"A man," says Poor Richard, "has three friends—an old wife, an old dog, and money." Now two of these friends Jim Taylor had. He had an old wife and he had an old dog, but he had no money. And there are times when, let comfortable moralists say what they please, a man's need for money overshadows everything else. Such a time had come to Jim Taylor.

It came at one o'clock on a cold, starry March morning. Since sundown he and the veterinarian from Breton Junction had been working out in the lot by the light of a lantern. Since sundown Mary, his wife, had hurried back and forth from the kitchen with pots of hot water.

"Better go to bed now, gal," he had said over and over. But she had not gone.

Since sundown, also, old Prince, his big white Llewellyn setter, had hung about within the circle of light cast by the lantern. He had followed Mary to the kitchen and back, as if she needed a protector. He had gone with Jim to the well after water. While Jim and the doctor worked, he had sat gravely on his haunches, looking solemnly on. Now the veterinarian had driven away, and old Jim, long, lank, a bit stooped, stood in the middle of the lot, Mary on one side, Prince on the other. Before him lay his mule, dead.

Now a mule is mortal, and a dead one not uncommon. But on this particular mule Jim had depended for his cotton crop. And on his cotton crop he had depended for money to pay off the mortgage on his farm—the farm that represented his and Mary's belated plunge in life.

Perhaps to say Mary's plunge would be nearer the truth. But for her, Jim would have remained an easy-going renter all his days, with a bird dog before the fire and a shotgun over the mantel and fishing poles out under the shed. His was the lore of field and stream, not of business. It was Mary who, two years before, had seen in the advancing price of cotton their chance to own a farm. She had talked him into trying to make terms with Old Man Thornycroft, his landlord.

"All right, gal," he had said one morning; "here goes."

He had come back with a new light in his gray, twinkling sportsman's eyes. He had got right down to work. The sound of his hammer as he patched barn and sheds had taken the place of the sound of his shotgun in the woods. He had followed the furrow as earnestly as if it were a wild-turkey track in the swamp, while old Prince, that mighty hunter, looked on bewildered. He had raised good crops. He had met his first payments. Then had come the great war and thirty-cent cotton and the chance to pay out. He had redoubled his efforts. He had borrowed to the limit on the coming season's prospects. He had bought ample fertilizer, a new wagon, a new plough. And now the mule, without which all these things were useless, lay at his feet a mass of worse than useless flesh.

The shivering voice of Mary at his side—he hadn't realized before how cold it was—roused him from his melancholy contemplation of the spectacle.

"What're we goin' to do now, Jim?"

"Oh, we'll manage somehow," he declared.

He picked up the lantern, looked down into her face, and his eyes twinkled momentarily.

"That mule was lazy, anyhow."

But there was no answering twinkle in Mary's eyes as they turned back toward the house. They left the lot gate open, no need to close it now, and old Prince followed with subdued mien at their heels; their troubles were his troubles, and, besides, he had rather liked the mule in a condescending sort of way.

"How much will a new mule cost?" Mary asked as they went up the steps, their footfalls sounding loud in the dead silence down there under the stars.

"Well, two hundred dollars will get one you won't have to prop up betwixt the traces."

He did not see the sudden eagerness in her face. He pushed the door open for her.

"Come in, old man," he said to Prince. "You done the best you could."

In the unceiled kitchen he set the lantern down on the table. "Don't you bother, gal," he said to Mary. "You look all wore out. Go to bed now and get some sleep. I'll go to Greenville to-morrow and see if I can't borrow the money."

But next day in town Jim found, as he had been afraid he would find, that it is not easy for a man known primarily as a hunter and fisherman to borrow two hundred dollars. He had not even gone to see Thornycroft. The old man would be glad enough of an opportunity to get the improved place back; Jim knew that.

But he did call on the banks. They were sorry, cashiers explained courteously after they had questioned him briefly through barred windows. But right at this particular time their customers had use for all the money they could get their hands on, and——

"You think you've got it," he said to Mary that night before the fire, "till you come out in the street and feel in your pockets. Then you know you ain't."

"But, Jim—what're you goin' to do now?"

"I'll bait another hook, Mary," he said, trying to conceal the growing anxiety he felt.

Old Prince went joyfully with him when next morning early he set out on foot to call on the few farmers he knew who might have money to lend; Prince always went when Jim was afoot. The sun rose on them when, a mile up the road, they came in sight of the Northern Hunt Club. It shone ruddily on the bare oaks and the columned porticos, and the white stables and kennels in the rear.

