The dog heard and most gleefully he obeyed. As the triumphant Shunk drew tight the noose about his victim’s neck and sought to bring the landing net into play, Chum launched himself, like a furry catapult, full at the man’s throat. And now there was no hint of fun or of mischief in the collie’s deep-set dark eyes. They flamed into swirling fury. He had received the word to attack. And he obeyed with a fiery zest. So may Joffre’s grim legions have felt, in 1914, when, at the Marne, they were told they need no longer keep up the hated retreat, but might turn upon their German foes and pay the bill for the past months’ humiliations. As the furious collie sprang, Shunk instinctively sought to clap the landing net’s thick meshes over Chum’s head. But the dog was too swift for him. The wooden side of the net smote, almost unfelt, against the fur-protected skull. The impact sent it flying out of its wielder’s grasp. The blow checked the collie’s charge by the barest instant. And in that instant, Shunk wheeled and fled. Just behind him was a shellbark tree, with a low limb jutting out above the lane. Shunk dropped his coat and leaped for this overhanging limb as Chum made a second dash for him. The man’s fingers closed round the branch and he sought to draw himself up, screaming loudly for help. The scream redoubled in volume and scaled half an octave in pitch as the pursuing collie’s teeth met in Shunk’s calf. His flabby muscles galvanised by pain and by terror, the man made shift to drag his weight upward and to fling a leg over the branch. But as the right leg hooked itself across the bough, the dangling left leg felt a second embrace from the searing white teeth, in a slashing bite that clove through trouser and sock and skin and flesh and grated against the bone itself. Screeching and mouthing, Shunk wriggled himself up onto the branch and lay hugging it with both arms and both punctured legs. Below him danced and snarled Chum, launching himself high in air, again and again, in a mad effort to get at his escaped prey. Then the dog turned to the approaching Ferris in stark appeal for help in dislodging the intruder from his precarious perch. “That’s enough, Chummie!” drawled Link. “Leave him be!” He petted the dog’s head and smiled amusedly at Chum’s visible reluctance in abandoning the delightful game of man treeing. At a motion of Ferris’s hand, the collie walked reluctantly away and lay down beside Dorcas. Chum could never understand why humans had such a habit of calling him off—just when fun was at its height. It was like this when he ran stray cattle off the farm or chased predatory tramps. Still, Link was his god; obedience was Chum’s creed. Wherefore, so far as he was concerned, Eben Shunk ceased to exist. The dog catcher noted the cessation of attack. And he ceased his own howls. He drew himself to a painful sitting posture on the tree limb and began to nurse one of his torn legs.