“Is it fatal, Dan?” she asked.  “Is there no hope for Bart?”

There was no answer from Barry, and she attempted to raise the fallen, lifeless head of the animal; but instantly a strong arm darted out and brushed her hands away.  Those hands fell idly at her sides and her head went back as though she had been struck across the face.  She found herself looking up into the angry eyes of Randall Byrne.  He reached down and raised her to her feet; there was no colour in her face, no life in her limbs.

“There’s nothing more to be done here, apparently,” said the doctor coldly.  “Suppose we take your father and go back to the house.”

She made neither assent nor dissent.  Dan Barry had finished a swift, deft bandage and stopped the bleeding of the dog’s wounds.  Now he raised his head and his glance slipped rapidly over the faces of the doctor and the girl and rested on Buck Daniels.  There was no flash of kindly thanks, no word of recognition.  His right hand raised to his cheek, and rested there, and in his eyes came that flare of yellow hate.  Buck Daniels shrank back until he was lost in the crowd.  Then he turned and stumbled back towards the house.

Instantly, Barry began to work at expanding and depressing the lungs of the huge animal as he might have worked to bring a man back to life.

“Watch him!” whispered the doctor to Kate Cumberland.  “He is closer to that dog—­that wolf, it looks like—­than he has ever been to any human being!”

She would not answer, but she turned her head quickly away from the man and his beast.

“Are you afraid to watch?” challenged Byrne, for his anger at Barry’s blunt refusals still made his blood hot.  “When your father lay at death’s door was he half so anxious as he is now?  Did he work so hard, by half?  See how his eyes are fixed on the muzzle of the beast as if he were studying a human face!”

“No, no!” breathed the girl.

“I fell you, look!” commanded the doctor.  “For there’s the solution of the mystery.  No mystery at all.  Barry is simply a man who is closer akin to the brute forces in nature.  See!  By the eternal heavens, he’s dragging that beast—­that dumb beast—­back from the door of death!”

Barry had ceased his rapid manipulations, and turned the big dog back upon its side.  Now the eyes of Black Bart opened, and winked shut again.  Now the master kneeled at the head of the beast and took the scarred, shaggy head between his hands.

“Bart!” he commanded.

Not a stir in the long, black body.  The stallion edged a pace closer, dropped his velvet muzzle, and whinnied softly at the very ear of the dog.  Still, there was not an answering quiver.

“Bart!” called the man again, and there was a ring of wild grief—­of fear—­in his cry.

“Do you hear?” said Byrne savagely, at the ear of the girl.  “Did you ever use such a tone with a human being?  Ever?”