to snow, and rabbits are almost helpless before a swift pounce in the
snow.

The drifts grew deeper as he travelled north. Fields of dead cotton
stalks were varied by fields of withered corn stubble, yellow, broken
rows on white hills. There was an occasional big farmhouse now, a house
with white pillars like his master's, set in a grove of naked oaks. And
at last, following fence rows and hedges, lines of cylindrical cedars
climbed over and over high hills. The look of home was on the face of
nature, the smell of home was in the air.

It was a bitter cold afternoon when the mountains first took shape in
the distance. He could make them out, though the sky was heavily
overcast. Those were the mountains he saw every morning from the back
porch of his home. He barked at them as he ran. He would lie before his
own fire this night.

At dusk sudden hunger assailed him. On a hill was a big farmhouse, the
windows aglow, smoke veering wildly from the chimneys. And on the wind
came the smell of cooking meat. He stopped on an embankment, pricked his
ears, licked his chops. Then he scrambled down the embankment and like a
big fox made his way along a fence row toward that house from whence
came the smell of cooking meat. At the same time flakes of snow began to
drive horizontally across the white fields.

Suddenly from out the yard two stocky cream-coloured dogs rushed at him.
They came with incredible swiftness through the snow, considering their
short bench legs. Frank waited, head up, ears pricked. One was a female;
it was she who came first. He would not fight a female; he even wagged
his tail haughtily. But in a twinkling she was under him and had caught
his hind leg in a crushing, grinding grip. He lunged back, snarling, and
the other dog sprang straight at his throat.

He was down in the snow, he was on his feet again, he was ripping the
short back of the dog at his throat into shreds, his fangs flashing in
the dusk. He was dragging them by sheer strength off toward the
railroad; but he could not tear that grip from his hind leg, nor that
other grip from his throat.

He did not cry out--he was no yelping cur. But it was growing dark, the
air was full of snow, the grip was tightening on his throat, the other
grip had pulled him down at last to his haunches. Then two men came
running toward them, the one white, the other black. The white man
grabbed the dog at his throat, the black man the dog under him. The
white man