game, a spark would light in her brown eyes, and--how led who can
say?--she would fly like a wireless message to the thing sought for.

So it was now, on the furzy side of Cnocan an Ceoil Sidhe; she knew
that the moment had come. She sat down on a ledge of rock, and waited,
throbbing with anticipation, and had not long to wait. A brown shadow
moved in the bracken near the dolmen, a brown face peered with
infinite caution, round a flank of the great stones.

"Yoop! the little bitchie!" said Christian to the horizon. Christian
was an apt scholar, and Cottingham's tone and idiom were alike
accurately rendered.

The lady thus addressed gazed with a greater intensity, but did not
move. Christian took a piece of dog-biscuit from the ragged pocket of
the kennel-coat, and, still walking closely in Cottingham's steps, bit
it, ate a part of it, and carelessly flung the remainder in the
direction of the shadow. This stole forth, and, having snapped up the
biscuit, sank back into the covert. Christian did not move.

"Amazon!" she crooned, in tones in which a doting wood-pigeon might
apostrophise a sickly fledgling; "Amazon, my darling!"

Another piece of biscuit accompanied the apostrophe, and poor Amazon,
who was indeed very lonely and very hungry, capitulated, and came
sidling up to the charmer, with propitiatory smiles, and deprecating
stern wagging, beneath her, and in advance of her hind legs, instead
of above her and behind them.

"'Olding the buckle in the right 'and," said Christian to herself, in
faithful quotation from the great ensample, as with a swiftness and
decision that were creditable to her training, she put the couples on
Amazon.

Then she produced the bone that had been "Dixie's" bright achievement,
and it was while, in contentment and friendship, Amazon was crunching
it, that Larry Coppinger appeared.

He rose from behind a spur of rock and furze, and came towards
Christian.

"Oh, good for you!" he said, admiringly, "I was afraid to show up till
you had got her."

Christian was not sure that she was pleased at this intervention.

"How did you know where I was?"

"The servants told me you had gone to the kennels, and Jimmy showed me
the hill, and then I spotted your white coat--not that it's so awfully
white!--I thought it was rather rotten to let you go alone."

"And why not, pray?" enquired Christian, haughtily. Male assumption of
the duties of guardianship was a thing she found highly offensiv