“And Piccolomini says he never cried out when he was struck, but went on running and jumping,” Villa took up enthusiastically.  “Think of it!  A dog no bigger than Michael dragging out of the saddle a man-killing outlaw whom scores of officers could not catch!”

“So far as we are concerned, he did better than that,” Harley commented quietly.  “If it hadn’t been for Michael, and for Jerry, too—­if it hadn’t been for the pair of them, I do verily believe that that lunatic would have kicked my head off as he promised.”

“The blessed pair of them!” Villa cried, with shining eyes, as her hand flashed out to her husband’s in a quick press of heart-thankfulness.  “The last word has not been said upon the wonder of dogs,” she added, as, with a quick winking of her eyelashes to overcome the impending moistness, she controlled her emotion.

“The last word of the wonder of dogs will never be said,” Harley spoke, returning the pressure of her hand and releasing it in order to help her.

“And just for that were going to say something right now,” she smiled.  “Jerry, and Michael, and I. We’ve been practising it in secret for a surprise for you.  You just lie there and listen.  It’s the Doxology.  Don’t Laugh.  No pun intended.”

She bent forward from the stool on which she sat, and drew Michael to her so that he sat between her knees, her two hands holding his head and jowls, his nose half-buried in her hair.

“Now Jerry!” she called sharply, as a singing teacher might call, so that Jerry turned his head in attention, looked at her, smiled understanding with his eyes, and waited.

It was Villa who started and pitched the Doxology, but quickly the two dogs joined with their own soft, mellow howling, if howling it may be called when it was so soft and mellow and true.  And all that had vanished into the Nothingness was in the minds of the two dogs as they sang, and they sang back through the Nothingness to the land of Otherwhere, and ran once again with the Lost Pack, and yet were not entirely unaware of the present and of the indubitable two-legged god who was called Villa and who sang with them and loved them.

“No reason we shouldn’t make a quartette of it,” remarked Harley Kennan, as with his own voice he joined in.