to labor the harder.

He ate and slept, that he might be able to work. And he worked, that he
might be able to eat and sleep. Beyond that, his life was as barren as
a rainy sea.

If he dreamed of other and wider things, the workaday grind speedily
set such dreams to rout. When the gnawing of lonely unrest was too
acute for bovine endurance--and when he could spare the time or the
money--he was wont to go to the mile-off hamlet of Hampton and there
get as nearly drunk as his funds would permit.

It was his only surcease. And as a rule, it was a poor one. For seldom
did he have enough ready money to buy wholesale forgetfulness. More
often he was able to purchase only enough hard cider or fuseloil whisky
to make him dull and vaguely miserable.

It was on his way home one Saturday night from such a rudimentary
debauch at Hampton that his Adventure had its small beginning.

For a half mile or so of Link's homeward pilgrimage--before he turned
off into the grass-grown, rutted hill trail which led to his farm--his
way led along a spur of the state road which linked New York City with
the Ramapo hill country.

And here, as Link swung glumly along through the springtide dusk, his
ears were assailed by a sound that was something between a sigh and a
sob--a sound as of one who tries valiantly to stifle a whimper of sharp
pain.

Ferris halted, uncertain, at the road edge; and peered about him. Again
he heard the sound. And this time he located it in the long grass of
the wayside ditch. The grass was stirring spasmodically, too, as with
the half-restrained writhings of something lying close to earth there.

Link struck a match. Shielding the flame, he pushed the tangle of grass
to one side with his foot.

There, exposed in the narrow space thus cleared and by the narrower
radius of match flare, crouched a dog.

The brute was huddl