At the roadside, some fifty yards from the plank bridge, were two dogs. Evidently there had just been a dreadful fight. Here and there a stone was streaked with blood. The grass and smaller bushes were flattened out, and tufts of hair were scattered about upon the ground. Of the two dogs, Lloyd recognised one upon the instant. It was Dan, the "liver'n white" fox-hound of the farmhouse--the fighter and terror of the country. But he was lying upon his side now, the foreleg broken, or rather crushed, as if in a vise; the throat torn open, the life-blood in a great pool about his head. He was dead, or in the very throes of death. Poor Dan, he had fought his last fight, had found more than his match at last. Lloyd looked at the other dog--the victor; then looked at him a second time and a third. "Well," she murmured, "that's a strange-looking dog." In fact, he was a curious animal. His broad, strong body was covered with a brown fur as dense, as thick, and as soft as a wolf's; the ears were pricked and pointed, the muzzle sharp, the eyes slant and beady. The breast was disproportionately broad, the forelegs short and apparently very powerful. Around his neck was a broad nickelled collar. But as Lloyd sat in the cart watching him he promptly demonstrated the fact that his nature was as extraordinary as his looks. He turned again from a momentary inspection of the intruders, sniffed once or twice at his dead enemy, then suddenly began to eat him. Lloyd's gorge rose with anger and disgust. Even if Dan had been killed, it had been in fair fight, and there could be no doubt that Dan himself had been the aggressor. She could even feel a little respect for the conqueror of the champion, but to turn upon the dead foe, now that the heat of battle was past, and (in no spirit of hate or rage) deliberately to eat him. What a horror! She took out her whip. "Shame on you!" she exclaimed. "Ugh! what a savage; I shan't allow you!" A farm-hand was coming across the plank bridge, and as he drew near the cart Lloyd asked him to hold Rox for a moment. Rox was one of those horses who, when standing still, are docile as a kitten, and she had no hesitancy in leaving him with a man at his head. She jumped out, the whip in her hand. Dan was beyond all help, but she wanted at least to take his collar back to Mrs. Applegate. The strange dog permitted himself to be driven off a little distance. Part of his strangeness seemed to be that through it all he retained a certain placidity of temper. There was no ferocity in his desire to eat Dan. "That's just what makes it so disgusting," said Lloyd, shaking her whip at him. He sat down upon his haunches, eyeing her calmly, his tongue lolling. When she had unbuckled Dan's collar and tossed it into the cart under the seat she inquired of the farm-hand as to where the new dog came from. "It beats me, Miss Searight," he answered; "never saw such a bird in these parts before; t'other belongs down to Applegate's."