HAPPINESS, to Jeff Titus, had become a fine art. It had become so when he married Eve Wallace, a little wisp of a city girl who had come to the Kentucky mountain hinterland to cure a set of weak lungs—and who had not only wedded but well-nigh civilised the lanky young mountaineer. Happiness had remained a fine art for Jeff, up there on his bare hillside farm, with Eve. It had remained so, for the most part, ever since his wedding. And now, in a single breath, happiness had taken a place among the lost arts. The “single breath” had been supplied by a sour east wind which had smitten Eve as she stood in the shack dooryard waiting for her husband’s home-coming. She was thinly clad, and she was in a perspiration from working in her flower garden. Her lungs were still weak. The east wind did the rest. By night she had a heavy cold. The third morning, pneumonia flung out its flaming red No Surrender signal on each of her fever-scorched cheeks. And life, to Jeff Titus, all at once became a horror. A frightened anguish gripped him by the throat and shook him to the bewildered soul; as he crouched night after night beside the slab bed where tossed and muttered the delirious little wisp of a woman who was at once his mate and his saint. Eve was so tiny, so fragile, so good! It wasn’t fair that this bullying unseen spirit of illness should torture and harry her and sap the life of her—while the man who right blithely would have been burned to a crisp to please her, sat helpless at the bedside, unable to do a thing to drive forth the damnable visitant! Jeff Titus dwelt upon the theme of his own impotence to save her; he swore venomously, and in the peculiarly hideous diction of Kentucky mountaineer blasphemy. There were doctors, of course, in the county seat of Duneka, thirty-two miles away. But they might as well have been in Austria, for all the good they could do the sick girl. Jeff could not desert Eve to go in quest of such a physician. Nor could he send one of his mile-distant neighbours. He knew that. It would be of no use. Those city doctors had no convenient means of getting over the thirty-odd miles of half-inaccessible trail, to his hinterland farm. Assuredly none of them was going to make the journey on foot or on mule-back, leaving his town practice Meantime, Eve was growing worse, steadily worse. Even the ignorant Jeff could see that. So, apparently, could the only sharer of his day-and-night vigils—a huge and lionlike dog which lay pressed close to the far side of the bed, and which all Titus’ commands could not keep out of the sick-room. This dog, Robin Adair, was the joy of Eve’s heart—or he had been, when her heart still could hold joy and not merely fever and delirium. One of Eve’s ragged hill-billy admirers had given the dog to her; in the old days, when Robin was a roly-poly mass of tawny-brown fluff, no bigger than a Persian cat. The dog had grown into a shaggy giant. A passing seed-catalogue man had told Eve he was a collie—a breed of which she had heard, in a vague fashion, as emanating from Scotland. And she had named him Robin Adair; after the hero of a Scotch song her mother had been wont to sing. He was Robin, for short. When she had married Jeff Titus, she had brought her beloved collie to live at the mountain shack. From the moment his mistress fell ill, Robin had not once willingly stirred from her bedside. Drinking little, eating nothing, the great dog had lain there, his sorrowing brown eyes It was on the dawn of the fourth day that Robin got to his feet with a leap, and, pointing his heavy muzzle skyward, set the still room to reverberating with a yell that was nothing short of unearthly. Jeff, starting from his daze of misery, made as though to throttle the brute that had broken in on the invalid’s unresting rest. Then, remembering Eve’s affection for the collie, he contented himself with picking Robin up bodily and bearing him towards the door; with the intent of putting him out of the house. The door, before Jeff could reach it, was flung open from outside. On the threshold stood a ramrodlike figure in rusty black. The caller was the Reverend Ephraim Stair—Methodist circuit-rider for the up-State counties, and a man whose brain and heart had long since made him the blindly obeyed autocrat of his scattered mountain flock. “What’s wrong, Titus?” was his wondering greeting as his sharp old eyes flashed from the man with the big dog in his arms to the eternally “Oh, parson!” gasped Jeff in babbling relief, dumping Robin on the puncheon floor and gripping the circuit-rider by both hands. “For Gawd’s sake, do suthin’ fer her! She acts like—like she ain’t goin’ to git well none!” Loud through the mountains were