She stooped to gather up other items of the scattered loot. Vail bent down to help her. In doing so, instinctively, he slackened his hold on Macduff’s collar. The dog took instant advantage of the chance to escape. Never pausing, he flashed toward the shut front door of the farmhouse. No time or need now to bark or to struggle. He was free--free to follow up the marvelous news that his sense of smell had imparted to him. Like a whirlwind he sprang up the hot brick walk to the closed door. “What on earth--?” began Miss Gregg, looking vexedly from her task of jewel-collecting as the flying collie sped past her. Then the half-uttered question died on her lips. For as Macduff cleared the wide flagstone in front of the threshold the farmhouse door swung open from within. In the doorway stood--or rather swayed--a man. The man was Clive Creede. The three intruders gaped in dazed unbelief at him. Vail and Miss Gregg were too stupefied to rise from the ground, but continued to crouch there, the recovered plunder in their stiffening fingers. Lawton blinked idiotically across the body of Osmun, his old face slack with crass incredulity. Yes, there in the threshold swayed Clive Creede. He was thin to emaciation, his hair was gray at the temples, and his face was grayer. He seemed about to topple forward from sheer weakness. His hollow eyes surveyed the group almost unseeingly. The man looked ten years older than did his dead brother. With a scream of agonized rapture--a scream all but human in its stark intensity--the collie hurled himself upon his long-absent master. Leaping high, he sought to lick the haggard face. His white forepaws beat an ecstatic tattoo on Clive’s chest. Dropping to earth, he swirled around Creede in whirlwind circles stomach to the ground, wakening the hot echoes with frantic yelps and shrieks of delight. Then, sinking down at Clive’s feet, he licked the man’s dusty boots and gazed up into his face in blissful adoration. The dog was shaking as with ague. After two years’ absence his god had come back to him. He had caught Clive’s scent--blurredly and uncertainly--through the sharp fragrance of the boxwood and the stillness of the air--as far off as the gateway. Every inch of the houseward journey had confirmed more and more his recognition of it. Then, just as he located the scent and sprang forward to find the unseen master, Thaxton Vail had collared him and checked his quest. But now he had come again to the feet of the man he worshiped. Henceforth Thaxton and all the rest of the world would be as nothing to the dog. He had re-found his god--the god for whom he had grieved these two dreary years--the god who most assuredly was not the “Clive Creede” that had imposed himself upon these mere humans.