His placid enjoyment of the stolen feast was short-lived.  A minute later a lean and truculent Irish terrier came swaggering round the corner, spotted the succulent morsel, and, making one leap, landed fairly on top of the smaller dog.  In an instant pandemonium arose, and the quiet street re-echoed to the noise of canine combat.

The little fox-terrier put up a plucky fight in defence of his prior claim to the bone of contention, but soon superior weight began to tell, and it was evident that the Irishman was getting the better of the fray.  The fox-terrier’s owner, very elegantly dressed, watched the battle from a safe distance, wringing her hands and calling upon all and sundry of the small crowd which had speedily collected to save her darling from the lions.

No one, however, seemed disposed to relieve her of this office—­for the Irishman was an ugly-looking customer—­when suddenly, like a streak of light, a slim figure flashed across the road, and flung itself into the melee, whist a vibrating voice broke across the uproar with an imperative:  “Let go, you brute!”

It was all over in a moment.  Somehow Sara’s small, strong hands had separated the twisting, growling, biting heap of dog into its component parts of fox and Irish, and she was standing with the little fox-terrier, panting and bleeding profusely, in her arms, while one or two of the bystanders—­now that all danger was past—­drove off the Irishman.

“Oh!  But how brave of you!” The owner of the fox-terrier rustled forward.  “I can’t ever thank you sufficiently.”

Sara turned to her, her black eyes blazing.

“Is this your dog?” she asked.

“Yes.  And I’m sure”—­volubly—­“he would have been torn to pieces by that great hulking brute if you hadn’t separated them.  I should never have dared!”

Garth, coming out of the tobacconist’s shop across the way, joined the little knot of people just in time to hear Sara answer cuttingly, as she put the terrier into its owner’s arms—­

“You’ve no business to have a dog if you’ve not got the pluck to look after him!”

As she and Trent bent their steps homeward, Sara regaled him with the full, true, and particular account of the dog-fight, winding up indignantly—­

“Foul women like that ought not to be allowed to take out a dog licence.  I hate people who shirk their responsibilities.”

“You despise cowards?” he asked.

“More than anything on earth,” she answered heartily.

He was silent a moment.  Then he said reflectively—­

“And yet, I suppose, a certain amount of allowance must be made for—­nerves.”

“It seems to me it depends on what your duty demands of you at the moment,” she rejoined.  “Nerves are a luxury.  You can afford them when it makes no difference to other people whether you’re afraid or not—­but not when it does.”