Breed dogs as carefully and as scientifically as you will; once in a way some such specimen will be born into even the most blue-blooded litter;—a specimen whose looks defy all laws of clean heredity; a specimen which it would be gross flattery to call a mutt. One of three courses at such times can be followed by the luckless breeder: To kill the unfortunate misfit; to give it away to some child who may or may not maul it to death; or to swindle a buyer into paying a respectable price for it. Thriftily, Lucius Frayne had chosen the third course. And no law could touch him for the deal. He had played as safe, in his dirty trade, as does any vivisector. Mackellar had bought the dog, sight unseen. Frayne had guaranteed nothing save the pedigree, which was flawless. He had said the creature was the image of King at the same age. But he had said it in the presence of no witness save his own kennel man. And the statement, in any event, was hard of refutal by law. No; Frayne, like many another shrewd professional dog breeder, had played safe. And he had annexed one hundred and fifty dollars, in peril-earned hoardings, for a beast whose true cash value was less than eight cents to any one. He had not even bothered to give the cur a high-sounding pedigree name. There stood, or crouched, the trembling and whimpering wisp of worthlessness; while the Mackellar family looked on in dumb horror. To add to the pup’s ludicrous aspect, an enormous collar hung dangling from his neck. Frayne had been thrifty, in even this minor detail. Following the letter of the transportation rules, he had “equipped the dog with suitable collar and chain.” But the chain, which Jamie had unclasped in releasing the pup from the crate, had been a thing of rust and flimsiness. The collar had been outworn by some grown dog. To keep it from slipping off over the puppy’s head Roke had fastened to it a twist of wire, whose other end was enmeshed in the scattering short hairs of the youngster’s neck. From this collar’s ring still swung the last year’s license tag of its former wearer. It was little Elspeth who broke the awful spell of silence. "Looks—looks kind of—of measly, don’t he?“ she volunteered. ”_Jamie Mackellar!_" shrilled her mother, finding voice and wrath in one swift gasp. “You—you went and gambled with your life on them explosion trucks—and never told me a word about it till it was over—just to earn money to buy—to buy—_that_!” Then Jamie spoke. And at his first luridly sputtered sentence his wife shooed the children out of the room in scandalised haste. But from the cottage’s farthest end she could hear her spouse’s light voice still raised to shrill falsetto. He seemed to be in earnest converse with his Maker, and the absence of his wife and children from the room lent lustre and scope to his vocabulary.