o his blood. And he yearned, too, to
let the world see what a marvelous dog was his.

He hurried through the morning chores, then dressed himself in his
shabby best and hitched his horse to the antiquated Concord buggy--a
vehicle he had been washing for the state occasion almost as vehemently
as he had scrubbed Chum.

After a gobbled breakfast, Ferris mounted to the seat of the aged
buggy, signaled Chum to leap to the battered cushion at his side and
set off for Craigswold. Long before ten o'clock his horse was safely
stabled at the Craigswold livery, and Ferris was leading Chum proudly
through the wicket gate leading into the country-club grounds.

All happened as the postmaster had foretold. The clerk at the wicket
asked him his name, fumbled through a ledger and a pile of envelopes
and presently handed Ferris a numbered tag.

"Sixty-five," read the clerk for Link's benefit. "That's down at the
extreme right. Almost the last bench to the right."

Into the hallowed precinct Link piloted the much-interested Chum. There
he paused for a dazzled instant. The putting green and the fore-lawn in
front of the field-stone clubhouse had been covered with a mass of
wooden alleyways, each lined with a double row of stalls about two feet
from the ground, carpeted with straw and having individual zinc water
troughs in front of them. In nearly every one of these "benches" was
tied a dog.

There were more dogs than Link Ferris had seen before in all his
quasi-dogless life. And all of them seemed to be barking or yelping.
The din was egregious. Along the alleyways, men and women in sport
clothes were drifting, in survey of the chained exhibits. In a central
space among the lines of benches was a large square enclosure, roped
off except for one aperture. In the middle of this space, which Link
rightly guessed to be the judging ring, stood a very low wooden
platform. At one side of the ring were a chair and a table, where sat a
steward in a Palm Beach suit, fussily turning over the leaves of a
ledger and assorting a heap of high-packed and vari-colored ribbons.

Link, mindful of instructions, bore to the right in search of a stall
labeled "65." As he went, he noted that the dogs were benched in such a
way that each breed had a section to itself. Thus, while he was still
some distance away from his designated bench, he saw that he was coming
into a section of dogs which, in general aspect, resembled Chum. Above
this aggregation,