and the stronger ones drank first, with much fighting and squabbling and slashing of fangs.  Into the foremost of this was Michael, slashing and being slashed, but managing to get hasty gulps of the life-saving fluid.  Davis danced about among them, kicking right and left, so that all might have a chance.  His wife took a hand, laying about her with a mop.  It was a pandemonium of pain, for, their parched throats softened by the water, they were again able to yelp and cry out loudly all their hurt and woe.

Several were too weak to get to the water, so it was carried to them and doused and splashed into their mouths.  It seemed that they would never be satisfied.  They lay in collapse all about the room, but every little while one or another would crawl over to the tub and try to drink more.  In the meantime Davis had started a fire and filled a caldron with potatoes.

“The place stinks like a den of skunks,” Mrs. Davis observed, pausing from dabbing the end of her nose with a powder-puff.  “Dearest, we’ll just have to wash them.”

“All right, sweetheart,” her husband agreed.  “And the quicker the better.  We can get through with it while the potatoes are boiling and cooling.  I’ll scrub them and you dry them.  Remember that pneumonia, and do it thoroughly.”

It was quick, rough bathing.  Reaching out for the dogs nearest him, he flung them in turn into the tub from which they had drunk.  When they were frightened, or when they objected in any way, he rapped them on the head with the scrubbing brush or the bar of yellow laundry soap with which he was lathering them.  Several minutes sufficed for a dog.

“Drink, damn you, drink—­have some more,” he would say, as he shoved their heads down and under the dirty, soapy water.

He seemed to hold them responsible for their horrible condition, to look upon their filthiness as a personal affront.

Michael yielded to being flung into the tub.  He recognized that baths were necessary and compulsory, although they were administered in much better fashion at Cedarwild, while Kwaque and Steward had made a sort of love function of it when they bathed him.  So he did his best to endure the scrubbing, and all might have been well had not Davis soused him under.  Michael jerked his head up with a warning growl.  Davis suspended half-way the blow he was delivering with the heavy brush, and emitted a low whistle of surprise.

“Hello!” he said.  “And look who’s here!—­Lovey, this is the Irish terrier I got from Collins.  He’s no good.  Collins said so.  Just a fill-in.—­Get out!” he commanded Michael.  “That’s all you get now, Mr. Fresh Dog.  But take it from me pretty soon you’ll be getting it fast enough to make you dizzy.”

While the potatoes were cooling, Mrs. Davis kept the hungry dogs warned away by sharp cries.  Michael lay down sullenly to one side, and took no part in the rush for the trough when permission was given.  Again Davis danced among them, kicking away the stronger and the more eager.