“Women don’t take a general part in any forms of sport, even yet,” pursued the reporter, “except dogshowing and tennis. At least those are almost the only sports they’ve achieved any prominence in. And look at the result! The dog game is full of squabbles and backbiting and poor sportsmanship. But for the A. K. C.’s wise guidance it would have gone to pot, long ago. As for women in tennis--well, maybe you’ve read of the Mallory-Lenglen mixups and others of the same sort. There couldn’t be anything like that, on the same scale, in baseball or pugilism or boating. Only in tennis. Because women are prominent in it. And in dog-breeding-and-showing. Not that I’m knocking women. It isn’t their fault. Sportsmanship is a thing that takes hundreds of years to acquire. They’ve been at it for less than a quarter-century. At that, they do fifty times better at it than any man could hope to, in some purely feminine art he was just learning. And many of them are clean sportsmen--these women. Better than most men. But some few of them--” “Say!” exploded Joel. “You tol’ me that armory wa’n’t but two miles away. We been ridin’ in this open hearse for a--” “We’ll be there in a minute now,” said Gladden, swallowing the rest of his oration. “It’s just around that corner. Don’t worry about your dog. He’s all right. You won’t even miss the collie judging. It won’t begin for another half-hour. Plenty of time to-- Here we are!” he finished, as the car swung a corner and stopped in front of the armory. Joel scarce waited for the machine to halt; before scrambling out and making his way, at a run, up the steps and into the rackety building. Gladden followed as fast as he could; amusedly interested in the prospect of watching the grouchy old man when he should rejoin his belovèd dog. This meeting was scheduled to be the most pathetic or the most humorous point in the story the reporter was planning. Would Fenno be as glum in that big moment as in the moment of his release from the cell? Gladden hoped so. He hated to think that the keynote of the story was to be spoiled by Fenno slopping babyishly over his restored collie chum. Down the crowded aisles sped Joel; Gladden close in his wake. They reached the collie section. There Fenno came to a standstill with an abruptness that all but threw him off his balance and sent Gladden colliding against him. Treve’s straw-cluttered bench was empty. It was the same bench, with the same printed number tacked to it; the same splintered pine footboard that Fraser Colt had kicked. But Treve was no longer there. Gladden’s trained reportorial eye fixed itself upon another detail of the deserted bench, a fraction of a second earlier than did Fenno’s. The stout chain, affixed to the bench staple, was pulled to its full length and hung over the splintered top of the footboard. From the chain’s snap hung a dog collar--broken. The collie’s frantic plunges had at last made the decaying leather give way.