Suddenly there came to Comet’s nose the smell of game birds, strong, pungent, compelling.  He stiffened into an earnest, beautiful point.  Heretofore in the little training he had had Thompson had come up behind him, flushed the birds, and made him drop.  And now Larsen, having quickly dismounted and tied his horse, came up behind him, just as Thompson had done, except that in Larsen’s hand was the gun.

The old-fashioned black powder of a generation ago makes a loud explosion.  It sounds like a cannon compared with the modern smokeless powder now used by all hunters.  Perhaps it was only an accident that had caused Larsen before he left the house to load his pump gun with black powder shells.

As for Comet he only knew that the birds rose; then above his head burst an awful roar, almost splitting his tender eardrums, shocking every sensitive nerve, filling him with terror such as he had never felt before.  Even then, in the confusion and horror of the surprise, he turned to the man, head ringing, eyes dilated.  A single reassuring word, and he would have steadied.  As for Larsen, though, he declared afterward (to others and to himself even) that he noticed no nervousness in the dog; that he was only intent on getting several birds for breakfast.

Twice, three times, four times, the pump gun bellowed in its cannon-like roar, piercing the eardrums, shattering the nerves.  Comet turned; one more glance backward at a face, strange, exultant—­and then the puppy in him conquered.  Tail tucked, he ran away from that shattering noise.

Miles he ran.  Now and then, stumbling over briars, he yelped.  Not once did he look back.  His tail was tucked, his eyes crazy with fear.  Seeing a house, he made for that.  It was the noon hour, and a group of farm hands was gathered in the yard.  One of them, with a cry “Mad dog!” ran into the house after a gun.  When he came out, they told him the dog was under the porch.  And so he was.  Pressed against the wall, in the darkness, the magnificent young pointer with the quivering soul waited, panting, eyes gleaming, the horror still ringing in his ears.

Here Larsen found him that afternoon.  A boy crawled underneath the porch and dragged him out.  He, who had started life favoured of the gods, who that morning even had been full of high spirits, who had circled a field like a champion, was now a cringing, shaking creature, like a homeless cur.

And thus it happened that Comet came home, in disgrace—­a gun-shy dog, a coward, expelled from college, not for some youthful prank, but because he was—­yellow.  And he knew he was disgraced.  He saw it in the face of the big man, Devant, who looked at him in the yard where he had spent his happy puppyhood, then turned away.  He knew it because of what he saw in the face of Jim Thompson.

In the house was a long and plausible letter, explaining how it happened: 

I did everything I could.  I never was as surprised in my life.  The dog’s hopeless.