Bobby’s aimless course took him past one end of the platform, as soon as he discovered it was harmless and deserted. A furtive sidelong glance, midway of the latticed stretch, showed him a weed-masked hole some two feet square, where the laths had been ripped away or had been kicked in. The sight awoke vague submemories, centuries old, in the artificially reared pup. Thus had his wolf forbears seen, and explored for den purposes, gaps between rocks or under windfalls. Bobby, moving with scared caution, crept up to the opening, sniffed its musty interior; and, step by step, ventured in under the platform. Here it was still bitter cold; yet it was sensibly warmer than in the open. And, year after year, dead leaves had been wind-drifted through the gap. Riffles of them lay ankle deep near the entrance. Down into the thickest of the riffles the wretched puppy wiggled his shivering way. There he lay, still shaking, but gaining what scant comfort he might from the warmth of the leaves beneath and around him. Presently from sheer nervous fatigue he snoozed. It was past midnight when Bobby awoke. He was awakened less by cold than by ravening hunger. His was not the normal increase of appetite that had come upon him at such times as the Lochinvar kennel men had been an hour or so late with his dinner. This was the first phase of famine. Fear and discomfort had robbed him of hunger throughout the train journey. But now he was safe away from the strangers who had seemed to menace his every move; and he had had a few hours of sleep to knit his frayed nerves. He was more than hungry. He was famished. All his nature cried out for food. Now, never in his brief life had Lochinvar Bobby found his own meals. Never had he so much as caught a mouse or rifled a garbage pail. In sanitary man-made kennel run and hutch had he passed all his time. Not his had been the human companionship which sharpens a collie’s brain as much as does stark need. And he had no experience of food, save that which had been served him in a tin dish. He did not know that food grows in any other form or place. But here was no tin dish heaped with scientifically balanced, if uninspired, rations. Here was no manner of food at all. Bobby nosed about among the dead leaves and the mould of his new-found den. Nothing was there which his sense of smell recognised as edible. And goaded by the scourge of hunger he ventured out again into the night. The wind had dropped. But the cold had only intensified; and a light snow was still sifting down. Bobby stood and sniffed. Far off, his sensitive nostrils told him, was human habitation. Presumably that meant food was there, too. Humans and food, in Bobby’s experience, always went together. The pup followed the command of his scent and trotted dubiously toward the distant man-reek.