Jim never saw the place without a touch of grave reminiscence. Here used to come old Doctor Tolman from New York, to attend the field trials and to hunt, and Jim had been his hunting companion. On just such mornings as this he would join the doctor out here in the road. Before those stone gate posts that marked the entrance to the grounds they had had their last talk, eight years ago.

"Don't know when I'll get back, Jim," the doctor had said. "I can't tramp around as I used to, and my practice gets heavier instead of easing up. I want to say this, Jim: I've hunted with many a man, but you're the best sport I ever went into the fields with. I'm going to send you a pup. Call him 'Prince' if you want to. He's got a pedigree like a king—goes back to the old country. He's good enough for you, and you're good enough for him."

That winter, just before the news came of the doctor's death, Prince had arrived at Breton Junction by express; a roly-poly puppy done up in a crate and scared to death. Jim had reared him tenderly, taught him while he was still a pup to retrieve and stand steady in the yard, taken him into the fields when he was old enough, shown him what was necessary, and left the rest to instinct. Season after season he had watched the dog gain in wisdom and steadfastness. Now they understood one another as only hunting man and hunting dog, who have been intimately associated for years, can understand. Together they passed the club, old Prince running contentedly ahead.

They were gone all day. First Jim called on Steve Earle, then on Squire Kirby. Both lived seven miles away, but they were his best chance. The Squire and his wife had gone to visit their children and would not be back till Christmas. Steve Earle had left the day before for New York on business.

He did not mention his troubles to Steve Earle's wife. He was not the man to parade his perplexities before a woman. He turned back toward the section where lived small farmers, like himself. It was dusk when he returned home, Prince trotting with dejected tail at his heels, for Prince had seen the troubled look in his master's eyes. One farmer after another had turned Jim down. The country was poor, for one thing. But for Kirby and Earle there were no large planters in it; and in this day of high-priced cotton each small farmer was straining every nerve to better his own fortunes.

"I'd like to, Jim," they had said, "but——"

"Oh, that's all right," Jim had replied.

He answered Mary's questions cheerfully enough. She had stuck to him through thick and thin, mostly thin, he reckoned, and he was going to stick to her. This farm was her gamble, and he was going to see it through for her. But in the silence of the night, unknown to her, he fought one of the hardest battles of his life, a battle that kept him awake and drenched him with perspiration. For he was a hunter, was Jim, and old Prince was his dog.

He arose with grave face to greet another day. While Mary was in the kitchen getting breakfast, he rummaged secretly among his queer assortment of papers—gun catalogues, directions about building a boat, advertisements of shotgun shells with hunting dogs painted on them. At last he found it—Prince's pedigree that Doctor Tolman had sent along with Prince. He folded it carefully, stuck it in his pocket, and replaced the other papers.

He was going to see some men at the club, he told Mary at breakfast. He might take a little round. She could look for him when she saw him. She insisted on putting up a lunch for him. She saw him getting back before night, she laughed, when he protested. She came out on the porch with him and patted him on the back when he went down the steps in his patched old hunting coat, his gun stuck under his arm.

He went up the road in his long, lurching, huntsman's stride. Old Prince raced ahead, then back to him, barking with joy, leaping into his face like the athlete he was, his eyes almost fierce with eagerness. On every side frost-sparkling strawfields, horizoned by pine woods, shimmered in the sun. The air came fresh like cold spring water. Hundreds of times before on such mornings he and Prince had set out this way. Hundreds of times they had come home in the gloaming, Prince trotting behind, Jim's hunting coat bulging with birds.

But this was to be no such hunt. A mile up the road he called the old setter to him. Prince came in with drooped ears and upraised, bewildered eyes. That was what hurt. That was what was going to hurt more and more—that Prince would never understand.

They turned in between the stone gate posts of the club and up the walk toward the white columns of the portico. Jim remembered a picture in Martha's Bible of an old high priest going to an altar with a sheep following behind. This was his place of sacrifice, and old Prince, suddenly subdued, was trotting at his heels.

The butler answered his knock at the door. Why, yes, he said in answer to Jim's question, there was a man upstairs named Gordon. He was a great dog man; he owned kennels up in Jersey. He just got in last night—down for the field trials and a few days' shooting before going to South America. Some big after-the-war business. He would call Mr. Gordon.