the praises of Stair’s medical lore. Many were the tales of sick folk he had cured; when the old women had given them up and had begun gruesomely relishful preparations for the funeral. Jeff Titus clutched at his unexpected presence, as at a life-belt. Half in superstitious awe, he glanced at the dog whose providential screech had made the clergyman halt in his brisk ride from one county seat to the next. Meantime, Stair had crossed to the bed, and, on his knees beside it, was examining the stricken Eve. Jeff came up behind him, standing awkwardly and with open mouth, in expectation of some miracle. But no miracle was vouchsafed. Instead the clergyman asked one or two questions as to the illness’ course, felt the patient’s pulse and her torrid cheek, then ordered his host to go and fetch in his saddlebags. “My medicine-kit is in them,” he explained. “She—she’s goin’ to git on all right, now you’re here, ain’t she?” pleaded Titus ingratiatingly, pausing at the door. “Get my saddlebags!” was the non-committal retort. “Jump! Then you can heat some water. Wait! Before you go, open those windows. And leave the door open. Isn’t this poor child having enough trouble in breathing; without your sealing the room hermetically?” “Sick folks hadn’t oughter be let have cold air tetch ’em, I’ve allers heard,” Jeff defended himself, nevertheless obeying. “It gives ’em——” “It gives them life!” retorted Stair. “Now get those saddlebags!” Next morning Eve was perceptibly worse: the breathing was more laboured; the fever blazed higher. This in spite of Stair and his ceaseless ministrations. Stark despair tore at the husband’s throat. Following Stair, as the circuit-rider left the room for a moment to wash his hands at the pump, Titus demanded fiercely: “She’s a-aimin’ to die, ain’t she? Spit out the truth, man! I got a right to hear it!” “I can’t say,” answered Stair, taking no offence at the furious manner. “She is in the midst of the crisis now. It is the turning-point in such “In Gawd’s hands!” mocked Jeff, wildly. “In Gawd’s hands, hey? You’re Gawd-a’mighty fond of blattin’ ’bout Gawd, parson! But I take notice He ain’t a-doin’ nothin’ fer that pore sick gal of mine, in yonder. Why ain’t He? Where is He, anyhow, if He cain’t——” “He is here,” answered Stair very quietly. “Here, and in that delirious girl’s room, back there. He is wherever His children cry out to Him in sorrow and pain—just as, in your inmost heart, you are crying to Him now. If His children are too deaf or too scared or too noisy, in their grief, to know He has come at their call, then the fault is with their own stupidity; and not with the all-pitying Father, who is carrying them through the ordeal.” He pushed past the mouthing Titus and went back to his post in the sick-room. On the second morning Eve was in a heavy sleep. Her once-parched forehead was moist. Stair, with a jerk of his thumb, motioned Jeff out into the dooryard. On his withered face was the glow of a conqueror. Harshly, as if in doubt of his own self-control, the circuit-rider said: “The crisis is past. She has turned the corner. “If He ain’t,” choked Titus ecstatically, “He sent a damn’ fine substitoot:—meanin’ no disrespec’. I—I reckon, parson—I reckon you-all knows how small I feel; ’bout blabbin’ like I did. An’—an’—Oh, you’re dead sure she’s a-goin’ to live? There—there ain’t—there ain’t nothing I c’n say! But—but——” Incontinently Jeff Titus bolted around the side of the house and out of sight into the woods. When he returned, an hour later, he was carrying a half-armful of kindling. Circumstantially and at some length he explained to Stair that he had spent the entire hour in looking for it. Stair accepted the explanation in grave credulity and forebore to glance towards the high-piled heap of kindling in the woodshed. At noon Eve awoke. She was very weak, very tired, very thin and big-eyed. But she was alive. And in Jeff’s heart there was something that made him yearn to howl aloud in rapture and roll on the grass, and to join the church all over again, and to thrash some mythical man for speaking mythical ill of Ephraim Stair; and to turn over his farm and his savings to foreign missions, Being a Kentucky mountaineer, and a Titus to boot, he contented himself with grinning down upon his sick wife and grunting: “Feel better? That’s nice. Be all right, pretty soon, now. Reckon I’d best be gittin’ in some more wood, b’fore it rains. So long!” Robin Adair, like his master, knew Eve was on the way to health again. But being only a dog and not a mountaineer, Robin did not sneak out of the house to hide his emotion. He stood beside the bed, his dark eyes aglow, his furry bulk quivering all over with puppyish joy; and