fear and the _First Venture_ had broken into a blaze in a
gale of wind off the Chunks. It was before Billy Topsail, a lad of
wits, had held a candle over the powder barrel, when the wreckers
boarded the _Spot Cash_. It was before Bill o' Burnt Bay had been
rescued from a Miquelon jail and the _Heavenly Home_ was cut out of
St. Pierre Harbour in the foggy night.

It was also before the _Spot Cash_ had fallen foul of the plot to
scuttle the _Black Eagle_. It was before the big gale and all the
adventures of that northward trading voyage. In short, it was before
Jim Grimm moved up from the Labrador to Ruddy Cove for better
fishing.

* * * * *

Tog had a bad name. On the Labrador coast all dogs have bad names;
nor, if the truth must be told, does the reputation do them any
injustice. If evil communications corrupt good manners, the desperate
character of Tog's deeds, no less than the tragic manner of his end,
may be accounted for. At any rate, long before his abrupt departure
from the wilderness trails and snow-covered rock of Buccaneer Cove, he
had earned the worst reputation of all the pack.

It began in the beginning. When Tog was eight weeks old his end was
foreseen. He was then little more than a soft, fluffy, black-and-white
ball, awkwardly perambulating on four absurdly bowed legs. Martha, Jim
Grimm's wife, one day cast the lean scraps of the midday meal to the
pack. What came to pass so amazed old Jim Grimm that he dropped his
splitting-knife and stared agape.

"An' would you look at that little beast!" he gasped. "That one's a
wonder for badness!"

The snarling, scrambling heap of dogs, apparently inextricably
entangled, had all at once been reduced to order. Instead of a
confusion of taut legs and teeth and bristling hair, there was a
precise half-circle of gaunt beasts, squatted at a respectful distance
from Tog's mother, hopelessly licking their chops, while, with hair on
end and fangs exposed and dripping, she kept them off.

"It ain't Jinny," Jim remarked. "You can't blame she. It's that little
pup with the black eye."

You couldn't blame Jenny. Last of all would it occur to Martha Grimm,
with a child of her own to rear, to call her in the wrong. With a
litter of five hearty pups to provide for, Jenny was animated by a
holy maternal instinct. But Tog, which was the one with the black eye,
was not to be justified. He was imitating his mother's tactics with
d