Then the ever-ready wit of a trained collie came to his aid. This mid-street, assuredly, was no place for him. The sidewalk offered shelter, with no worse perils than the stream of passing pedestrians. Toward the sidewalk he made his way. It is in such safety-seeking efforts that the average dog, in like conditions, becomes confused and is run over. Treve was not confused. With the skill and dexterity of a timber wolf he sped in and out of the traffic, timing his every step to a nicety; enacting prodigies of time-and-distance gauging. In another few seconds he was on the sidewalk; nearly a block distant from the armory. The collie was panting; but not from fatigue. He was panting through excitement and nervousness. Light froth gathered on his lips and tongue. His rich coat was one smear of muck and mud. He was collarless. His aspect was ferocious and disreputable. People made plenty of room for him as he swung on down the sidewalk, nose to ground, still seeking Fenno’s lost trail. His dangerous circling of mid-street had failed to locate that trail. Collie-like, he knew there was no use in casting back over the same ground again. Henceforth, he must hunt on mere chance and with nothing to guide him. It was not a hopeful prospect. Fenno had left the armory. That much Treve’s eyes and nose had told him. Fenno had walked as far as the curbstone. There his trail had ended. Gallantly, the collie kept on, along his aimless route, still sniffing the ground; pedestrians giving him the widest possible berth and turning to look back apprehensively at him. A man came briskly out of a store. So suddenly did he debouch onto the pavement that the dog had no room to avoid him. The man felt something collide glancingly with his knee; and peered down. He beheld a huge collie; mud-coated and bleeding from a graze on the flank. Panic possessed the newcomer as he recalled the impact at his knee. By every law of fiction, this was a mad dog. The dog, of course, had bitten or at least tried to bite him, in passing--which was also the way of fictional mad dogs. The man, like most of the world, was actuated by what he had read, rather than by what he had learned, or should have learned, from real life experience. Hence, he did the one regulation thing that was to be done, under the circumstances. He screeched at the top of his lungs: “_Mad dog! MAD DOG!_” A hundred persons stopped and stared apprehensively around them. They saw a chalk-faced man clutching at his left knee with one hand while with the other he pointed dramatically at the harmlessly-trotting Treve. Again and again he waked the echoes with that imbecile bellow of “Mad Dog!”