Royce Mack was laughing loudly at his canine chum’s exploit. Joel glowered at the placidly drinking dog. “Gee, but that was clever!” Mack declared. “It took a lot of thinking out, too. Treve, you’ve sure got brains! So that’s where all the cat-milk has been going! I wondered--” “Clever, nuthin’!” grumbled Joel. “Any fool would have sense enough to steal food when he’s hungry. He’s stoopid. An’ he’s lazy, too. If I had my way--” To shut off his partner’s eternal invective against the dog, Mack passed on into the house, leaving Joel in mid-swing of his diatribe. Chang happened to glance apprehensively out of the window, a second later. He saw Joel bend over the lapping dog, a silly grin of admiration on his wizened face, and pat the collie’s head in approving friendliness. “Trevy,” the old man was whispering, “it _was_ clever of you. One of the plumb cleverest things I ever seen you do. An’ I’ve seen you do a passel of slick things. You know more’n ten humans an’ a Chink, Trevy.” Treve wagged his tail vigorously at the praise and caress. He even paused in his stolen meal long enough to lick milkily the petting hand. Joel, grinned, resentless of the milk spattered on his sleeve. Then, catching sight of Chang’s bobbing head, through the window, the old man favored Treve with a glare of utter detestation; and stumped into the house and slammed the door. When the partners had bolted dinner and, with Treve at their heels, had gone back to work, Chang repaired to his own cubbyhole room under the roof. There, in front of his bash-nosed Joss, he proceeded to burn a flight of faintly perfumed prayer-papers, accompanying the process with certain pious “setting-up exercises” before the idol. To his Joss and to the spirits of his innumerable ancestors, Chang offered orisons for the instant vanishing of that devil collie. The dog’s size and buoyantly noisy ways had jarred him, from the first. Then the collie had taken sinful pleasure in treeing Chang’s dear cat; and in making playful little rushes at her, even when she sought refuge on her master’s thin shoulder. The uncanny wisdom of the dog had long ago completed the wreck of Chang’s nerves. The big beast, assuredly, was a devil; and might in time be expected to wreak awesome torments upon the Chinaman himself. Not a week earlier, on ironing day, Chang had burned a hole in the arm of Royce Mack’s only silk shirt. To hide his fault, he had taken the ruined shirt out back of the stables and had buried it. Then he had gone smugly to his kitchen, prepared to deny with innocent smiles that he had ever set eyes on the garment. Indeed, an hour later, he was in the midst of that convincing denial, when Treve frisked up to the credulous Royce, shaking merrily between his jaws the muddy and burnt shirt he had exhumed. Nothing short of a demon could have done that!