"I remember him well," said Patsy. "I fed him once."
"You poisoned him," said Billy the Music quickly.
"That's a hard word to say," replied Patsy, scraping at his chin.
Billy the Music looked very fixedly at him, and he also scraped meditatively at his bristles.
"It doesn't matter now," said he. "That was the dog. I made a place under his kennel. It was well made. If you had pulled the kennel aside you'd have seen nothing but the floor. Down there I kept the three boxes of gold, and while I'd be looking at them the dog would be lurching around wondering why he wasn't allowed to eat people—I was a bit timid with that dog myself—and it was one day while I was handling the money that the thing happened.
"There came a thump on the barn door. The dog made a noise away down in the heel of his throat and loped across; he stuck his nose against the crack at the bottom and began to sniff and scratch.
"'Strangers there,' said I. I put the money away quietly, lifted the kennel back to its place, and went over to open the door.
"There were two men standing outside, and the dog sprang for one of them as if he had been shot out of a gun.
"But that man was quick. He took the beast on the jump, caught him by the chaps, and slung him with a heave of his arm. I don't know where he slung him to; I never saw the dog alive after that, and I did think it was that jerk killed him."
"Begor!" said Patsy.