wagging his plumed tail, frantically, every time his mistress looked at him. One evening a few days later the two men were smoking together in the dooryard before turning in. Eve had been made comfortable for the night and was asleep. She had gained a little ground, but her convalescence was maddeningly slow and uncertain to Jeff. The horror of the past fortnight or so had left him nerve-shaken. In spite of all Stair’s assurances, he could not throw off his fear for her safety. “She has been through a terrible illness,” patiently explained Stair for the hundredth time. “Good news, hey?” mused Jeff, his bony hands supporting his leathern face as he cogitated. “Good news? H’m!” “Yes,” returned Stair, “that, or something pleasant to look forward to. When she’s well enough, you might take her to Duneka, or somewhere, for a little outing. Tell her so. It may brighten her to——” “Nope,” dissented Jeff. “It wouldn’t. I tried, to-day. Told her she must git well, right smart, now; so’s we c’d have a ja’ntin’, somewheres. She said she was so tired, she reckoned she’d jest stay quiet to home a spell. It didn’t brace her, a wee peckle. Funny, too! ’Cause jest before she was took sick, she an’ me was projectin’, a hull lot, on a trip we was plannin’ to make. She’d got her heart real sot on it—’count of suthin’ she’d read[Pg “Well?” asked Stair, in no special interest, as Jeff paused. “Wal,” went on the mountaineer sheepishly, “you-all know how much store Eve sets by Robin, here. She thinks he’s jest the finest dawg on this yer planet. She was a-sayin’ there couldn’t be no finer dawg in the collie bunch, at the show, than what Robin is. An’ she was honin’ fer us to take him down there an’ let him git a chance at that silver cup. Wal, whatever Eve hones fer, she’s a-goin’ to git—if it’s gittable an’ if I’m in reach to git it fer her. So I ’greed we’d take Robin to the show. She was all het up over the idee of a-gittin’ that ’ere cup. An’ she was a-sayin’ how grand it’d be to have the paper print Robin’s name as winnin’ it, so’s she c’d send a copy of the paper to her folks, down Looeyville way, an’ all that. Wal, that’s all there is to it,” he ended with a loud sigh. “Why is that all there is to it?” demanded Stair with sudden inspiration. “Why can’t you “Good! Oh, good!” exulted a feeble little voice in the room behind them. Eve had waked, during their talk. And, in her tones, as she applauded the plan, rang the first interest she had shown since the beginning of her illness. Stair, listening, shut his thin lips on a belated objection that had come into his mind while the mountaineer was applauding his chance suggestion. It had just occurred to the circuit-rider that if Robin should not be adjudged worthy of the cup, the disappointment was likely to do the invalid more harm than a week of nursing could counteract. But it was too late to voice that warning now. Eve had heard. Eve was pathetically eager over the scheme. And, kicking himself mentally for his own impulsiveness, the clergyman held his peace. He knew nothing about dogs, from a show standpoint—and mightily he hoped Eve’s estimate of her pet might be correct. But he doubted—more and more, he doubted. Collies, fit to win Timidly, Stair sought to wet-blanket the venture. But again he was too late. At last Eve had the desired “interest in life,” an interest that threatened to bring back her fever. The dog-show virus is potent, as any exhibitor can testify. It has a mystic lure. Jeff, once he grasped the idea, was swept off his feet by it. The fall County Fair at Duneka had begun its fourth day. That day’s star feature was to be the “all breeds” dog-show, to be held in the Agricultural Building. A gratifying number of dogs was benched in the main hall of the ramshackle structure; early on the morning of the show. Two stewards were busy receiving the fast-arriving entrants, assigning to them their places in the double aisles of wire-partitioned and straw-littered “benches,” and assessing late-comers the usual extra fees for “post-entries.” To these grievously overworked functionaries, in the thick of their labours, appeared a lanky farmer of the true mountaineer type. He was clad in store-clothes that sat on his angular figure as might a horse-blanket on a washboard. By a rope, the hill-billy led a large and shaggy dog whose rough, tawny coat had been washed and “Collie dawg,” announced Jeff, “owned by Miz Jeff Titus. Entered for the silver cup.” Patiently the stewards explained to him that a dog must be entered for one or more of the show’s regular classes, and that the coveted silver cup was to go to the collie adjudged best in the whole show. They also informed Jeff that as his was a