t want any of you
children ever to leave anything about the yard that he can stumble over.
Mother, whenever you move a chicken coop, call him and show him where it
is, hear?"

They all agreed.

Then Mac began to follow his master to the field and to Tom Belcher's
store up the road. Neighbours grinned and said they had often heard of a
blind man led by a dog, but never before of a blind dog led by a man.
They never said this, though, in Tom Jennings's presence.

As summer waned and hunting season approached, Tom Jennings, a great
hunter, bought a pointer to take the place of Mac in the field, and in
order that there might be no jealousy and no quarrelling, he bought a
female.

It was hard to have to leave Mac at home on the first day of the
winter's hunting. Though Tom had tried to keep the matter of his going a
secret, the blind dog had sensed the preparations. He had smelled the
oiling of boots. He had heard the click of shells dropped into
hunting-coat pockets. And at the end, the frantic barkings of the
pointer, whom Tom had tried in vain to keep silent, told him as plainly
as a shout. Mac tried to follow and they had to chain him up.

In the middle of the afternoon Mrs. Jennings turned him loose. He stayed
close to her skirts for a while, following her in and out of the kitchen
and about the yard. But as the time drew near for the return of the
hunters, he began to sniff the air in every direction, his nose held
high.

At last he smelled them coming across the fields and made his way
eagerly through the yard and toward them. And now it was, as he saw the
blind dog coming, that a happy thought struck Tom Jennings. Instead of
coming to the house he waited at the edge of the yard; and when Mac
reached him, he took out of his hunting coat a quail and handed it to
the dog.

"Take it to the missus," he said.

Straight to the kitchen wing and up the steps the dog went, happy and
proud. Mrs. Jennings opened the door, face beaming. The children all ran
out to see. And though it consumed time Tom remained where he was and
handed the blind dog bird after bird. After that, this procedure came to
be a regular part of Tom Jennings's hunts.

Soon Mac learned to rear gently up on the kitchen table and place the
birds on the top. Each bird he placed near the preceding one, rooting
them gently with his nose into a conical pile. "Mac's pile" it came to
be called by the children, returning from school and hurrying into the