Jim waited anxiously on the porch, twisting his scraggly gray moustache and biting the ends. Beside him stood old Prince, looking up into his grave face. At last the man came out, bareheaded—tall, ruddy, clean-cut, a sportsman every inch. Jim would have spotted him in a crowd and he would have spotted Jim—soul mates, as it were. The quick glance he gave old Prince was full of admiration.

"What's his name?"

"Prince."

The man looked down appraisingly at the long, straight line of the back, the white, wavy, silken hair, that glistened like satin in the sun, the noble dome of the head with its one lemon-coloured ear, the intelligence, courage, and high breeding in the upraised, fearless eyes.

"Where did you get him?"

Jim told him.

"Why, I knew Doctor Tolman well. A fine old gentleman. Gordon's my name. Mr. Taylor, I'm glad to meet you. You know, I like the looks of Prince here. He is—well, there are not many like him. Did Doctor Tolman leave any record of his pedigree?"

Jim's hand trembled a bit as he reached in his pocket. It was almost with regret that he saw the unmistakable pleasure in Gordon's eyes as he glanced quickly down the record that told why Prince was what he was.

"I tell you what I'll do," said Gordon, handing the paper back, "I'll get on my hunting things and we'll take a little round—just you and I and Prince. Won't you come in?"

Jim shook his head. While Gordon was gone he sat down on the stone steps, his gun between his knees. Yonder lay the sunlit country he and Prince knew so well. Prince came to him and laid his head on his knee. He knew when a man was in trouble, did Prince.

All day they hunted through a country of distant prospects, a country that rolled like the sea, a country brown with broomstraw fields, green with pine woods, gray with patches of bare winter oaks. Back and forth ahead, sometimes so far they could hardly make him out, again so close they could hear the pant of his breath, swept old Prince.

Sometimes they saw him stop short, a mere speck of white against a distant hill. Again in creek bottoms, in the edges of woods, they found him, erect, motionless, tail straight out, a living, breathing statue in white. They advanced side by side; the staccato of their shots rang out in the amber air; out of whirling coveys birds tumbled. And always here came old Prince to them, bird in mouth, ears thrown back, fine old eyes aglow with a sportsman's joy.

Not even Prince himself had ever done more brilliant work. He didn't know that every covey he found, every bird he retrieved, was setting a price as it were on his head, dooming him in his old age to exile under a strange master in a strange land. But Jim knew, watching with sinking heart the admiration in Gordon's eyes.

They ate Mary's lunch on a log in the woods, sitting side by side in the democracy of the out of doors. They talked about hunting and dogs. They took turns tossing biscuit to hungry old Prince, who sat at a distance like the gentleman he was, and who caught them skillfully, then lay down to eat them, his tail dragging gratefully across the dead leaves.

At last they rose from the log. Old Prince sprang to his feet, ears pricked, eyes shining. A wave of Jim's hand and he was off in his strong, steady gallop to new conquests. Their shots rang out in other fields and woods. The sun dropped closer to the horizon. The shadows crept farther out into the fields and deeper into the spirit of Jim Taylor.

It was early dusk when they stood in front of the stone gate posts of the club, and Gordon spoke about it at last.

"Are you sure you want to sell him, Taylor?"

Jim swallowed. "That's what I come for, Mr. Gordon."

"Well, I think two hundred and fifty would be a fair price at his age."

"That's fair enough," said Jim.

"All right. Come in and we'll fix it up."

They went up the walk together in silence and around the club to the kennels. Close to his master's heels trotted old Prince, tired now, eyes turned longingly down the road toward his home and his fire.

"You can chain him there," said Gordon.

"Here?" asked Jim, for things seemed suddenly to be swimming around.

"Yes—to that kennel. That's it. Now we'll go inside."

Jim knew he was in the wide hall before the fire, that he was shaking hands with two or three men Gordon introduced him to, that he was upstairs in Gordon's room, that Gordon had counted out twenty-odd crisp bills on the table. But all these things were confused and blurred in his mind. For out there as he turned away old Prince had looked at him with drooped ears, and pleading eyes that for the first time in their long relationship did not understand.

Gordon came downstairs with him. He was looking for a telegram calling him away any hour now, he said. Old Prince would be well taken care of while he was gone. He had an old groom who was a wizard with dogs. Out on the porch they shook hands. In the growing darkness Jim trudged, solitary, home. His problem was solved; Mary's home was saved. But in front of that kennel Prince would be waiting for him to come back; and as long as he lived, wherever he went, Prince would still be waiting for him to come back. It was a faithful friend he had sold, one that would have died for him. It was blood money that crackled in his pocket. Mary was cooking supper when he appeared, solitary and gaunt, in the kitchen. Old Prince was going to see something of the world now, he explained.

