At once, on the invitation, King forgot his accruing years and his dignity. With a bound he was at Nina’s side. Together the two raced madly across the yard and across the yellow road and on up into the hills.
It was a wonderful night for such a wild run. Pure-breed and cross-breed were obsessed by the urge of it all. Forgotten was King’s stolidly loyal intent to lie on the chilly mat until Shawe should return. Forgotten was the wistful loneliness that had saddened Nina since the departure of the two children.
As the dogs bounded across the bright road, the kennelman, returning from a stroll, caught sight of them and recognised them. He shouted to King to come to heel. The champion did not so much as look back. At Shawe’s call he would have obeyed—though with vast reluctance. But this man was a hireling. And no dog knows better than a collie the wide difference in the loyal obedience due to a master and the negligible civility due to an employee. So King kept on, at the shoulder of his galloping new mate.
When Shawe, late in January, followed the kennelman into the corner of a disused stall and stared down at Nina, his face was creased in a frown of disgust.
There, deep in a pile of bedding, lay the big young cross-bred dog. She looked up at the visitors with a welcoming glint of her round brown eyes and a thumping wag of her bushy tail. She was happy at their notice. She was inordinately proud of what they had come to see.
Snuggled close against her side squirmed seven puppies. They were three days old. A more motley collection could not have been found in dogdom.
Two were short-haired and bullet-headed, and were white except for a brindle spot or two on head and hip. Throwbacks, these, to their warlike grandsire, Upstreet Butcherboy. Three more were intermediate of aspect, and might or might not be going to have long coats. A sixth was enough like a thoroughbred collie to have passed muster in almost any newborn collie litter.
Over this harlequin sextette Shawe’s contemptuous glance strayed. Then his gaze focused on the seventh pup. And the frown was merged into a look of blank incredulity.
The pup was lying an inch or two away from his dam, and several inches from the huddle of brothers and sisters. Every line of him was clearly visible and distinct from the rest.
To a layman, he looked like any three-day-old collie. To Shawe he did not. Any collie expert will tell you that at the age of three days a pup gives far truer promise of his future appearance—to the trained eye—than he gives at three months. To the man who knows, there is a look—to the head, especially—that foreshadows the lines of maturity.