post-entry, it would cost him an extra fifty cents to exhibit his dog. He was told that in addition to this it would cost him a dollar for every class in which he might enter Robin. As most of this was Greek to the puzzled exhibitor, one of the stewards asked if the dog had ever before been shown. On receiving a negative answer he took one look at the uninterested Robin and suggested he be entered for the “novice class,” alone. As soon as he could be made to understand that a collie winning, in the novice class, would stand as good a chance for the cup as would any other, Titus paid over his money and led Robin to the stall in the collie section corresponding to the number the steward had tied to the dog’s collar. After mooring Robin’s rope to the ring in his wire-partitioned bench, and getting him some Dogs—dogs—dogs! Everywhere dogs—more dogs than Jeff had known existed—dogs of all breeds and sizes, from Peke to St. Bernard. The iron-girdered roof was re-echoing with their clangour. They were barking or yapping in fifty different keys, but all with the same earnestness. Jeff saw that each breed had a bench-section to itself. In the hall’s centre, to which the bench aisles converged, were two wood-and-wire inclosures in each of which were a low central platform and a corner table and a chair. On the tables were neat piles of red and yellow and blue ribbons alongside a record-ledger. Handlers were everywhere busy making their pets ready for the judging. Crowds of onlookers had already begun to filter through the aisles. Jeff heard someone say that the judging was about to begin, and that collies were to be among the first breeds shown. His general curiosity sated, Titus fell to examining the dogs which were to be Robin’s competitors. And at once his mountaineer scowl merged into a grin. Here, forsooth, was nothing wherewith the splendid Robin need fear comparison. Why, of all the nineteen collies on exhibition, there was not one within three inches of Robin’s Poor old Robin Adair was probably more collie than anything else; he may even have been a shade more than half-collie. But in his veins ran also the mixed blood of many another breed, Newfoundland predominating. “Look over there!” Jeff heard a dapper collie-handler in a linen duster say in guarded tones to a woman who was sifting talcum powder into her gold-and-white collie pup’s fluffy coat. “Over at Bench 89! What is that Thing? A dog—or a hippopotamus?” As the woman turned to observe the luckless Robin, Jeff Titus strolled across to the man who had called her attention to the dog. His eyes were glinting flares behind their lowered lids, and his lips twisted into something which looked like a smile and wasn’t. He said softly: “Beggin’ you-all’s pardon, mister, what was you a-happenin’ to call my dawg?” The man in the linen duster gave one glance at the leathern face peering down so intensely into his. Then, shakily, he made reply: “I—I wasn’t speaking of your dog, sir. I was speaking of the dog in the next bench to his. I—I read the number wrong. Yours is—a—a grand—a grand—collie, sir.” He gulped, and sped down the aisles on a new-remembered errand somewhere. Jeff turned back to Robin, his mind freed of its momentary angry doubt. The collie classes were called a few minutes later. The first to be judged were, as usual, the male puppies. Jeff, watching the performance of the entrants, saw how the judging was done. First the dogs were made to march around the ring. Then, in ones or twos, they were placed on the platform while the little tweed-clad judge studied them and felt them all over. After that, the judge wrote certain numbers in the ring-steward’s book and handed to the owner of the winning dog a blue ribbon. A red ribbon went to the owner of the second best, a yellow ribbon to the third, and a white ribbon to the fourth. Every one of the several collie classes, it seemed, must be judged in that same deliberate way; before the winners of all classes could compete Then, directly after the judging of the puppies, came the novice class. Along with only two other entries, Jeff Titus led the majestically unconcerned Robin into the ring. As he passed, a titter swept the quadruple line of railbirds outside the inclosure. Jeff did not so much as look about him to locate the cause of the mirth. These fool city-folks were always laughing at nothing. Nor did he note the glare, almost of horror, which the little tweed-clad judge bestowed upon Robin; as Eve’s adored pet paced into the ring. The judge eyed him with much the expression one might expect to see in the visage of a Supreme Court justice who has been asked to hand down an official opinion on a nursery rhyme. “Walk your