"And Osborne—and Haynes?" asked Webb. "They did quite as much as I."
Captain M'Bride shrugged his shoulders.
"I cannot offer any opinion," he replied. "All I know is that they were mentioned in my dispatch. Perhaps recognition in their case will come later."
On the seventeenth day following Laddie's operation, the plate and the plaster of Paris were removed. To everyone's satisfaction the operation was perfectly successful.
"Good old boy!" exclaimed Webb. "Now we'll take you to your master."
Osborne was reported to be fit to receive visitors that afternoon. A regular crowd of officers expressed their intention of paying congratulatory calls, but at the suggestion of the surgeon the number was limited to three—Captain M'Bride, and the two men who had been chiefly instrumental in Laddie's recovery, Webb and Dixon.
"I think, in view of previous experience, it would be as well to walk in the centre of the street," said Captain M'Bride, as the trio made their way along the lane where Osborne had been treacherously struck down.
"Rather, sir!" agreed Webb; then—"Oh, dash it all! Now what's going to happen?"
For a large native cur, emerging from a squalid hovel, had suddenly hurled himself upon the unsuspecting Laddie, and in an instant both dogs were engaged in a terrific combat.