Produced by Al Haines. _*The Scratch Pack*_ _*By Dorothea Conyers.*_ _Author of "The Strayings of Sandy," "Meave," etc._ _LONDON: HUTCHINSON & CO. PATERNOSTER ROW 1916_ *THE SCRATCH PACK* *CHAPTER I* "If there even appeared to be the faintest reason for his not going into something," said Gheena severely. Then she put her hand on the collar of the nondescript cur named Crabbit, an animal which was not precisely an Irish terrier and not quite a retriever, had some distant connections in the house of spaniels, and other relations too varied to trace, the result of this liberally scattered ancestry being endowed with a silky-red coat, and liquid, truthful eyes which expressed his powers of affection, but not the original sin behind his broad forehead. "You will get a cold in your nose and snuffle at dinner if you go into the water again, Crabbit. No, sir! If there could be the faintest reason for it," went on Gheena Freyne. "If he was like Dick Kennedy, who has no one to help him, or half blind like Professor Brown, or couldn’t walk——" She stopped, flushing, and took up her knitting. "Like me—yes, Gheena." The words came lightly, but a little half stifled twisted sigh slipped from Darby Dillon’s lips. Darby had been a light-hearted, long-limbed soldier in days of peace. If you saw him sitting down or in the saddle, and came up at his right side, he was apparently long limbed and good-looking still: a lean well-built man of about thirty-five, but at the left side Darby’s shoulder stooped; he shuffled with one limb stiff and useless, generally with a crutch under his shoulder. A crashing fall playing polo on hard Egyptian ground had left him maimed and crippled. "I—did.... I wasn’t. He’s gone again," said Gheena philosophically. A streak of red had tumbled over the brow of the low cliff, and a resounding splash marked the fact that Crabbit was once more in hot pursuit of seagulls, the hope to seize one unawares being embedded deeply in him. "He is off to that rock where they all sit on. Mother gets quite worried when he snuffles under her chair and thinks it is bits or perhaps he is going mad. Why do some people"—Gheena whistled impotently—"never get a grip of life, Darby? Mummie can’t ever think about Crabbit without asking Dearest if it isn’t right—Aren’t the dog’s nose noises suspicious? Darby—I—I never meant to refer to anyone." Darby said cheerily that he knew it, and that one got used to a lost leg, even if it meant other losses—here his eyes clouded—and that a fellow who could sit on a saddle need never grumble.