The young woman in a raincoat came out in the back yard and held the streaming lantern while the man arranged some sacks underneath the porch and closed and bolted the back gate. He heard them go up the back steps, heard them moving about in the house. Like a decent old fellow he licked the rain from his silken coat, smoothed out the matted strands, then curled up comfortably in his dry bed and slept deep and long. He stayed with them a week, while strength returned to his muscles, fire to his eyes, courage to his heart. But as he lay before their hearth at night he saw always in his mind that other fire--the fire of home. The stars were still shining that morning when he scrambled over the high back fence and was gone. But it was with new life and confidence that he continued his journey. He slunk no more on the outskirts of towns; he passed boldly through. Fortune favoured him now; on the second day after he left them he ran into snow, and rabbits are almost helpless before a swift pounce in the snow. The drifts grew deeper as he travelled north. Fields of dead cotton stalks were varied by fields of withered corn stubble, yellow, broken rows on white hills. There was an occasional big farmhouse now, a house with white pillars like his master's, set in a grove of naked oaks. And at last, following fence rows and hedges, lines of cylindrical cedars climbed over and over high hills. The look of home was on the face of nature, the smell of home was in the air. It was a bitter cold afternoon when the mountains first took shape in the distance. He could make them out, though the sky was heavily overcast. Those were the mountains he saw every morning from the back porch of his home. He barked at them as he ran. He would lie before his own fire this night. At dusk sudden hunger assailed him. On a hill was a big farmhouse, the windows aglow, smoke veering wildly from the chimneys. And on the wind came the smell of cooking meat. He stopped on an embankment, pricked his ears, licked his chops. Then he scrambled down the embankment and like a big fox made his way along a fence row toward that house from whence came the smell of cooking meat. At the same time flakes of snow began to drive horizontally across the white fields. Suddenly from out the yard two stocky cream-coloured dogs rushed at him. They came with incredible swiftness through the snow, considering their short bench legs. Frank waited, head up, ears pricked. One was a female; it was she who came first. He would not fight a female; he even wagged his tail haughtily. But in a twinkling she was under him and had caught his hind leg in a crushing, grinding grip. He lunged back, snarling, and the other dog sprang straight at his throat.