"Why, Jim!" she cried. "If you had only told me!"

She came to him and caught him by both shoulders. She looked up pityingly into his face.

"Poor old Jim—why didn't you tell me?"

"Oh, well, there wasn't any use, Mary. Mr. Gordon knows how to treat a dog like Prince. I didn't mind much."

So he spoke, boldly, in the kitchen. But as he went about his work in the yard he missed the silent companionship of Prince at his heels. As he ate supper, his eyes from force of habit wandered over the table for scraps of food for Prince. While he sat smoking his pipe before the bedroom fire he tried resolutely not to look at the empty rug in front of the hearth. And when later he went out to draw water the yard was desolate, and the moon risen over the fields looked at him in solemn reproach.

Next day he rode to Greenville with Tom Jennings, a neighbouring farmer, and bought a mule. They had passed the club before sunrise, sitting side by side on the wagon seat in the cold morning air. No sound had come from those white kennels which he could make out dimly in the back yard like tombstones. Old Prince was not the kind of dog to whine or howl.

But all that morning while he went from one sales stable to another Jim knew Prince would be pricking his ears at every footstep around the club, and scanning every approaching face with hopeful, eager eyes. He had known some bird dogs who were the property of any hunter who chanced along with a gun, and others that stuck to one man, and one man alone. Prince was a one man's dog.

He left town in the afternoon, sitting on a box in the rear of Jennings's wagon, leading the mule by a halter. Before sunset they came to the country where he and Prince had hunted a hundred times. On top of that steep hill, yonder by that dead pine, Prince had held a covey an hour one stormy day in a gale of wind that threatened to blow him off his feet.

Into this swift creek, over whose bridge the wagon wheels rumbled, Prince had plunged one icy morning and retrieved a wounded bird, the water freezing on him as he stepped dripping out. These things and others like them, in spite of himself, passed, along with the slowly passing landscape, through the mind of Jim Taylor while the sun dropped low over the hills and Tom Jennings talked about what a bargain the mule was, and the mule pulled back, as mules always do, on the halter.

It was nearly dusk when they came in sight of the club, whose lights twinkled through the trees, and Jennings spoke up suddenly:

"Hello! Ain't that your wife yonder?"

Jim glanced around. "Looks like her, Tom."

"She just left the club."

"Been to sell eggs, likely."

But when they caught up with her Jim saw that she was in her best black dress with the black beaded bonnet, and when he helped her in the wagon he noticed that her face was worried. She did not even seem to observe the mule; and Jim, as he led his sleek new purchase to the barn, was wondering what it all meant.

He was still wondering while he finished his lonely work about the yard. As he stamped up the back steps he saw her through the kitchen window rise suddenly from a chair. She had changed her dress, but she had not started the fire or lit the lamp. He must have surprised her.

Oh, she was just tired, she said in reply to his anxious question. She had been to the club to sell eggs.

"They must have been mighty fine eggs," he said, his eyes twinkling kindly, "for you to dress up so. You must have toted 'em in your hands, too, for you forgot your basket."

She sank into a chair, looking up helplessly at him.

"Sit down, Jim," she said. Then she went on: "I never meant to tell you, Jim. I tried—I tried to buy him back."

"Buy him?"

"Yes, old Prince."

"Why, Mary, I thought I told you—he give me two hundred and fifty dollars."

"I know. I offered him what he gave."

"You—you done what?"

She smiled a little at the amazement in his face, but her voice trembled as she made her confession. For ten years she had been saving up on chickens and eggs, a quarter here, a half-dollar there. In secret she had dreamed and planned. They would have new furniture, she had thought, when the house was theirs—new furniture and a parlour. She had meant to surprise him, not to let him know till it came. She had the furniture picked out in a catalogue.

"Jim," she concluded, "I've saved up two hundred and fifty-four dollars and twenty cents!"

His arm was about her shoulders. "Poor gal," he said. "She would have give it all up for me and Prince. Now, now—don't cry. It's all the same—you tried."

She wiped her eyes on her apron and looked at him.

"I saw last night how hard hit you was. I never knew till then just how much store you set on Prince. And I never knew how much I thought of him, for what you love, I love. I made up my mind then, Jim. After dinner I went to the club. I had to wait a long time, for he was out hunting. When he came in I told him I'd give him what he gave you, and four dollars more. Jim, I thought he understood, he looked so kind. He made me set down there in the big room. Then, Jim, I told him—told him how it was with us."