dogs, please!” rasped the judge. The parade started. Robin strolled unconcernedly at his lanky master’s side. As he was not a thoroughbred, his nerves were not of the hair-trigger order. The racket and the crowd and the new surroundings did not excite or terrify or make him profoundly miserable; as they did some of the high-strung collies about him. Jeff observed this calm demeanour and was proud of his dog’s bearing. The parade was halted. The judge motioned Robin’s two competitors to the platform, squinted at them for a moment, ran his hand over them, examined the spring of their ribs, then their teeth, and various other details,—stood back and studied them—then handed to the owner of one a blue ribbon and to the other a red. The third-prize yellow ribbon he tossed back onto the steward’s table. The winners of the first and second prizes departed with their collies. The steward chalked up the next class on the blackboard. But Jeff Titus did not leave the ring. Eyes bulging, cheeks slowly turning from tan to brick-hue, he strode over to the judge. “Look-a-here, you!” he rumbled in a blend of wrath and dazed incredulity. “What’s the meanin’ of this-yer? Are you aimin’ to doublecross me? My dawg’s wuth ten of them ornery critters. He’s a heap bigger’n an’ huskier, an’ he’s purtier to look at, too! What the blue blazes do you-all mean by treatin’ him thisaway, you hard-biled shrimp? He——” With much dignity the little judge turned his back on the angry Titus and started across the ring. But before he had gone two steps Jeff was once more confronting him. “Look-a-here!” snarled Titus, again, striving to keep himself in hand, “I ain’t goin’ to lay “I was bound to do nothing of the sort!” rapped out the exasperated judge. “I am here to judge collies, not dinosaurs. I refuse to countenance the claim that your dog is a collie, by giving him a third-prize ribbon; even in a class of three. So, in this class, I have deliberately withheld the third prize. Your dog is not a collie. The Lord alone knows what he is, but he’s no collie. That’s all. Clear out!” For a man with heart or imagination, there is no ordeal more irksome than to judge dogs. For, in almost every division, there is some such beast as Robin Adair;—a dog loved by his owners, who know nothing of shows or of show points. A judge, in fairness to the better exhibits, must pass over these poor animals; and thereby must cause heartache and shame to their pathetic owners. It is not a pleasant task. Nor is any phase of dog-judging pleasant. It is a thankless and nerve-racking job, at best; and it has a magic quality of turning one’s friends into enemies. The little judge at the Duneka show was hardened by long practice. Also, he had all the bristling pluck of a rat-terrier. And he needed It was going to be bad enough to slink home with no cup, but it would be ten-fold worse to go to the hoosgow for mayhem. He pictured sick Eve’s grief over such a disgrace, and his clenched hand dropped again to his side. Grappling with his temper, the mountaineer wheeled about and led the disqualified Robin out of the ring and back to the bench. A sweet mess he had made of everything; he and that parson, up yonder! They had wrought on Eve’s hopes and had made her so gloriously confident that her dear dog was going to sweep all before him and win the cup! She was lying at home, this minute, her big eyes shining with anticipation, her vivid mind picturing the triumph-scene at the show. How confidently she would be waiting for that cup! Jeff had sought so enthusiastically to work out Stair’s theory of a “good news” cure! And how was the experiment to result? He must go home on the morrow and tell Eve not only that he had no cup to show her, but that the judge Knowing Eve as he did, Jeff was ready to believe it would undo most of her hard-won convalescence. And at the very least, in her weak state, it was certain to make her cry. Jeff would rather have faced a machine-gun nest than make his gallant little sweetheart cry. He began to swear, very softly but very, very zealously. And then his resourceful mountaineer brain unlimbered and went into action. Presently, he arose from the bench, patted Robin absentmindedly on the head and slouched off towards the end of the hall, where, in a high glass case, were displayed the prize cups and the other trophies. Long and minutely he scanned the glittering prizes, especially the cup engraved “Best Collie.” And he spelled out the printed legend over the case—which proclaimed that the cups were supplied by the long-famous jewellery firm of Pinkus Bernstein, of Republic Street, Duneka, Kentucky. Ten minutes later, leaving Robin to shift for himself on his bench, Jeff was