pistol, smiled
gleefully to himself, for his glee was intellectual and in admiration of
this half-grown puppy whom he rapped on the nose with a short, hardwood
stick and compelled to keep distance. No matter how often and fiercely
Jerry rushed him, he met the rush with the stick, and chuckled aloud,
understanding the puppy's courage, marvelling at the stupidity of life
that impelled him continually to thrust his nose to the hurt of the
stick, and that drove him, by passion of remembrance of a dead man to
dare the pain of the stick again and again.

This, too, was life, Bashti meditated, as he deftly rapped the screaming
puppy away from him. Four-legged life it was, young and silly and hot,
heart-prompted, that was like any young man making love to his woman in
the twilight, or like any young man fighting to the death with any other
young man over a matter of passion, hurt pride, or thwarted desire. As
much as in the dead head of Van Horn or of any man, he realized that in
this live puppy might reside the clue to existence, the solution of the
riddle.

So he continued to rap Jerry on the nose away from him, and to marvel at
the persistence of the vital something within him that impelled him to
leap forward always to the stick that hurt him and made him recoil. The
valour and motion, the strength and the unreasoning of youth he knew it
to be, and he admired it sadly, and envied it, willing to exchange for it
all his lean grey wisdom if only he could find the way.

"Some dog, that dog, sure some dog," he might have uttered in Van Horn's
fashion of speech. Instead, in beche-de-mer, which was as habitual to
him as his own Somo speech, he thought:

"My word, that fella dog no fright along me."

But age wearied sooner of the play, and Bashti put an end to it by
rapping Jerry heavily behind the ear and stretching him out stunned. The
spectacle of the puppy, so alive and raging the moment before, and, the
moment after, lying as if dead, caught Bashti's speculative fancy. The
stick, with a single sharp rap of it, had effected the change. Where had
gone the anger and wit of the puppy? Was that all it was, the flame of
the splinter that could be quenched by any chance gust of air? One
instant Jerry had raged and suffered, snarled and leaped, willed and
directed his actions. The next instant he lay limp and crumpled in the
little death of unconsciousness. In a brief space, Bashti knew,
consciousness, sensation, mot