The big, shaggy animal had slunk to the feet of his master and with head abased stared furtively up into Barry’s face.  A gesture served as sufficient command, and he slipped shadow-like into the corner and crouched with his head on his paws and the incandescent green of his eyes glimmering; Barry sat down in a chair nearby.

O’Brien was happily spinning bottles and glasses the length of the bar; there was the chiming of glass and the rumble of contented voices.

“Red-eye all ’round,” said the loud voice of Jerry Strann, “but there’s one out.  Who’s out?  Oh, it’s him.  Hey O’Brien, lemonade for the lady.”

It brought a laugh, a deep, good-natured laugh, and then a chorus of mockery; but Barry stepped unconfused to the bar, accepted the glass of lemonade, and when the others downed their fire-water, he sipped his drink thoughtfully.  Outside, the wind had risen, and it shook the hotel and carried a score of faint voices as it whirred around corners and through cracks.  Perhaps it was one of those voices which made the big dog lift its head from its paws and whine softly! surely it was something he heard which caused Barry to straighten at the bar and cant his head slightly to one side—­but, as certainly, no one else in the barroom heard it.  Barry set down his glass.

“Mr. Strann?” he called.

And the gentle voice carried faintly down through the uproar of the bar.

“Sister wants to speak to you,” suggested O’Brien to Strann.

“Well?” roared the latter, “what d’you want?”

The others were silent to listen; and they smiled in anticipation.

“If you don’t mind, much,” said the musical voice, “I think I’ll be moving along.”

There is an obscure little devil living in all of us.  It makes the child break his own toys; it makes the husband strike the helpless wife; it makes the man beat the cringing, whining dog.  The greatest of American writers has called it the Imp of the Perverse.  And that devil came in Jerry Strann and made his heart small and cold.  If he had been by nature the bully and the ruffian there would have been no point in all that followed, but the heart of Jerry Strann was ordinarily as warm as the yellow sunshine itself; and it was a common saying in the Three B’s that Jerry Strann would take from a child what he would not endure from a mountain-lion.  Women loved Jerry Strann, and children would crowd about his knees, but this day the small demon was in him.

“You want to be moving along” mimicked the devil in Jerry Strann.  “Well, you wait a while.  I ain’t through with you yet.  Maybe—­” he paused and searched his mind.  “You’ve given me a fall, and maybe you can give the rest of us—­a laugh!”

The chuckle of appreciation went up the bar and down it again.

“I want to ask you,” went on the devil in Jerry Strann, “where you got your hoss?”

“He was running wild,” came the gentle answer.  “So I took a walk, one day, and brought him in.”