hiking towards the business streets of the mountain metropolis. He Returning to the Agricultural Hall, he seated himself once more on the narrow bench beside the exultantly welcoming Robin, and proceeded to unwind the tissue wrappings of his package. Robin looked on in mild curiosity. His sense of smell had already told the dog that the parcel contained nothing of vital interest to him. Yet, because he had been lonely and a little worried by Jeff’s long absence, Robin evinced a polite concern in the undoing of the wrappings. The last layer of paper was removed. To the dog’s view was exposed a huge and gleaming silver cup, a cup with much chasing on its polished surface and with three handles and an ebony base. It was at least double the size of the cup offered by the committee for “best collie.” “See that?” questioned Titus, holding the trophy aloft for Robin’s inspection. “Forty-one dollars, that set me back. An’ it’d a’ been a heap more, only it was a left-over, an’ had that one little gouge under the aidge. Robin, if that cup don’t tickle her, suthin’ terrible, I’m a clay-eater! You-all won this yer vase, to-day, Robin; by bein’ He paused in his low-pitched confidence to the blinking, sympathising dog. Two men had halted just in front of him. One of them was carrying an apparatus which movie-camp memories told Jeff was a camera. It chanced to be a moment when no less than two “Winners’ Classes” were on in the showrings. Accordingly the ring-sides were banked deep with onlookers, and this secluded section of the aisles was almost wholly stripped of spectators. That was why Jeff had ventured to bring forth the cup from its wrappings. The sight of the two keenly interested men set him to scowling in dire embarrassment. The chairman of the dog-show committee was also one of the chief stockholders of the Duneka Chronicle. Wherefore, the dictum had gone forth to the Chronicle city-room that the show was to be played up, big, in both morning and evening editions. And the paper’s best descriptive writer, one Graham, had been assigned to do some “human-interest stuff” about it, in addition to the sporting editor’s regulation account. Graham was a good reporter, and he had a After pausing near the front entrance to accustom their ears to the frightful din and to take a snapshot of the trophy-case, the two newspaper men had wandered down the first aisle into which their non-enthusiastic feet had chanced to stray. There, suddenly, Graham saw one of the “human-interest bits” for which he was always hunting. Midway in an aisle labelled COLLIE SECTION sat a tired man, a typical mountaineer, beside a huge collie. And to the civilly interested dog the mountaineer was exhibiting pridefully a silver cup; larger than any in the trophy-case. He was talking to the dog, too, in a confidential whisper; evidently telling the collie what a splendid victory he had scored and how proud of him his master was. Here was human-interest stuff, if ever Graham had seen it! “Cup for best collie in the show?” asked Graham of the scowling hill-billy. “Yep!” snapped Jeff Titus, defiantly. “Good boy!” exclaimed Graham, seeking by “His name,” said Jeff with perilous courtesy, “is Robin—Robin Adair. He b’longs to my wife, Miz Jeff Titus—up Keytesville-way. She’s sick, to home. I’m showin’ him fer her. Got any more questions to pester me with, b’fore——” “Would you mind holding up the cup, a second?” wheedled Graham, scribbling with a chewed pencil on a doubled wad of copy paper. “So! Thanks!” Still defiantly, Jeff had held forward the cup for inspection, his free arm around the majestic Robin’s shoulders. The camera clicked. Titus did not hear it, through the noise of a hundred barks and yelps. Besides, he was focusing his indignant attention on this slick-spoken opponent of his. “Wal?” he demanded truculently. “Anything more you-all wants o’ me? He’s our dawg. An’ he’s good enough for us. If you-all don’t like him none——” “But I do!” effused Graham. “A great dog, Mr. Titus! And”—his eye running along the collie section—“he must be close to championship standard, to have beaten all of these beauties. I’d like to ask you——” “I ain’t got nothin’ more to say!” growled Jeff, Graham was not aiming to start trouble. Not at all did he like the new expression, nor the voice, of this sulking hill-billy he had sought to patronise. With a signal to the photographer he moved rapidly away, continuing his progress down the aisle. Jeff glared after him. If the man were going to inform the committee that Titus had bought a cup when he had not been able to win one, why, let him do it! Jeff wasn’t going to run away. So he held his ground, feeling very wrathful, but somewhat scared. He