It was his only surcease. And as a rule, it was a poor one. For seldom did he have enough ready money to buy wholesale forgetfulness. More often he was able to purchase only enough hard cider or fuseloil whisky to make him dull and vaguely miserable. It was on his way home one Saturday night from such a rudimentary debauch at Hampton that his Adventure had its small beginning. For a half mile or so of Link's homeward pilgrimage--before he turned off into the grass-grown, rutted hill trail which led to his farm--his way led along a spur of the state road which linked New York City with the Ramapo hill country. And here, as Link swung glumly along through the springtide dusk, his ears were assailed by a sound that was something between a sigh and a sob--a sound as of one who tries valiantly to stifle a whimper of sharp pain. Ferris halted, uncertain, at the road edge; and peered about him. Again he heard the sound. And this time he located it in the long grass of the wayside ditch. The grass was stirring spasmodically, too, as with the half-restrained writhings of something lying close to earth there. Link struck a match. Shielding the flame, he pushed the tangle of grass to one side with his foot. There, exposed in the narrow space thus cleared and by the narrower radius of match flare, crouched a dog. The brute was huddled in a crumpled heap, with one foreleg stuck awkwardly out in front of him at an impossible angle. His tawny mass of coat was mired and oil streaked. In his deep-set brown eyes burned the fires of agony. Yet, as he looked up at the man who bent above him, the dog's gaze was neither fierce nor cringing. It held rather such an expression as, Dumas tells us, the wounded Athos turned to D'Artagnan--the aspect of one in sore need of aid, and too proud to plead for it. Link Ferris had never heard of Dumas, nor of the immortal musketeer. None the less, he could read that look. And it appealed to him, as no howl of anguish could have appealed. He knelt beside the suffering dog and fell to examining his hurts. The dog was a collie--beautiful of head, sweepingly graceful of line, powerful and heavy coated. The mud on his expanse of snowy chest frill and the grease on his dark brown back were easy to account for, even to Link Ferris's none-too-keen imagination. Link, in his own occasional trudges along this bit of state road, had often seen costly dogs in the tonneaus of passing cars. He had seen several of them scramble frantically to maintain their footing on the slippery seats of such cars; when chauffeurs took the sharp curve, just ahead, at too high speed. He had even seen one Airedale flung bodily from a car's rear seat at that curve, and out into the roadway; where a close-following motor had run over and killed it.