room he loaded
half-a-dozen shells. It would have been a study in faces to watch him
as he bent over his work, on his lips a smile. Into the shells he packed
all the powder they could stand, all the powder his trusted gun could
stand, without bursting. It was a load big enough to kill a bear, to
bring down a buffalo. It was a load that would echo and reecho in the
hills.

On the morning that Larsen walked out in front of the judges and the
field, Peerless II at the leash, old Swygert with Comet at his side, he
glanced around at the "field," or spectators. Among them was a handsome
young woman and with her, to his amazement, George Devant. He could not
help chuckling inside himself as he thought of what would happen that
day, for once a gun-shy dog, always a gun-shy dog--that was _his_
experience.

As for Comet, he faced the strawfields eagerly, confidently, already a
veteran. Long ago fear of the gun had left him, for the most part. There
were times, when at a report above his head, he still trembled and the
shocked nerves in his ear gave a twinge like that of a bad tooth. But
always at the quiet voice of the old man, his god, he grew steady, and
remained staunch.

Some disturbing memory did start within him to-day as he glanced at the
man with the other dog. It seemed to him as if in another and an evil
world he had seen that face. His heart began to pound fast and his tail
drooped for a moment. Within an hour it was all to come back to
him--the terror, the panic, the agony of that far-away time.

He looked up at old Swygert, who was his god, and to whom his soul
belonged, though he was booked as the property of Miss Marian Devant. Of
the arrangements he could know nothing, being a dog. Old Swygert, having
cured him, could not meet the expenses of taking him to field trials.
The girl had come to the old man's assistance, an assistance which he
had accepted only under condition that the dog should be entered as
hers, with himself as handler.

"Are you ready, gentlemen?" the judges asked.

"Ready," said Larsen and old Swygert.

And Comet and Peerless II were speeding away across that field, and
behind them came handlers and judges and spectators, all mounted.

It was a race people still talk about, and for a reason, for strange
things happened that day. At first there was nothing unusual. It was
like any other field trial. Comet found birds and Swygert, his handler,
flushed them and shot. Comet remained steady