on the neck of the other. Soon they were fawning about her
and jumping on her and licking her hands. She felt thoroughly happy now.
Her headache had quite vanished. The dogs, the darlings, were her true
friends! There was a little piece of grass quite close to where they had
attacked her, and she squatted deliberately down on it and invited the
dogs to stretch themselves by her side. They did so without a minute's
delay. They were in raptures with her, and one dog only growled when she
paid too much attention to the other.

She began to whisper alternately in the shaggy ears of each. "Ah, you
must have come from Scotland! You must, anyhow, have met Andrew! Do you
think you are as brave as Andrew, for I doubt it?"

Then she continued to the other dog, "And you must have been born in the
same litter with Fritz. Did you ever look into the eyes of Fritz and see
straight down into his gallant heart? I should be ashamed of you,
ashamed of you, if you were not as brave and noble as Fritz."

There was such pathos in Betty's voice that the dogs became quite
penitent and abject. They had certainly never been in Scotland, and
Andrew and Fritz were animals unknown to them; but for some reason the
mysterious being who understood dogs was displeased with them, and they
fawned and crouched at her feet.

It was just at that moment that a sturdy-looking farmer came up. He
gazed at Betty, then at the two dogs, uttered a light guffaw, and
vanished round the corner. In a very few minutes he returned,
accompanied by his sturdy wife and his two rough, growing sons.

"Wife," he said, "did you ever see the like in all your life--Dan and
Beersheba crouching down at that young girl's feet? Why, they're the
fiercest dogs in the whole place!"

"I heard them barking a while back," said Mrs. Miles, the farmer's wife,
"and then they stopped sudden-like. If I'd known they were here I'd have
come out to keep 'em from doing mischief to anybody; but hearing no more
sound I went on with my churning. Little miss," she added, raising her
voice, "you seem wonderful took with dogs."

Betty instantly rose to a standing position. "Yes, I am," she said.
"Please, are these Scotch, and have they come from Aberdeenshire?"

The farmer laughed. "No, miss," he said; "we bred 'em at home."

Betty was puzzled at this.

The dogs did not take the slightest notice of the farmer, his wife, or
his sons, but kept clinging to the girl and pressing their noses against