Mack broke off in his lecture. The new puppy had begun to move about, on the porch, with a queer wariness. Now, coming to its edge, she did not observe that there was a two-foot drop to the yard below; and she was stepping out into space when a quick intervention of Treve’s shaggy shoulder turned her back to confused safety. “Hold on!” exclaimed Joel, suddenly. “I knew there was a catch in it, somewheres. An’ her eyes have a funny look, too! Watch me.” He struck a match and held it scarcely an inch from the puppy’s wide eyes; twitching the flame back and forth in the windless air, so close to her unflinching pupils that the lashes were all but singed. Nellie did not so much as blink. “Blind!” diagnosed Joel, with grim satisfaction. “Stone blind. I knew there was suthin’ queer. There was bound to be. Been blind always, most likely, if she’s only six months old. Hibben, you’re stung all the way acrost the board. Your Cirenhaven Nellie couldn’t ever be learned to herd anything--without it was the three blind mice the feller writ the song about. You’re seventy-five dollars in the hole!” The poor blind pup seemed to sense the ridicule in his tone. She shrank back a little in her groping approach toward the speaker. Instantly, Treve licked her face reassuringly, as though he were comforting a scared child. The big dog had known instinctively that this newcomer was afflicted and unable to look after herself. And his great heart had gone out to her in loving protectiveness. Now, before Joel had fairly stopped speaking, the sensitive Nellie shrank even more appealingly against Treve’s shaggy side. For Chris Hibben was waking the echoes with a salvo of profanity that shook the house. Fenno listened with real interest to the outburst. He had the air of one who is acquiring many new and valuable words. As Chris paused for breath, Joel said sanctimoniously to Treve: “Best run indoors, Trevy. You’re learnin’ language that won’t do you no reel good. You’ve been brought up by a couple of God-fearin’ sheep men. This blasphemious cattle talk is new to you. Best run away till he--” A sharp gesture from Hibben interrupted him. The cattleman whipped out his heavy pistol and leveled it at the hapless little female collie as she crouched shivering and frightened before him. Nellie had had bruisingly terrible experience with Fraser Colt’s brutal rages. To her, the sound of an angry voice meant a fast-ensuing kick--a kick her blind eyes could not tell her how to avoid. Treve, too, understood Chris Hibben’s volley of fury; and he understood the deadly gesture which was its climax. In an instant he was ready for what might follow. “Stand clear!” bawled Hibben, dropping his pistol muzzle to cover the quivering Nellie’s head. “You boys tolled me into gettin’ this cur. Now you boys c’n have the job of buryin’ her an’ of mopping up your stoop. Stand clear, I said! And haul Treve out of the way; unless you want me to drill him, too.”