r example, that
when a dog holds his head high and barks there is no special danger to
be feared from him. But he also knew that when a dog lowers his head
and growls, showing his eyetooth, he means business.

And the man shrank from the menace. One hand crept back instinctively
toward his hip pocket.

Link saw the purely involuntary gesture, and he shook in his boots. It
was thus a Hampton constable had once reached back when a stray cur
snapped at him. And that constable had completed the movement by
drawing a pistol and shooting the cur. Perhaps this non-uniformed
stranger meant to do the same thing.

"Hold on!" begged Link, intervening between the man and the dog. "I'll
go along with you peaceful. Quit, Chum! It's all right!"

The dog still looked undecided. He did not like this new note in his
god's voice. But he obeyed the injunction, and fell into step at Link's
side as usual. Ferris suffered himself to be piloted, unresisting,
through the tattered remnant of the crowd and up the clubhouse steps.

There his conductor led him through the sacred portals and down a wide
hallway to the door of a committee room. Throwing open the door, he
ushered in his captive and the dog, entering behind them and reclosing
the heavy door.

In the room, round a table, sat several persons--all men except one.
The exception was the girl whose collie had had the bench next to
Chum's. At the table head, looking very magisterial indeed, sat Colonel
Marden. Beside him lounged a larger and older man in a plaid sport suit.

Link's escort ranged his prisoners at the foot of the table; Chum
standing tight against Ferris's knee, as if to guard him from possible
harm. Link stood glowering in sullen perplexity at the Colonel. Marden
cleared his voice pompously, then spoke.

"Ferris," he began with much impressiveness, "I am a magistrate of this
county--as you perhaps know. You may consider yourself before the Bar
of Justice, and reply to my questions accordingly."

Awed by this thundered preamble, Ferris made shift to mutter:

"I ain't broke no laws. What d'j' want of me, anyhow?"

"First of all," proceeded Marden, "where did you get that dog?"

"Chum here?" said Ferris. "Why, I come acrost him, early last spring,
on the patch of state road, jes' outside of Hampton. He was a-layin' in
a ditch, with his leg bust. Throwed off'n a auto, I figgered it. I took
him home an'--"

He paused, as the sport-suited man next to Marden nodded exc