He had never been allowed to follow the buggy to Breton. "It corrupts the morals of a dog to loaf around a railroad station," Earle had always said. But this morning he stole secretly after the buggy, and trotted under the rear axle unobserved by Earle and Tommy. A mile down the road he thought it safe to show himself. He ran eagerly around the buggy, as if he had suddenly conceived the idea of going with them, had just overtaken them, and had no doubt whatever of his welcome. "Go back!" ordered Earle. He stopped, ears thrown back, with that banal expression on his face of a dog pretending not to understand. The histrionic excellence of the performance was not lost on Tommy, who laughed out loud. "Let him go, Popper." "All right--you rascal!" Frank ran ahead, barking up into the blazed face of the sorrel. Five miles farther from the crest of a hill they looked down on the village of Breton Junction, with the squat, sunlit roof of the station in the middle--box cars grouped about, semaphore above, and long lines of telegraph poles that came from out the south and disappeared into the north--one of those small centres in a vast nerve system that controls the activities of a continent. At sight of station and box cars, at the sound of a freight engine hissing lazily, Frank came back to the buggy and looked up inquiringly into the faces of man and boy. When at a store awning Earle tied the horse, he followed close at their heels, confidence suddenly gone out of him. Association and instinct stirred vague recollections of a former life. Whence came that hissing engine? Where led those long flashing rails that disappeared into the blue of distant hills? In a littered room, heated by a pot-bellied stove, with an instrument on a table that rattled monotonously like a mechanical species of cricket, a man handed Earle a crate of shotgun shells. Then twinkling, he looked down at the wide-eyed boy and the big red dog who stuck close to the boy. "Steve, which do you think most of? Dog or boy?" Earle laughed. "Hard to tell, Bill. On the whole, Tommy takes precedence." "Ever find out where the dog came from?" "No; and that's not all, Bill--I don't want to. All right, young man, let's get back home." Frank sprang out of the door and ran for the buggy. His fears had vanished with the turning of his back on this reminder of things past. But when Earle and Tommy did not follow, he came dejectedly back. Tommy wanted to wait and see the train; he had never seen but one, he pleaded--that was a "fate" train. Far down the track a fateful whistle blew. Above them, the semaphore dropped with a clang. "Come, F'ank!" shouted Tommy, dancing with excitement.