“H’m!” mused the guest, his professional interest vehemently roused.  “He would be worth a fortune over there.  There are a lot of collies in the service, in one capacity or another—­almost as many as the Airedales and the police dogs.  And they are doing grand work.  But I never saw one that was better fitted for it than Bruce.  It’s a pity he lives on the wrong side of the Atlantic.  He could do his bit, to more effect than the average human.  There are hundreds of thousands of men for the ranks, but pitifully few perfect courier-dogs.”

The Mistress was listening with a tensity which momentarily grew more painful.  The Master’s forehead, too, was creased with a new thought that seemed to hurt him.  To break the brief silence that followed the guest’s words, he asked: 

“Are the dogs, over there, really doing such great work as the papers say they are?  I read, the other day—­”

" ‘Great work!’” repeated the guest.  “I should say so.  Not only in finding the wounded and acting as guards on listening posts, and all that, but most of all as couriers.  There are plenty of times when the wireless can’t be used for sending messages from one point to another, and where there is no telephone connection, and where the firing is too hot for a human courier to get through.  That is where is the war dogs have proved their weight in radium.  Collies, mostly.  There are a million true stories of their prowess told, at camp-fires.  Here are just two such incidents—­both of them on record, by the way, at the British War Office

“A collie, down near Soissons, was sent across a bad strip of fire-scourged ground, with a message.  A boche sharpshooter fired at him and shattered his jaw.  The dog kept on, in horrible agony, and delivered the message.  Another collie was sent over a still hotter and much longer stretch of territory with a message. (That was during the Somme drive of 1916.) He was shot at, a dozen times, as he ran.  At last two bullets got him.  He fell over, mortally wounded.  He scrambled to his feet and kept on falling, stumbling, staggering—­till he got to his destination.  Then he dropped dead at the side of the Colonel the message had been sent to.  And those are only two of thousands of true collie-anecdotes.  Yet some fools are trying to get American dogs done away with, as ‘non-utilitarian,’ while the war lasts!  As if the dogs in France, today, weren’t earning their overseas brothers’ right to live—­ and live well!”

Neither of his hearers made reply when the guest finished his earnest, eager recital.  Neither of them had paid much heed to his final words.  For the Master and the Mistress were looking at each other in mute unhappiness.  The same miserable thought was in the mind of each.  And each knew the thought that was torturing the mind of the other.

Presently, at a glint of inquiry in the Master’s eye, the Mistress suddenly bent over and buried her face in the deep mass of Bruce’s ruff as the dog stood lovingly beside her.  Then, still stroking the collie’s silken head, she returned her husband’s wretchedly questioning glance with a resigned little nod.  The Master cleared his throat noisily before he could speak with the calm indifference he sought.  Then, turning to the apparently unnoticing guest, he said—­