Tiny Tim had known but one master, and but one code of sportsmanship; he responded to but one set of signals; he had never been curbed in his range or speed; he had never been scolded or shouted at or beaten, but he had received much of love and caressing and praise. He had been fed properly, housed properly, wormed regularly every three months, bathed every Saturday afternoon and brushed and combed almost every day, and as a result he was an extremely healthy dog, albeit a small dog, even among small, field type English setters. Dan Pelly loved him just a little bit more because he was a runt and because, though royally bred, his bearing was a bit ignoble. "I'll have none of your bench type setters," Dan was wont to remark when speaking of setters. "I could weep from just lookin' at them--the poor boobs, with their domed foreheads and their sad, bloodshot eyes and dribbling chops. Too heavy and slow for anybody but a fat man. An hour's hard going of a warm day and they're done. I'll have a light, neat little setter for a long, hard, drivin' day of it." Dan Pelly's choice of dog was an index to his character. He, too, was a light, compact little man, with something of a lost dog's wistfulness about him. Dan didn't like pointers. They were too aggressive, too headstrong, too noisy for him. The sight of a bulldog or a bull terrier or an Airedale made him angry, for such dogs could always be depended upon to pounce upon a shooting dog and worry him. Toy dogs depressed him. They seemed so unworthy of human attention and moreover they had no brains. This morning Dan Pelly was more than ordinarily unhappy. He needed five hundred dollars worse than he needed salvation . . . And only the day before while he and Tim had been working a patch of low cover just off the county road, a man in a very expensive automobile driven by a liveried chauffeur had paused in the road to watch them. Presently Tim had made one of those spectacular points which always give a real dog lover a thrill. In mid-air, while leaping over a small bush, he had caught the scent of a quail crouching close under that bush. He had landed with his body half turned toward the bush, his head had swung around and there he had stood, "frozen." Dan had walked up, kicked the bird out, waited until the quail was forty yards away and fired. Meanwhile Tim had broken point and, head up, was following the flushed bird with anxious eyes. As the gun barked the bird flinched slightly but did not reduce its speed. Wings spread stiffly, it sailed away out of sight and Dan Pelly, seeing himself watched by the man in the motor car, grinned deprecatingly. "Missed him a mile," he called. "You let him get too far away before you fired," the stranger replied with that hearty camaraderie which always obtains between lovers of upland shooting.