Moreover, being only mortal and afflicted with a hearty appetite, Bruce loved the food and other delicacies the men were forever offering him as a variation on the stodgy fare dished out to him and his fellow war-dogs.

As much to amuse and interest the soldiers whose hero he was, as for any special importance in the dispatch he carried, Bruce had been sent now to the trenches of the Here-We-Comes.  It was his first visit to the regiment he had saved, since the days of the Rache assault two months earlier.  Thanks to supremely clever surgery and to tender care, the dog was little the worse for his wounds.  His hearing gradually had come back.  In one shoulder he had a very slight stiffness which was not a limp, and a new-healed furrow scarred the left side of his tawny coat.  Otherwise he was as good as new.

As Bruce trotted toward the group that so recently had been talking of him, the Missouri recruit watched with interest for the dog’s joy at this reunion with his old friends.  Bruce’s snowy chest and black-stippled coat were fluffed out by many recent baths.  His splendid head high and his dark eyes bright, the collie advanced toward the group.

Mahan greeted him joyously.  Vivier stretched out a hand which displayed temptingly the long-hoarded lump of sugar.  A third man produced, from nowhere in particular, a large and meat-fringed soup-bone.

“I wonder which of you he’ll come to, first,” said the interested Missourian.

The question was answered at once, and right humiliatingly.  For Bruce did not falter in his swinging stride as he came abreast of the group.  Not by so much as a second glance did he notice Mahan’s hail and the tempting food.

As he passed within six inches of the lump of sugar which Vivier was holding out to him, the dog’s silken ears quivered slightly, sure sign of hard-repressed emotion in a thoroughbred collie,—­ but he gave no other manifestation that he knew any one was there.

“Well, I’ll be blessed!” snickered the Missourian in high derision, as Bruce passed out of sight around an angle of the trench.  “So that’s the pup who is such a pal of you fellows, is he?  Gee, but it was a treat to see how tickled he was to meet you again!”

To the rookie’s amazement none of his hearers seemed in the least chagrined over the dogs chilling disregard of them.  Instead, Mahan actually grunted approbation.

“He’ll be back,” prophesied the Sergeant.  “Don’t you worry.  He’ll be back.  We ought to have had more sense than try to stop him when he’s on duty.  He has better discipline than the rest of us.  That’s one of very first things they teach a courier-dog—­to pay no attention to anybody, when he’s on dispatch duty.  When Bruce has delivered his message to the K.O., he’ll have the right to hunt up his chums.  And no one knows it better’n Bruce himself.”

“It was a sin—­a thoughtlessness—­of me to hold the sugar at him,” said old Vivier.  “Ah, but he is a so good soldier, ce brave Bruce!  He look not to the left nor yet to the right, nor yet to the so-desired sugar-lump.  He keep his head at attention!  All but the furry tips of his ears.  Them he has not yet taught to be good soldiers.  They tremble, when he smell the sugar and the good soup-bone.  They quiver like the little leaf.  But he keep on.  He—­”