Bruce! Glorious old Brucie, whose progress had been McGilead’s own life-monument! To slink out of the ring—at his very last show, too—defeated by a puppy! Oh, this rotten cult of youth—youth—_youth_! He and Bruce were both back numbers at last. But were they? Bruce, bored by the long wait, nudged the Scotchman’s inert fist with his cold nose, and sought to shake hands. This diversion brought the judge back to earth. A gust of red rage set McGilead’s blood to swirling. On fierce impulse he straightened his bent figure and unveiled his sleepy-looking eyes in a glare of fury. He laid both hands on the head of the gallant old dog whom he idolised. “Bruce wins!” he proclaimed, his rasping voice as harsh as a file on rusty iron. “Bruce _wins_!” Wheeling on the Master, he croaked, in that same strained, rasping shout, the scrap of a schooldays’ quotation which had come often to his memory of late. “‘It’s safer playing with the lion’s whelp than with the old lion dying!’” he mouthed. “Bruce wins! Retire him, now! ‘Youth will be served.’ But not till us oldsters are out of the way. Clear the ring!” As he stamped from the enclosure he was buttonholed by a sporty-looking man whom he had met at many a show. “Mr. McGilead,” began the man, respectfully, “the Collie Club of the Union has appointed me a committee of one to engage you for judge at our annual show in November. Some of the members suggested a younger man. But the Old Guard held out for _you_. I was going to write, but—” “It’d have done you no good!” growled McGilead, sick with shame. “Let me alone!” “If it’s a question of price—” urged the puzzled man. “Price?” snarled McGilead, turning on him in senile fury. “_Price?_ There’s only one price. And I’ve paid it. I won’t judge at your show! I’ll never judge again at any show! My judging days are over! I’m a dead one! I’m an old, _old_ man, I tell you! I’m in my dotage! I—why, I couldn’t even trust myself, any more, to judge squarely. I’m _through_!” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ SIX: Lochinvar Bobby ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] SIX: Lochinvar Bobby When the first Angus Mackellar left his ancestral Lochbuy moors he brought to America the big, shaggy, broad-headed collie dog he loved—the dog that had helped him herd his employer’s sheep for the past five years. Man and dog landed at Castle Garden a half century ago. From that time on, as for three hundred years earlier, no member of the Mackellar family was without a collie; the best and wisest to be found. Evolution narrowed the heads and lightened the stocky frames of these collies, as the decades crawled past.