restored the cup to its wrappings. It would be handier to carry it, that way, should he be ejected from the show on account of his fraud. But no one ejected him. Except that people paused now and then, through the course of the day, to stare amusedly at poor Robin (and to straighten their faces in comical haste as they encountered Jeff’s glower), no one molested Titus. At four in the afternoon Jeff’s raw nerves could stand the strain no longer. Untying Robin from the bench, he led him to the entrance of “When c’n me an’ my dawg git outen here an’ traipse home?” he asked. “No dog is supposed to leave the building before ten o’clock to-night, when the show ends,” replied the superintendent, adding with a cryptic glance at Robin: “But I don’t think I need hold your entry to those rules. Go when you like.” The cup under his arm and Robin at his heels, Jeff departed. He had come to town on mule-back, the dog running alongside. Even at the best pace he could scarce hope to get home very much before midnight. He had come to Duneka on the preceding day and had planned to stay until next morning. But, already, his imagination was afire with the thought of bursting in on Eve that very night, with the glittering trophy. So he bent his steps towards the stable where he housed his mule. Across the fair-grounds, from the cityward gate, a bevy of barelegged newsboys was scampering, with armfuls of newspapers—copies of the Chronicle’s first afternoon edition. One of them ran past Jeff. Jeff’s keen mountaineer eyes chanced on a dark blotch near the bottom of the swaying sheet’s first page. With an unbelieving gasp, he stopped The boy returned, holding out the paper. Jeff snatched it from him, riveting his incredulous gaze upon that dark blotch on the front page. The blotch, at close range, resolved itself into a two-column cut—a picture of Robin, lying majestically at full length in his bench, his trustful gaze fixed on the lank man who squatted beside him and who held aloft an ornate silver cup! Above the cut ran the caption: “A PRIZE-WINNER AND HIS PRIZE.” Beneath the picture were the lines: “Mrs. Jeff Titus’ Robin Adair; Winner of cup for Best Collie in Show.” Doubled, in single-column space under this, was one of the two-stick “human-interest” stories with which Graham was wont to strew the Chronicle’s pages. Jeff’s fascinated eyes tore themselves from the picture and caught a glimpse of his own name midway of this explanatory yarn. He read the sentence containing the name, then the next line or so. Slowly and painfully he spelled out:
The brief story switched back to the human-interest note—to the man’s evident rapture in the triumph of his sick wife’s pet, and his shy pride in the magnificent cup. But Jeff read no more just then. Whirling on the impatiently waiting newsboy, he demanded thickly: “Gimme all them newspapers you’re totin’! An’ then scuttle off an’ fetch me a dozen more! Scat!” Again he stared in idiotic bliss at the smudged two-column cut. What did it matter to Jeff Titus that the picture and its erroneous caption were to be “lifted out” of the next edition, and that Graham was to incur the sharpest call-down of his career, for the break he had made? Not three copies of the Chronicle a week made their way to Keytesville. And, even should the next day’s full account of the dog-show reach the Titus region, no mountaineer in the State would possess the technical show-lore to decipher No: in the mountains, the printed word was accepted as gospel fact—by those who had education to read it. And its pictures were accepted as such by those who had not bothered to master the effete arts of reading and writing. Jeff was going to take home enough papers to go around the whole sparse neighbourhood, in addition to those which were to be mailed to Eve’s people at Louisville and to any other distant kin or friends of hers. Not in the very least did Jeff Titus understand the meaning of this newspaper tribute. Nor did he bother his overwrought brain about it. He had the required “good news” for Eve. He had printed and pictured proofs thereof. If this didn’t help along her tardy cure, by leaps and bounds— “I ain’t never lied to her yet, Robin!” he informed the prize-winner as they ambled homeward at dusk over the purpling miles of hilly trail. “Nor yet I don’t aim to, now. We’ll walk in on her, with the cup. An’ when she asks, all pleased an’ tickled-like, ‘Why, whatever is this yer fer?’ we’ll jest stick a copy of the noospaper up in front of her. I’m bettin’ the R’cordin’ Angel is due to strain his pore ears till they ache him, if he ‘lots on ketchin’ me tellin’ a lie to that Gawd-blessed gal!”
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