But as Lloyd sat in the cart watching him he promptly demonstrated the fact that his nature was as extraordinary as his looks.  He turned again from a momentary inspection of the intruders, sniffed once or twice at his dead enemy, then suddenly began to eat him.

Lloyd’s gorge rose with anger and disgust.  Even if Dan had been killed, it had been in fair fight, and there could be no doubt that Dan himself had been the aggressor.  She could even feel a little respect for the conqueror of the champion, but to turn upon the dead foe, now that the heat of battle was past, and (in no spirit of hate or rage) deliberately to eat him.  What a horror!  She took out her whip.

“Shame on you!” she exclaimed.  “Ugh! what a savage; I shan’t allow you!”

A farm-hand was coming across the plank bridge, and as he drew near the cart Lloyd asked him to hold Rox for a moment.  Rox was one of those horses who, when standing still, are docile as a kitten, and she had no hesitancy in leaving him with a man at his head.  She jumped out, the whip in her hand.  Dan was beyond all help, but she wanted at least to take his collar back to Mrs. Applegate.  The strange dog permitted himself to be driven off a little distance.  Part of his strangeness seemed to be that through it all he retained a certain placidity of temper.  There was no ferocity in his desire to eat Dan.

“That’s just what makes it so disgusting,” said Lloyd, shaking her whip at him.  He sat down upon his haunches, eyeing her calmly, his tongue lolling.  When she had unbuckled Dan’s collar and tossed it into the cart under the seat she inquired of the farm-hand as to where the new dog came from.

“It beats me, Miss Searight,” he answered; “never saw such a bird in these parts before; t’other belongs down to Applegate’s.”

“Come, let’s have a look at you,” said Lloyd, putting back the whip; “let me see your collar.”

Disregarding the man’s warning, she went up to the stranger, whistling and holding out her hand, and he came up to her—­a little suspiciously at first, but in the end wagging his tail, willing to be friendly.  Lloyd parted the thick fur around his neck and turned the plate of the collar to the light.  On the plate was engraved:  “Kamiska, Arctic S.S.  ‘Freja.’  Return to Ward Bennett.”

“Anything on the collar?” asked the man.

Lloyd settled a hairpin in a coil of hair at the back of her neck.

“Nothing—­nothing that I can make out.”

She climbed into the cart again and dismissed the farm-hand with a quarter.  He disappeared around the turn of the road.  But as she was about to drive on, Lloyd heard a great clattering of stones upon the hill above her, a crashing in the bushes, and a shrill whistle thrice repeated.  Kamiska started up at once, cocking alternate ears, then turned about and ran up the hill to meet Ward Bennett, who came scrambling down, jumping from one granite outcrop to another, holding on the whiles by the lower branches of the scrub oak-trees.