And then suddenly the sheep-dog completely changed, as though by magic. His flame died down to still, white fire; his jaws ceased to clash; his ferocious snarl died away into deadly silence; he crouched like a lynx at bay. At that moment Jan's number was very nearly up, for Grip had coldly determined to kill. He had practically ceased fighting. He was merely sparring defensively now, with bloody murder in his blue eyes, watching grimly for his opening--the opening through which he was wont to end his serious fights, the opening which would yield him the death-hold. Jan, who knew naught of death-holds, and was at this moment blind to every consideration in life save that of combat, would assuredly yield the fatal opening within a very few seconds; and that being so, it was a small matter to Grip that in the mean time the youngster should rob him of a little fur and blood and skin. No orders, no suasion, could touch Grip now; neither could any form of attack move his anger. He was about to kill; and, for him, that fact filled the universe. At last the moment arrived. When the breath was out of Jan's body after a missed rush, he stumbled badly in wheeling, and almost choked as the spume of blood and froth and fur flew from his aching jaws. At that psychological moment Grip, balanced to the perfection of a hair-spring, and calmly calculating, leaped upon him from the side, and brought the youngster's four feet into the air at one time. That was the opening, and, in the same second, Grip's jaws sprang apart to profit by it and to inclose Jan's throat in a final and sufficing hold. And then, as a medieval observer might have said, the heavens opened and a whirling vision of gray-clad muscle and gleaming fangs descended from the high hedge-top, landing fairly and squarely athwart Grip's back. For a moment the sheep-dog sprawled, paralyzed by this inexplicable event. In that moment his last chance was lost. The new arrival had whirled his huge body clear and gripped the sheep-dog's neck in jaws longer and more powerful than those of any other dog in Sussex. Grip weighed close upon ninety pounds; but he was shaken and battered now from side to side, very much as a rat is shaken by a terrier. And, finally, with one tremendous lift of the greatest neck the hound world has known, Grip was flung clear to the far side of the lane, at the very feet of his master, who promptly grabbed him by the collar and, as though to complete Finn's prescription, hammered him repeatedly upon the nose with his clenched fist. "I'll larn'ee to answer me--by cripes, I will!" quoth David.