Jim's face grew suddenly stern. "You told him that?"

She nodded.

"And he turned you down?"

"Oh, he was nice enough, as nice as if I was his mother. He came out on the porch with me; he wanted to send me home. But he said he didn't feel like selling him—selling old Prince; that it was a bargain between you and him. Jim, when he turned back, I went round the club house. He was chained to a kennel. He knew me, Jim. He thought I had come after him!"

She was crying outright now, there beside her cold stove, and wiping her eyes on her apron.

"Well," said Jim solemnly, "I've hunted with many a man. I never knew one to be white in the field and black outside before."

They ate a silent supper. They went into the bedroom before the fire. Above the mantel was a picture of a dog pointing, over the bed another of a dog retrieving. And in Jim's mind was another of old Prince sitting off at a distance like the gentleman he was, and a man on the log at his own side eating Mary's lunch.

"God Almighty!" he said to himself.

Out in the night came the roar of the Florida Limited. It whistled once long and melodiously, then twice in short staccatos. That meant passengers for the club or passengers from the club for the train. Maybe, right now, old Prince was waiting on the station platform in the glare of the headlight, wondering what it all meant. Maybe by to-morrow he would be hundreds of miles away.

Jim rose, picked up the bucket, and stepped out into the cold moonlight. Even on a little trip like this Prince had always come with him. He could imagine he saw him now, sitting on his haunches out there in the yard, waiting for the water to be drawn. He had comforted himself with the thought that Gordon would be kind to Prince, and now——

"A man that would treat a woman like that," he said bitterly, "would kick a dog!"

He turned back to the house, his head bowed. As he went up the steps he seemed to hear up the misty moonlit road that led to the club a faint tinkle like that made by a running dog's collar. He stood listening for a moment. The ghost of a sound had ceased. He went inside and closed the door behind him.

Mary sat by the fire above the empty rug, her chin in her hand. He placed the bucket on the stand and washed his face, smoothing back with a big wet hand his heavy, iron-gray hair. He sat down and began to undress in silence. He had taken off one shoe when he heard it again—the tinkle, unmistakable this time, of a running dog's collar.

"What's that, Jim?" demanded Mary.

But he was already on his feet and halfway down the hall, Mary close behind him.

"It's him!" he said grimly. "He run away!"

He threw the door open. Big, white, with shining eyes, old Prince was jumping all over him, jumping up into his face, and into the face of Mary. They turned back to the fire. He was running round and round the room, looking at them over the table, his tail beating chair rungs and bedstead. He was frantic with joy; his eyes were aglow with happiness, the happiness of a dog that has come home.

"Get my hat, Mary."

"Why, Jim?"

"It was blood money bought him but I've got to take him back."

She pleaded with him. There was her money. Maybe he would take it now.

But Jim's face was set. "He turned you down once, gal. He'll never have another chance!"

She brought him his hat, her face white.

"Come on, old man," he said, and started for the door.

But Prince hung back, ears drooped, eyes pleading.

"Come on, sir!"

He pretended not to understand. He sat down on his haunches. He lay down humbly on the floor, head between his paws, tail dragging contritely across the rag rug. He showed decided symptoms of an intention to crawl under the bed, and Jim started grimly toward him. Then it was that Mary saw.

"Hold on, Jim! What's this on him?"

She was down on the floor with the dog. She jerked something off his collar.

"Light the lamp, Jim!" she cried.

With trembling hands he obeyed. She had risen now, so had Prince. He had taken refuge behind her skirts, from which point of vantage he was looking round her up into the face of his master. The light Jim held over her shoulder showed writing on a piece of paper.

"Jim!" she cried, all out of breath, "Jim! It says: 'Compliments of Mr. Gordon to Mrs. Taylor. You see, I couldn't sell him to you, but I want you two to have him. I am leaving in a few minutes. No time for more. The train is coming."

Jim set the lamp on the table. "Well, well!" he said and sank into a chair. Before him the fire roared and crackled up the chimney. Prince's head was on his knee. He saw a man sitting on a log beside him in the woods. He looked into the man's clear sportsman's eyes.

Far in the north through the stillness of the night he heard the faint, vanishing whistle of the Limited. He put his hand on Prince's silken head, and Prince nestled close and sat down on his haunches. Jim's arm was about the shoulders of Mary, who had knelt down beside him.

"Well, well!" he said again, and the fire grew dim and blurred before his eyes.