"Quarterman, without answering, stopped in the middle of the room some distance from the fire, laid his gun on the table, reached around for his bird-bag, thrust in his hand, drew out a small quail--all he had shot--and threw it with all his might against the wall of the fireplace, where it dropped into the ashes--threw it as a boy would throw a brick against a fence. Then with a vicious hind thrust of his boot he kicked the setter in the face. The dog gave a cry of pain and crawled under the table and out of the room. "'What luck!' growled Quarterman. 'Footed it fifteen miles clear to Pottsburg, and that damned dog scared up every bird before I could get a shot at it!' and without another word he mounted the stairs to his room. "His opinion of the dog was now common property. If any man who had heard it disagreed with him, he kept his opinion to himself. But what I wanted to know was what the setter thought of Quarterman? He had followed him all day through swamps and briars; had run, jumped, crept on his belly, sniffed, scented, and nosed into every tuft of grass and brush-heap where a quail could hide itself; had walked miles to the man's one, leaped fences, scoured hills, raced down country roads and over ditches, had pointed and flushed a dozen birds the brute couldn't hit, and after doing his level best had come back to the club-house expecting to get a warm corner and a hot supper--his right as well as Quarterman's--and instead got a kick in the face. "I ask you now, what did the dog think of him? I was so mad I had to go outside and let off steam myself. I was half Quarterman's weight and ten years his senior, but if he had stayed five minutes longer by that fire I am quite sure I should have told him what I thought of him." "I bet you told the dog, didn't you, Mac?" remarked Lonnegan. "Yes, I did. Gave him a hug, and hunted up the cook and saw he was fed. He tried to tell me all about it, putting out his paw and drawing it in again, looking up into my face with his big eyes--tears in 'em, I tell you--real tears! Not so much from the hurt as from the mortification. I understood then his shrinking away from his master. It hadn't been the first time he had been humiliated and hurt. Dirty brute! If I knew where he was I think I'd go and thrash him now." The coterie broke out into a laugh over Mac's indignation, but a laugh in which there was more love than ridicule. "Yes, I would; I feel like it this minute. But I tell you the setter got his revenge; a revenge that showed his blood and breeding; the revenge of a gentleman.