Jamie laid down the paper and went into executive session with his own inner consciousness. A disk of metal, suspended from the throat of an animal, means but one thing. It is a license tag. Never has such a tag been fastened to a wolf. Back into Mackellar’s memory came the picture of a poor shivering waif from whose meagre and almost naked throat hung a huge collar; a collar affixed by wire which was wound into such sparse strands of hair as could be made to support it. On the morning after the next snowfall, Jamie took a day off. Carrying only a collar and chain and a muzzle, he fared forth into the woods. All day he hunted. He found nothing. A week later came another snowfall in the night. Next morning Mackellar set forth again; this time letting his little son Donald come along. He had told his family the far-fetched suspicion that had dawned upon him, and Donald had clamoured to join the hunt. On his first search, Jamie had quartered the country to west of the ridge. To-day he climbed the rocks and made his way into the rolling land below. Skirting Blake’s Woods, he was moving on toward the farms when, in the fresh snow, he came upon the tracks he sought. For an hour he followed them. Apparently they led nowhere. At least, they doubled twice upon themselves and then vanished on a long outcrop of snowless rock which stretched back into Blake’s Woods. Tiring of this fruitless way of spending the morning, Donald strayed from his father. Into the woods he wandered. And presently he sighted the dancing platform amid its tangle of dead weeds. Running over to it, the boy climbed thereon. Then, striking an attitude, he began to harangue an invisible audience, from the platform edge; after the manner of a cart-tail political orator he had observed with emulous delight. “My friends!” he shrilled, from memory, “Our anc’st’rs fit fer the lib’ty we enjoy! Are we goin’ to—? _Ouch!_ Hey, Daddy!” One rhetorically stamping little foot had smashed through the rotten boarding. Nor could Donald draw it out. At the yell of fright, Jamie came running. But, a few yards from his son, Mackellar slid to a stop. His eyes were fixed on an opening just below the boy’s imprisoned foot; an opening from which the passage of Donald’s advancing body had cleared aside some of the tangled weeds. From the tip of a ragged lath, at the edge of this aperture, fluttered a tuft of tawny hair. Pulling Donald free, Mackellar got down on all fours and peeped into the space beneath the platform. For a few seconds he could see nothing. Then, as his eyes accustomed themselves to the dimness, he descried two greenish points of light turned toward him from the farthest corner of the lair. “Bobby?” called the man doubtfully. The cornered dog heard the name. It roused vague half memories. The memories were not pleasant; though the voice had in it a friendliness that stirred the collie strangely.