“More agents of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals,” was Jacob Henderson’s thought, as the man and woman, accompanied by the manager of the theatre, were shown into his tiny dressing-room.  Michael, on a chair and half asleep, took no notice of them.  While Harley talked with Henderson, Villa investigated Michael; and Michael scarcely opened his eyes ere he closed them again.  Too sour on the human world, and too glum in his own soured nature, he was anything save his old courtly self to chance humans who broke in upon him to pat his head, and say silly things, and go their way never to be seen by him again.

Villa Kennan, with a pang of disappointment at such rebuff, forwent her overtures for the moment, and listened to what tale Jacob Henderson could tell of his dog.  Harry Del Mar, a trained-animal man, had picked the dog up somewhere on the Pacific Coast, most probably in San Francisco, she learned; but, having taken the dog east with him, Harry Del Mar had died by accident in New York before telling anybody anything about the animal.  That was all, except that Henderson had paid two thousand dollars to one Harris Collins, and had found the investment the finest he had ever made.

Villa turned back to the dog.

“Michael,” she called, caressingly, almost in a whisper.

And Michael’s eyes partly opened, the base-muscles of his ears stiffened, and his body quivered.

“Michael,” she repeated.

This time raising his head, the eyes open and the ears stiffly erect, Michael looked at her.  Not since on the beach at Tulagi had he heard that name uttered.  Across the years and the seas the word came to him out of the past.  Its effect was electrical, for on the instant all the connotations of “Michael” flooded his consciousness.  He saw again Captain Kellar, of the Eugenie, who had last called him it, and Mister Haggin, and Derby, and Bob of Meringe Plantation, and Biddy and Terrence, and, not least among these shades of the vanished past, his brother Jerry.

But was it the vanished past?  The name which had ceased for years, had come back.  It had entered the room along with this man and woman.  All this he did not reason; but indubitably, as if he had so reasoned, he acted upon it.

He jumped from the chair and ran to the woman.  He smelled her hand, and smelled her as she patted him.  Then, as he recognized her, he went wild.  He sprang away, dashing around and around the room, sniffing under the washstand and smelling out the corners.  As in a frenzy he was back to the woman, whimpering eagerly as she strove to pet him.  The next moment, stiff in a frenzy, he was away again, scurrying about the room and still whimpering.

Jacob Henderson looked on with mild disapproval.

“He never cuts up that way,” he said.  “He is a very quiet dog.  Maybe it is a fit he is going to have, though he never has fits.”