“My name is Brice,” said the other.  “Gavin Brice.  Not that it matters.  And now, perhaps you’ll answer my question.  Whose dog is that?”

“Mine,” returned the barefoot man, renewing his effort to drag the collie toward the boat.

“If he’s yours,” said Brice, pleasantly, “stop hauling him along and let him loose.  He’ll follow you, without all that hustling.  A good collie will always follow, his master, anywhere.”

“When I’m honin’ for your jabber,” retorted the other, “I’ll come a-askin’ for it.”

He drew back his foot once more, for a kick.  But, with a lazy competence, Brice moved forward and gave him a light push, sidewise, on the shoulder.  There was science and a rare knowledge of leverage in the mild gesture.  When a man is kicking, he is on only one foot.  And, the right sort of oblique push will not only throw him off his balance, but in such a direction that his second foot cannot come to earth in position to help him restore that balance.

Under the skillfully gentle impact of Brice’s shove, the man let go of the snarling collie and hopped insanely for a second or so, with arms outflung.  Then he sat down ungracefully on the sand.

Scarce had he touched ground when he was up.

But the moment had sufficed for the collie to go free.  Instead of running off, the dog moved over to Brice, thrust his cool muzzle into the man’s hand, and, with wagging tail, looked up lovingly at him.

A collie has brains beyond most dogs.  And this collie recognized that the pleasant-voiced, indolent-looking stranger had just rescued him from a captor who had been treating him abominably.  Wherefore, in gratitude and dawning adoration, he came to pay his respects.

Brice patted the silken head so confidingly upraised to him.  He knew dogs.  Especially, he knew collies.  And he was hot with indignation at the needlessly brutal treatment just accorded this splendid beast.

But he had scant time for emotions of any kind.  The beach comber had regained his feet, and in the same motion had lost his self-control.  Head lowered, fists swinging, he came charging down upon the stripling who had the audacity to upset him.

Brice did not await his onset.  Slipping lithely to one side he avoided the bull-rush, all the time talking in the same pleasantly modulated drawl.

“I saw this dog, earlier in the day,” said he, “in a car, with some people.  They drove this way.  The dog must have chewed his cord and then jumped or fallen out, and strayed here.  You saw him, from the water, and tried to steal him.  Next to a vivisectionist, the filthiest man God ever made is the man who kicks a dog.  It’s lucky—­”

He got no further.  Twice, during his short speech, he had had to twist, with amazing speed, out of the way of profanity-accompanied rushes.  Now, pressed too close for comfort, he halted, ducked a violent left swing, and ran from under the flailing right arm of his assailant.