"

"Oh, that's all right," Jim had replied.

He answered Mary's questions cheerfully enough. She had stuck to him
through thick and thin, mostly thin, he reckoned, and he was going to
stick to her. This farm was her gamble, and he was going to see it
through for her. But in the silence of the night, unknown to her, he
fought one of the hardest battles of his life, a battle that kept him
awake and drenched him with perspiration. For he was a hunter, was Jim,
and old Prince was his dog.

He arose with grave face to greet another day. While Mary was in the
kitchen getting breakfast, he rummaged secretly among his queer
assortment of papers--gun catalogues, directions about building a boat,
advertisements of shotgun shells with hunting dogs painted on them. At
last he found it--Prince's pedigree that Doctor Tolman had sent along
with Prince. He folded it carefully, stuck it in his pocket, and
replaced the other papers.

He was going to see some men at the club, he told Mary at breakfast. He
might take a little round. She could look for him when she saw him. She
insisted on putting up a lunch for him. She saw him getting back before
night, she laughed, when he protested. She came out on the porch with
him and patted him on the back when he went down the steps in his
patched old hunting coat, his gun stuck under his arm.

He went up the road in his long, lurching, huntsman's stride. Old Prince
raced ahead, then back to him, barking with joy, leaping into his face
like the athlete he was, his eyes almost fierce with eagerness. On every
side frost-sparkling strawfields, horizoned by pine woods, shimmered in
the sun. The air came fresh like cold spring water. Hundreds of times
before on such mornings he and Prince had set out this way. Hundreds of
times they had come home in the gloaming, Prince trotting behind, Jim's
hunting coat bulging with birds.

But this was to be no such hunt. A mile up the road he called the old
setter to him. Prince came in with drooped ears and upraised, bewildered
eyes. That was what hurt. That was what was going to hurt more and
more--that Prince would never understand.

They turned in between the stone gate posts of the club and up the walk
toward the white columns of the portico. Jim remembered a picture in
Martha's Bible of an old high priest going to an altar with a sheep
following behind. This was his place of sacrifice, and old Prince,
suddenly subdued, was trotting at his heels.

The