Lionel Arthur Montagu Brean stood, for one brief instant, frozen with horror. Then he bolted through the back window of the shack; and ran at top speed to the nearest patch of cover. Nor did he slacken greatly his rapid retreat until he had put something like five miles between himself and Number Three camp. Even then he did not come to a halt, but kept on at such pace as he could muster. His haste and his continued flight were due only in part to the unmasking of his pretense that Treve was a trained sheep-worker. As he fled from the shack he snatched Joel Fenno’s vest from the back of the rancher’s chair. During breakfast he had noted the presence of a broken old wallet in the inside pocket of this momentarily discarded garment. From the ill-fastened top of the wallet he had seen protruding the fringed edges of a little roll of bills. And, as he fled, he took with him the price of his dog. Meantime, the partners reached the shack’s doorway just in time to see Treve come to a momentary halt as he eyed the far-scattering bunch of lambs. Something else was clawing at the collie’s heartstrings. Something he could not account for was striking into his young brain. Ancestry was gripping him; even as it has gripped scores of other untrained collies at their first sight of galloping sheep. This atavism takes a murderous turn, in some such dogs; but in a few instances it plays true to form. Treve halted for only an instant. Then, like a furry whirlwind, he was off after the lambs. Working wholly by instinct, he flashed past three of them that were racing neck and neck. Then, almost without breaking his stride, he wheeled, sweeping the bleating trio ahead of him toward two more strays. He bunched the five in some semblance of scared order, then darted away to the remaining strays, driving them, singly or in pairs, toward the nucleus he had formed. Again and again he tore around this nucleus, as it tried to scatter; welding it firm again. When the last stray had been added to it, he set the compact bunch in motion. Brean was somewhere back there by the shack. To Brean, if to any one now, he owed allegiance. And to Brean he resolved to drive his baa-ing and milling lambs. Thus it was that the partners, in the doorway, saw the young dog round up the bunch and bring it toward them. “A little ragged in spots, his work is,” commented Royce Mack. “But for a young dog it isn’t so bad. Maybe they train ’em ragged, over in England. We might do worse than take him, if we can buy him cheap. We’re a dog short, since that rattler got Zippy. Besides, the pup’s got a way with him that makes a hit with me. We can easy train that roughness out of him.” He lowered his voice, and spoke with his lips close to Fenno’s ear; lest Brean catch his words Joel looked about; as, at a wide-arm shooing from the shepherd, the lambs bolted into the marking yard with the joyous collie at their heels.