ade a quick movement of impulse to capture Jerry.

"Why now?" the chief demanded. "You will but have to carry him through
the swamp. Let him trot back on his own legs, and when he is before the
canoe house tie his legs there."

Across the swamp and approaching the canoe house, Jerry, trotting happily
at the heels of the two men, heard the wailing and sorrowing of many dogs
that spelt unmistakable woe and pain. He developed instant suspicion
that was, however, without direct apprehension for himself. And at that
moment, his ears cocked forward and his nose questing for further
information in the matter, Bashti seized him by the nape of the neck and
held him in the air while Agno proceeded to tie his legs.

No whimper, nor sound, nor sign of fear, came from Jerry--only choking
growls of ferociousness, intermingled with snarls of anger, and a
belligerent up-clawing of hind-legs. But a dog, clutched by the neck
from the back, can never be a match for two men, gifted with the
intelligence and deftness of men, each of them two-handed with four
fingers and an opposable thumb to each hand.

His fore-legs and hind-legs tied lengthwise and crosswise, he was carried
head-downward the short distance to the place of slaughter and cooking,
and flung to the earth in the midst of the score or more of dogs
similarly tied and helpless. Although it was mid-afternoon, a number of
them had so lain since early morning in the hot sun. They were all bush
dogs or wild-dogs, and so small was their courage that their thirst and
physical pain from cords drawn too tight across veins and arteries, and
their dim apprehension of the fate such treatment foreboded, led them to
whimper and wail and howl their despair and suffering.

The next thirty hours were bad hours for Jerry. The word had gone forth
immediately that the taboo on him had been removed, and of the men and
boys none was so low as to do him reverence. About him, till night-fall,
persisted a circle of teasers and tormenters. They harangued him for his
fall, sneered and jeered at him, rooted him about contemptuously with
their feet, made a hollow in the sand out of which he could not roll and
desposited him in it on his back, his four tied legs sticking
ignominiously in the air above him.

And all he could do was growl and rage his helplessness. For, unlike the
other dogs, he would not howl or whimper his pain. A year old now, the
last six months had gone far toward maturin