l the
firing went on, regularly, like a minute gun.

Just before the sun set an exhausted dog staggered toward an old man,
almost as exhausted as he. The dog had been too near death and was too
faint to care for the gun that was being fired over his head. On and on
he came, toward the man, disregarding the noise of the gun. It would not
hurt him, that he knew at last. He might have many enemies, but the gun,
in the hands of this man, was not one of them. Suddenly old Swygert sank
down and took the dripping dog in his arms.

"Old boy," he said, "old boy."

That night Comet lay before the fire, and looked straight into the eyes
of a man, as he used to look in the old days.

Next season, Larsen, glancing over his sporting papers, was astonished
to see that among promising Derbys the fall trials had called forth was
a pointer named Comet. He would have thought it some other dog than the
one who had disappointed him so by turning out gun-shy, in spite of all
his efforts to prevent, had it not been for the fact that the entry was
booked as Comet; owner, Miss Marian Devant; handler, Wade Swygert.

Next year he was still more astonished to see in the same paper that
Comet, handled by Swygert, had won first place in a Western trial, and
was prominently spoken of as a National Championship possibility. As for
him, he had no young entries to offer, but was staking everything on the
National Championship, where he was to enter Larsen's Peerless II.

It was strange how things fell out--but things have a habit of turning
out strangely in field trials, as well as elsewhere. When Larsen reached
Breton Junction where the National Championship was to be run, there on
the street, straining at the leash held by old Swygert, whom he used to
know, was a seasoned young pointer, with a white body, a brown head, and
a brown saddle spot--the same pointer he had seen two years before turn
tail and run in that terror a dog never quite overcomes.

But the strangest thing of all happened that night at the drawing, when,
according to the slips taken at random from a hat, it was declared that
on the following Wednesday, Comet, the pointer, was to run with Peerless
II.

It gave Larsen a strange thrill, this announcement.

He left the meeting and went straightway to his room. There for a long
time he sat pondering. Next day at a hardware store he bought some black
powder and some shells.

The race was to be run next day, and that night in his