We humans often grope for the solution to some baffling mystery which eludes our sharpest intelligence, and whose key, could we but master it, lies within easy reach of us. So with Treve. The key to this disturbing new ranch development lay within six inches of his nose, in the form of a newspaper which had fallen from the porch rocker to the dusty floor. Had Treve been able to read type--as he could read human nature and weather signs and danger to the Dos Hermanos flocks--a front page news item in that paper might have told him much. The paper was the Santa Carlotta _Bugle_. The item had been written by the _Bugle’s_ proprietor, himself, in his best florid style. The proprietor, by the way, chanced to be the managing editor, the city editor, the reportorial staff and the printer of the paper. Also the business-and-advertising manager and office boy. The _Bugle_ was a one-man sheet. His front-page article ran: “Dan Cupid has been making a spring roundup of the ranch country, this season. We have had glad occasion to announce no less than four engagements and two marriages, in the Dos Hermanos Valley, during the past three months. We now take personal pleasure in retailing the latest romance from that garden spot of our fair state. “Mr. Royce Mack, younger partner of the popular sheep-ranchers, Fenno and Mack, of the Dos Hermanos Ranch outfit, is about to marry Miss Reine Houston, the lovely and popular and talented Fourth Grade teacher at the Ova school. “Miss Houston’s gain is the loss of the Dos Hermanos Valley; as the young couple plan to leave this section (which so aptly has been termed ‘God’s Country’), and to settle in the far and effete East, upon a well-stocked Vermont dairy farm which was recently bequeathed, along with a considerable cash legacy, to Mr. Mack, by his deceased maternal uncle. “The nuptials, we understand, will occur at the bride’s parental home in Dodge City, Kas., early next month. Miss Houston expects to leave Ova, Friday, to go home for her final wedding arrangements. Mr. Mack, we learn, will follow the first of the week.” There was more of the article, including a stanza of machine-made poetry, with a highly original reference to two hearts that beat as one. But no more is needed to explain the atmosphere of impending change which had begun to grate upon the collie’s nerves. For a long time this change had been coming. Treve had trotted across to Ova, evening after evening, for weeks alongside of Royce’s pinto. He had lain boredly on a rug in a stuffy little boarding house parlor, while his master forgot him and everything else in chatting with a plump girl who smelt annoyingly of lily-of-the-valley perfume. A girl who said at the outset that she didn’t care much for dogs and who asked if collies weren’t supposed to be treacherous.