Where the fields were bisected by a country road Will Chadwick had undertaken to meet her and motor her back. It was rather beyond the hour fixed for the meeting, but Mr Chadwick was a patient man, and a knowledge of his wife's habits prepared him for delay. He had brought Diogenes with him in the car because Diogenes had expressed the wish to accompany him; and Diogenes, not being blessed with the same amount of patience, had been allowed to dismount, and was putting in his time, as the pekinese was doing, in searching the hedges for possible sport. Diogenes was not a sporting dog; but when he saw a cat, or any other legitimate form of chase, he tried to cheat onlookers into believing that he was. A pose is detestable in man or beast; it not infrequently leads to his undoing. Diogenes posed so enthusiastically that he almost deceived himself into mistaking the pose for the quality it sought to emulate. It was unfortunate that on this occasion, when he was especially bent on imposing on himself, and was pursuing his snuffling search for hidden prey among the dank fern-stalks and soft mould in the hedge, the pekinese should at the same moment be engaged in a similar form of deception on the farther side of the hedge. Diogenes detected the fur of its long coat through the wet, shining leaves, and though familiarity with the pekinese should have accustomed him to discriminate between it and a cat, the practice of self-deception had become such an obsession that he wilfully ignored this distinction and, with a low growl, burst through the hedge and seized his quarry and shook it playfully in a transport of delight, then laid the little limp body down and stood over it in an attitude of satisfied triumph and barked a cheerful accompaniment to Mrs Chadwick's screams. Mrs Chadwick made a dart forward and struck at Diogenes with her hand, to Diogenes' pained surprise; then she gathered the pekinese up in her arms and fell to lamenting loudly. Diogenes walked back to the car with an air of injured disgust and wagged a short, tentative tail at his master; but Mr Chadwick, ignoring these overtures, passed him, and was over the hedge in a trice and beside his disconsolate wife. "Oh, I say, Ruby, I am sorry!" was all that he could articulate, as he gazed at the limp bit of fur in her arms and then into her weeping face. He blamed himself for having brought Diogenes, but most of all he blamed Diogenes for doing the last thing on earth that might have been expected of him. As Mrs Chadwick continued to lament, and continued to hold the dead dog in her arms, his perturbation increased to the extent of causing him to swear. "Damn that dog!" he exclaimed in exasperation, and put his arm about his wife's shoulders, and took with his disengaged hand the limp, lifeless thing from her. "He didn't suffer at all," he assured her. "It was so quick, he couldn't have realised that he was hurt."