with a black spot on his neck, which gives him his name.  His mate in harness is a tawny yellow dog called Scotty.  Then come Rover and Shaver.  Rover is a small, black, lop-eared dog, about half the size of Shaver, who looks upon Rover as an inconsequent attachment, and though he thinks that Rover is of small assistance, he takes upon himself the responsibility of making this little working mate of his keep busy when in harness.  Tad and Eric, the rear dogs, are the largest and heaviest of the pack, and perhaps the best haulers.  Their traces are never slack, and they attend strictly to business.

This is the team that hauls Doctor Grenfell in long winter journeys, when he visits the coast settlements of northern Newfoundland, in every one of which he finds no end of eager folk welcoming him and calling him to their homes to heal their sick.

In the scattered hamlets and sparsely settled coast of northern Newfoundland the folk have no doctor to call upon at a moment’s notice when they are sick, as we have.  They live apart and isolated from many of the conveniences of life that we look upon as necessities.

It was this condition that led Doctor Grenfell to build his fine mission hospital at St. Anthony, and from St. Anthony, to brave the bitter storms of winter, traveling over hundreds of miles of dreary frozen storm-swept sea and land to help the needy, often to save life.  He never charges a fee, but the Newfoundlander is independent and self-respecting, and when he is able to do so he pays.  All that comes to Doctor Grenfell in this way he gives to the mission to help support the hospitals.  Those who cannot pay receive from him and his assistants the same skilled and careful treatment as those who do pay.  Money makes no difference.  Doctor Grenfell is giving his life to the people because they need him, and he never keeps for his own use any part of the small fees paid him.  He is never so happy as when he is helping others, and to help others who are in trouble is his one great object in life.

Two or three years ago the Newfoundland Government extended a telegraph line to St. Anthony.  This offers the people an opportunity to call upon Doctor Grenfell when they are in need of him, though sometimes they live so far away that in the storms of winter and uncertainty of dog travel several days may pass before he can reach the sick ones in answer to the calls.  But let the weather be what it may, he always responds, for there is no other doctor than Doctor Grenfell and his assistant, the surgeon at St. Anthony Hospital, within several hundred miles, north and west of St. Anthony.

Late one January afternoon in 1919 such a telegram came from a young fisherman living at Cape Norman, urging Doctor Grenfell to come to his home at once, and stating that the fisherman’s wife was seriously ill.  Grenfell’s assistant had taken the dog team the previous day to answer a call, and had not returned, and if he were to go before his assistant’s return there would be no doctor at the hospital.  He therefore answered the man, stating these facts.  During the evening another wire was received urging him to find a team somewhere and come at all costs.