The mastiff yelped, snapped wildly at his strange antagonist, and then, finding himself held so that he could not by any possibility get a grip, strove to leap into the air and shake his assailant off. But the Pup held him down inexorably, his long teeth cutting deeper and deeper with every struggle. For perhaps half a minute the fight continued, the mad contortions of the entangled three (for Toby still clung to his grip on the foe's hind paw) tearing up the snow for a dozen feet in every direction. The snow was flecked with crimson,--but suddenly, with a throbbing gush, it was flooded scarlet. The Pup's teeth had torn through the great artery of his opponent's neck. With a cough the brute fell over, limp and unresisting as a half-filled bran sack. At this moment the mastiff's owner, belatedly aware that the tables were being turned on his vicious favorite, came yelling and cursing over the gate, brandishing a sled stake in his hands. But at the same time arrived Captain Ephraim, rushing bareheaded from the kitchen, and stepped in front of the new arrival. One glance had shown him that the fight was over. "Hold hard there, Baiseley!" he ordered in curt tones. Then he continued more slowly--"It ain't no use makin' a fuss. That murderin' brute of yourn begun it, an' come into my yard to kill my own little tike here. He's got just what he deserved. An' if the Pup here hadn't 'a' done it, I'd 'a' done it myself. See?" Baiseley, like his mongrel follower, was a bully. But he had discretion. He calmed down. "That there dog o' mine, Captain Ephraim, was a good dog, an' worth money. I reckon ye'll hev to pay me ten dollars for that dog, an' we'll call it square." "Reckon I'll have to owe it to ye, Hank! Mebbe I'll pay it some day when you git han'somer 'n you are now!" laughed Captain Ephraim dryly. He gave a piercing whistle through his teeth. Straightway Toby, sadly bedraggled, came limping up to him. The Pup let go of his dead enemy, and lifted his head to eye his master inquiringly. His whole front was streaming with blood. "Go wash yerself!" ordered the captain picking up a chip and hurling it into the pond, which was now half empty of ice. The Pup floundered off obediently to get the chip, and Baiseley, muttering inarticulate abuse, slouched away to his sled. CHAPTER III Toward the end of April there came a great change in the Pup's affairs. Primarily, the change was in Captain Ephraim's. Promoted to the command of a smart schooner engaged in cod-fishing on the Grand Banks, he sold his cottage at Eastport and removed his family to Gloucester, Massachusetts. At the same time, recognizing with many a pang that a city like Gloucester was no place for him to keep a seal in, he sold the Pup, at a most consoling price indeed, to the agent of an English animal trainer. With the prospect of shortly becoming the cynosure of all eyes at Shepherd's Bush or Earl's Court, the Pup was shipped on a freighter for Liverpool.