Presently, the dusty runabout rounded the bend, a furlong beyond. Royce Mack was driving it. At his side sat a plump and slackly pretty figure in billowy white. Treve was too far away to catch the reek of lily-of-the-valley. But he knew it would assail and torture his keen nostrils soon enough. The dog got to his feet, with a bark of welcome. He was about to lope forward to meet the car and escort Mack to the house, when Joel Fenno, hearing the bark, stumped out of the kitchen doorway behind him. The old man had come from work, with Treve at his heels, a half-hour early that day. Now he reappeared from his bedroom, crossly uncomfortable in his store clothes; his neck teased by a frayed collar-edge and further girt with a ready-made tie of awesome coloring. If his bulls-eye emerald scarfpin had been genuine, it would have been worth more than the entire ranch. His new boots squeaked groaningly on the porch floor. The collie, wondering at such change in his friend’s costume and bearing, halted in his scarce-begun journey toward the approaching car and stared, with head on one side. “Sure!” growled Fenno. “Sure! Keep a-lookin’ at me, Trevy. I’m sure wuth it. If ’twasn’t that he’s leavin’ here for good, in a day or two, I’d ’a’ saw him in blue blazes before I’d ’a’ rigged me up like this, on a hot week-day; jes’ ’cause he took a idee to ask her over to eat supper with us, to-night. I feel like I was to a fun’ral, Trevy.” As he spoke, Joel was strolling down the dusty walk, toward the gateway, to give such sour welcome as he might to his partner’s sweetheart. The collie abandoned his own intent to gambol ahead; and paced sedately along at Joel’s side. The average high-class collie has reduced snobbishness to an art. Witness the courtesy wherewith many of them hasten to greet a well-dressed stranger, as contrasted with their fierce rebuff of a tramp. Perhaps it was Fenno’s unwonted splendor of raiment which made Treve elect to continue the gateward walk in his company, rather than dash on ahead. Yet of late, he had more than once chosen Joel’s companionship rather than Mack’s. As they walked, Joel continued to mutter under his breath. “She said she ‘wanted to meet her darling Royce’s dear old partner,’” he sniffed. “Well, Trevy, the pleasure’s all her’n. (Not that I’m a-grudgin’ her the treat of seein’ me.) Nothing’d do but she must come over to supper with us, Trevy. And if Sing Lee don’t cook no better’n he’s been cookin’ lately, she’s sure due to remember this supper for quite a spell. She--Whatcher smellin’ at, Trevy?” he broke off. The dog had slowed in his walk, and was moving stiff-legged. His nostrils were sniffing the still air with queer intensity. The car was drawing to a stop, in front of the gate, twenty feet away;--quite near enough for the hated lily-of-the-valley perfume to reach the collie’s acute senses.