was pounding the dog's nose with his fist, was cramming snow
down his bloody mouth.

"They'll kill him, Will!" he panted. "Go get some water to throw in
their faces."

The black man disappeared running--came back running, a bucket in each
hand.

And now it was over, and off there the white man held both his dogs by
their collars. They were panting, their wrinkled eyes half closed, their
mouths dripping bloody foam. For many yards around the snow was churned
into little hillocks. And there lay old Frank, panting hard, head up,
eyes shining.

"Pick him up, Will!" said the white man. "His leg's broke."

"Cap'n," said the negro, "I'm afraid of him."

The white man swore, shaking his dogs angrily. That was some man's bird
dog, a fine one, too.

"I believe that's Steve Earle's setter, from Freedom Hill across the
river!" he cried above the wind. "By George, I believe that's just who
it is! We'll go and get the sled!"

But when they hurried back with the sled the wounded dog was gone. They
followed his bloodstained tracks across the field, up the embankment,
and to the railroad. They looked at them between the rails, fast filling
with snow. The white man put his hands to his ears.

"He'll freeze to-night," he said.

In the teeth of the wind, like a three-legged automaton, Frank was
fighting his way doggedly through the night. The wind almost blew him
off the embankments; the swirling waves of snow choked him. Maybe he
would have lain down, maybe it would have happened as the man said, if
it had not been for the spirit within him and for what he saw.

For just before him the superstructure of an iron trestle rose pencilled
in snow against the night. Far below a black river wound serpentine into
the mists. A mile to the left, he knew, was Squire Kirby's. In those
dim bottoms on either side of the trestle he and his master and the
squire had hunted a hundred times. The birds had scattered on those
wooded hills now vibrant with the blast. Out on the trestle he picked
his slow, hesitating way.

Suddenly he cried out sharply. A mighty gust of wind striking him in
mid-air and almost hurling him into the blackness below had caused him
to put down as a brace his wounded hind leg. Gasping, trembling, he lay
down for a minute on the whitened ties, one leg hanging through. Then he
rose and doggedly picked his way on.

On the high embankment at the other side of the trestle he stopped and,
in spite of the blood stiffened u