The occasional snowfalls exhilarated him. The glare and tingle of them went to his head and made him frisk and roll in puppylike glee and snatch up mouthfuls of the stinging white flakes as they lay for a brief space on the sodden or half-frozen earth. True, hard snow-lumps had an annoying way of forming between his pads; so that he had to halt in his romps or his runs, every few minutes, to gnaw them out. But these were petty drawbacks. The snow, for the most part, was Treve’s loved playfellow. Royce Mack was as enthusiastic over the snowfalls as was Treve himself. They reminded him of the jolly winter sports in the Vermont hills he had left so far behind him. He and Treve used to tramp for miles through the glistening whiteness; just for the fun of it. Joel Fenno had never in his long and grouchy life done anything “just for the fun of it.” Fun had no place in his meager workaday vocabulary. Sourly he used to watch Royce and young Treve set forth together on their snow-tramps, in the rare hours of worklessness, that winter. He grudged the idea of any energy not directed to the piling up of dollars and cents. Moreover, he had grown to care queerly much for the big collie that once had saved him from death. He was vaguely annoyed by the dog’s evident preference for Mack; and the gay romps and rambles they enjoyed. To Royce, the old chap grumbled loudly about the folly of wasting time in such fashion. He used to scowl in disgust at Treve and make as though to repel the collie’s playful offers of friendship. Not to Royce or to any one else would Fenno have admitted that he had so far broken the crust of his own grouchiness as to entertain a genuine yearning for the comradeship of a mere dog. Mack was deceived by Joel’s attitude of lofty contempt; even though Treve was not. The fact that Joel ignored him or glowered at him, in public, did not offset to Treve the pleasanter fact that he fed him choice bits from his own dinner plate or patted his head with awkward furtiveness when Royce’s back was turned. One morning, as spring was dawning, the two partners sat at their sunrise breakfast, preparatory to starting out for a day of “marking,” at their Number Three camp. Treve’s usual place, at meals, was on the puncheon floor; to the left of Royce Mack’s seat at the table. This morning, the big dog was absent. “Where’s Treve?” asked Fenno, with elaborate carelessness; adding, surlily: “It’s good to have one meal in peace, without a measly cur to take away my appetite by scratchin’ fleas and watchin’ every mouthful I eat.” “I don’t know where he is,” Mack answered. “Around, outside, somewhere, most likely. These warm spring nights when we leave the doors open, he’s apt to trot out, as soon as he’s awake. If it takes your appetite away to have him here when we eat, I can tell him not to come in at meals. He never needs to be told anything but once.”