"I--I guess we got to play it square, Chum!" he muttered aloud, with something like a groan. "I was blattin' to 'em, up there, how you'd made a white man of me. An' a reg'lar white man don't keep what ain't his own prop'ty. Come along, Chummie!"His jaw very tense, his back painfully stiff, Link strode heavily down the lane and out into the highroad. Chum, always eager for a walk with his god, frisked about him in delight.
He had traversed the bulk of the distance to Craigswold, the dog beside him, when he remembered that he had left his horse and buggy at the livery stable there in the morning. Well, that would save his aching feet a four-mile walk home. In the meantime--He and Chum stepped to the roadside to avoid a fast-traveling little motor car which was bearing down on them from the direction of Craigswold.
The car did not pass them. Instead, it came to a gear-racking halt close beside Ferris. Link, glancing up in dull lack of interest, beheld Gault and the latter's daughter staring down at him.
"Chum came home," said Ferris, scowling at them. "He trailed me.
Don't lick him fer it! He's only a dog, an' he didn't know no better. I was bringin' him back to you."The girl looked sharply at her father. Gault fidgeted uneasily, as he had done once or twice that afternoon in the clubhouse. And he avoided his daughter's gaze. So she turned her level eyes on Link.
"Mr. Ferris," she said very quietly, "do you mean to say, when this dog came back to you, you were actually going to return him to us, instead of hiding him somewhere till the search was over?""I'm here, ain't I?" countered Ferris defiantly.
"But why?" she insisted. "WHY?"
"Because I'm a fool, I s'pose," he growled. "I guess Chum wouldn't care much 'bout livin' with a thief. Take him up there with you on the seat. Don't let him fall out. An'"--his voice scaling a half octave in its pain--"keep him to home after this.
I ain't no measly angel. I can't swear I'd have the grit to fetch him back another time."He stopped, to note a curious phenomenon. There were actually tears in the girl's big grave eyes. Link wondered why. Then she said:
"Cavalier isn't my father's dog. He is mine. My father gave him to me when he bought him, last spring. Colonel Marden seemed to have forgotten that to-day. And I didn't want to start a squabble by reminding him of it. After all, it's my father's affair, and mine. Nobody else's. My father got me another collie last spring to take Cavalier's place. A collie I'm ever so fond of. So Idon't need Cavalier. I don't want him. I tried to find you to tell you so. But you had gone. So I got my father to drive me to your place. We'd have started sooner, but Cavalier got away. And we waited to look for him--to bring him along.""Bring him along?" mutteringly echoed the blankbrained Link.
"What fer?"
"Why," laughed the girl, "because your house is where he belongs and where he is going to live. Just as he has been living all summer.
Ferris caught his breath in a choked wheeze of unbelieving ecstasy.
"Gawd!" he breathed. "GAWD!"
Then, he stammered brokenly "They--they don't seem no right words to--to thank you in, Ma'am.
But maybe you und'stand what I'd want to say if I could?""Yes," she said gently. "I think I understand. I understood from the minute I saw you and the dog together. That's why I decided Ididn't want him. That's why I--""An' you'll get that thousand dollars!" cried Link, his fingers buried rapturously in Chum's fur. "Ev'ry cent of it. I--""I think," interrupted the girl, winking very fast. "I think I've got what I wanted, already. My father doesn't want the money either. Do you, Dad?""Oh, for heaven's sake, stop rubbing it in!" fumed Gault. "Come on home! It's getting cold. I ought to thank the Lord for not having you anywhere near me in Wall Street, girl! You'd send me under the hammer in a week."He kicked the accelerator, and the little car whizzed off in the twilight.
"Chum," observed Ferris, gaping after it. "Chum, I guess the good Lord built that gal the same day He built YOU. If He did--well, He sure done one grand day's work!"
