He continued to live with Pitchdark and to travel with her and to hunt with her; not because he needed to, but because he loved her. To this temperamental black-and-silver vixen went out all the loyal devotion and hero-worship and innate protectiveness which a normal collie lavishes on the human who is his god. Together they roved the mountain, where Pitchdark’s technique and craft bagged illimitable game for them. Together on dark nights they scouted the farm-valleys, where Ruff’s strength and odd audacity won them access to hencoop after hencoop whose rickety door would have resisted a fox’s onslaught. Twice, Ruff forced his way through the rotting palings of a sheepfold and bore thence to his admiring foster-mother a lamb that was twice as heavy as Pitchdark. Once in open field he fought and outmanœuvred and thrashed a sheep-herding mongrel; dragging off in triumph a half-grown wether. There were things about Pitchdark the young collie could not understand; just as there were traits of his which baffled her keen wits. To him a grape vineyard was a place whose sole interest centred about any possible field-mouse nests in its mould. An apple orchard had as little significance to him. He would pause and look in questioning surprise as Pitchdark stopped, during their progress through an orchard, to munch happily at a fallen harvest apple; or while she stood daintily on her hindlegs to strip grapevines of their ripening clusters. The fable of the fox and the sour grapes had its basis in natural history. For the fox, almost alone of carnivora, loves fruit. Ruff cared nothing for it. Few collies do. Also, he could see no reason for Pitchdark’s rapture when they chanced upon the rotting carcasses of animals. True, he felt an æsthetic thrill in rubbing first one shoulder and then the other in such liquescent carrion and then in rolling luxuriously over on his back in it. But it was not good to eat. Ruff knew that. Yet Pitchdark devoured it in delight. On the other hand, when the two came upon a young hawk that had fallen from its pine-top nest, Pitchdark gave one sniff at the broken bird of prey; and then pattered on, leaving it alone. Ruff killed and ate it with relish. By the first cool days of autumn, Ruff stood twenty-four inches at the shoulder. He would have tipped the scales at a fraction above fifty pounds. His gold-red winter coat was beginning to come in, luxuriantly and with a sheen such as only the pelt of a forest-dweller can boast. His young chest was deep. His shoulders were broad and sinewy. His build was that of a wild beast; not of a domesticated dog. Diet and tremendous exercise and his mode of life had wrought that vast difference.