"Oh, met a stray dog back near the broken jetty. Seems like he was 'most starved. I didn't bring more grub than I needed, but if you've got a bit of bread and meat you can spare——"
"Sure! Here! Take a sandwich. Wife put me up three to-night. Two's all I need. Nasty bit of weather!"
"Regular rip-snorter!"
They parted, and as Sig neared the place where he had last seen the dog he whistled and called. He waited, but no slinking form came from the wet sand dunes.
"Come on, boy!" called the guard, raising his voice. "I got meat for ye! Come here!"
He whistled and flashed his light, but the waif did not come.
"Poor little red pup," murmured Sig. "I'd like to get hold of the man who beat you! Well, I'll put this away for you. I'll be back here in about two hours."
The "red pup," as Sig had called him, had really thought the big man in the yellow coat was driving him away. "Ruddy," to give him the name he was afterward called by, had been driven away often of late. His life had not been a glad one.
Dimly he remembered some puppy days; brief, happy ones with his mother. The other, and following days and weeks were spent among boxes and barrels of refuse on a street in a big city that bordered the river front—where big ships tied up at the docks.
Then Ruddy had a dim recollection of a big bearded man, with hob nails in his shoes, who took him away from the yard where the red pup had spent some of his early and first unhappy days. And the nails in the shoes of the big bearded man hurt when he used them on Ruddy as he did—far too often.