“Oh, _you’re_ looking for a bargain, too, from the ‘yap,’ are you?” snorted Joel. “Before the judge c’n tell him he’s got a good dog? Well, the yap don’t need to be told. He knows it. That’s why he brang Treve here to-day. If your fat was wuth a hundred dollars a pound, you’d be a billionaire. But you wouldn’t be able to buy my dog. Get that?” He was about to turn away from the stout personage, as from his former interlocutor, when he noted the man was no longer looking at him Instead, oblivious of the grouchy old hurler of insults, the stranger was once more studying Treve. In his plump face was a glint of perplexity, of struggling recollection. Fraser Colt had an excellent memory. And the more he examined Treve, the closer he came to verifying a most improbable idea that had come to him, to-day, when first he caught sight of the collie reclining unhappily on the bench. Back into his trained mind came the picture of a highbred collie pup, lying thus sorrowfully in Colt’s stuffy kennel yard, some two years earlier, after Fraser had picked him up at his first master’s forced sale. The dog’s markings and facial expression were unusual. It seemed impossible. Yet-- Half-unconscious of his own gesture, Fraser Colt stretched out his hand toward Treve’s shapely left ear. If there were sign of break or of ancient teeth-marks therein, the mystery was solved. If not-- Treve had lain resignedly in this place of turmoil, consoling himself by following with his sorrowful eyes the master who, for some unexplainable reason, had brought him here. Then, amid the million disturbing odors of the show, one special scent came to his nostrils in a way to annihilate his heed of all the rest. Suspiciously, his eyes clouding with half-formulated and long-sleeping recollections, he sniffed the heavy air. At the same instant, came the sound of a voice that was more than vaguely distasteful to him. Into his friendly heart sprang a righteous anger--but against what or whom he scarcely knew. Then he saw Colt. And sound and scent and sight brought his dormant memories wide awake. He knew the man. Even as he would have recognized Royce and Joel, whom he loved--even as he would have recognized and loved them after two years of absence--so now he knew and hated the man who had maltreated him so abominably as a defenseless puppy. Into the soft eyes flamed red rage. All ignorant of the emotion he had aroused, Fraser Colt had stretched forth his plump hand, confidently, to inspect the collie’s left ear. The expert big fingers turned over the ear-tip. A glance showed Colt what he sought. There, faintly white, on the ear’s pinkish underside, were the harrow-marks of the police dog’s teeth. There, too, was a far fainter groove-mark where the plaster and splints had once remained for weeks on the healing ear. There could be no doubt.