Treve lay on the porch at the Dos Hermanos ranch house; his classic head between his little white forepaws; his mighty gold-and-white body like a couchant lion’s. A casual passerby would have said the dog was asleep. A dog-student would have known better. Seldom do collies sleep in that picturesque pose. Usually they slumber asprawl on one side.
Neither were the collie’s deepset sorrowful eyes shut. They were looking wearily across the heat-pulsating miles of ranch land. Nor were they alert, as when the big dog was on guard. There was perplexed worry in their soft gaze.
Things were happening at the ranch; things Treve did not understand. Yet his collie sixth sense told him there were change and confusion in the air as well as in the words and voices of his two masters. These two masters were often at odds. The dog long since had ceased to let himself be stirred by their incessant and harmless quarrels.
But they were not at odds, nowadays. Indeed, there was a new civility—almost a sad friendliness—in their manner toward each other.
We humans often grope for the solution tosome baffling mystery which eludes our sharpest intelligence, and whose key, could we but master it, lies within easy reach of us. So with Treve. The key to this disturbing new ranch development lay within six inches of his nose, in the form of a newspaper which had fallen from the porch rocker to the dusty floor.
Had Treve been able to read type—as he could read human nature and weather signs and danger to the Dos Hermanos flocks—a front page news item in that paper might have told him much. The paper was the Santa CarlottaBugle. The item had been written by theBugle’sproprietor, himself, in his best florid style. The proprietor, by the way, chanced to be the managing editor, the city editor, the reportorial staff and the printer of the paper. Also the business-and-advertising manager and office boy. TheBuglewas a one-man sheet.
His front-page article ran:
“Dan Cupid has been making a spring roundup of the ranch country, this season. We have had glad occasion to announce no less than four engagements and two marriages, in the Dos Hermanos Valley, during the past three months. We now take personal pleasure in retailing the latest romance from that garden spot of our fair state.“Mr. Royce Mack, younger partner of the popular sheep-ranchers, Fenno and Mack, of the Dos Hermanos Ranch outfit, is about to marry Miss Reine Houston, the lovely and popular and talented Fourth Grade teacher at the Ova school.“Miss Houston’s gain is the loss of the Dos Hermanos Valley; as the young couple plan to leave this section (which so aptly has been termed ‘God’s Country’), and to settle in the far and effete East, upon a well-stocked Vermont dairy farm which was recently bequeathed, along with a considerable cash legacy, to Mr. Mack, by his deceased maternal uncle.“The nuptials, we understand, will occur at the bride’s parental home in Dodge City, Kas., early next month. Miss Houston expects to leave Ova, Friday, to go home for her final wedding arrangements. Mr. Mack, we learn, will follow the first of the week.”
“Dan Cupid has been making a spring roundup of the ranch country, this season. We have had glad occasion to announce no less than four engagements and two marriages, in the Dos Hermanos Valley, during the past three months. We now take personal pleasure in retailing the latest romance from that garden spot of our fair state.
“Mr. Royce Mack, younger partner of the popular sheep-ranchers, Fenno and Mack, of the Dos Hermanos Ranch outfit, is about to marry Miss Reine Houston, the lovely and popular and talented Fourth Grade teacher at the Ova school.
“Miss Houston’s gain is the loss of the Dos Hermanos Valley; as the young couple plan to leave this section (which so aptly has been termed ‘God’s Country’), and to settle in the far and effete East, upon a well-stocked Vermont dairy farm which was recently bequeathed, along with a considerable cash legacy, to Mr. Mack, by his deceased maternal uncle.
“The nuptials, we understand, will occur at the bride’s parental home in Dodge City, Kas., early next month. Miss Houston expects to leave Ova, Friday, to go home for her final wedding arrangements. Mr. Mack, we learn, will follow the first of the week.”
There was more of the article, including a stanza of machine-made poetry, with a highly original reference to two hearts that beat as one. But no more is needed to explain the atmosphere of impending change which had begun to grate upon the collie’s nerves.
For a long time this change had been coming. Treve had trotted across to Ova, evening after evening, for weeks alongside of Royce’s pinto.He had lain boredly on a rug in a stuffy little boarding house parlor, while his master forgot him and everything else in chatting with a plump girl who smelt annoyingly of lily-of-the-valley perfume. A girl who said at the outset that she didn’t care much for dogs and who asked if collies weren’t supposed to be treacherous.
Treve had known from the first that she did not like him. This bothered him not at all. For he didn’t like her, either. Her pungent lily-of-the-valley perfume was as distressing to his sensitive nostrils as would be the reek of carrion to a human nose. Moreover, she was not the type of human that dogs like. Also, she took up too much of his master’s attention.
Intuitively, Treve realized Mack was not as fond of him as once he had been and that the man was not the jolly chum of yore. It grieved the sensitive collie. He sought wistfully to draw Royce’s attention more to himself and less to this painfully-scented outsider. But it was all in vain.
Royce Mack was blindly and deliriously in love. The world, for the time, contained for him only one person. That person was far more like an angel than a mere woman. And she exhaled in some occult way a faintly angelic perfume from her garments.
Sheepishly, Mack told his partner of theengagement. Joel’s reply was a grunt which implied nothing or anything. Fenno made precisely the same reply, a week afterward, when news came to Royce of his comfortable legacy of cash and of pleasant farmland in southern Vermont.
Risking monotony, Joel had achieved a third grunt when Mack went on to inform him of the projected eastward move. This move meant a breaking up of the partnership. Mack could not run a dairy farm in Vermont and also a ranch in the West.
Joel came out of the silences and out of a maze of calculations long enough to make an offer for Royce’s share of the Dos Hermanos. The offer was as meager as was Fenno himself; but it was as reliable. Too foolishly happy to barter, Mack closed with it. Thus, in another three days, Joel Fenno was to become sole owner of the ranch.
Both men had evaded the question of Treve’s ownership. The collie belonged jointly to them. Yet he was not included in the list of land, buildings and livestock set forth in the bill of sale.
From the first, Mack had regarded the dog as his own, and had made Treve his particular chum. Joel had scoffed at such folly, and had pretended to hold the collie in utter contempt. But Treve had grown to be everything to the gnarl-souled oldster. For the first time in his sixty-odd warped years, he had learned to careabout some living creature. It was with a twinge that he saw how much fonder the dog seemed to be of Mack than of Fenno’s unlovable self.
Now, at the possibility of parting with his loved dog-comrade, his heart was as sore as a boil. Wherefore, as usual, he held his peace on the theme so close to him; and he was outwardly the more savage in his comments on Treve’s worthlessness.
Treve lifted his head from between his paws, and stared down the road toward the coulée. His trained ears not only caught the rattle and chug of an approaching car, but they recognized it as a car belonging to the ranch.
Presently, the dusty runabout rounded the bend, a furlong beyond. Royce Mack was driving it. At his side sat a plump and slackly pretty figure in billowy white. Treve was too far away to catch the reek of lily-of-the-valley. But he knew it would assail and torture his keen nostrils soon enough.
The dog got to his feet, with a bark of welcome. He was about to lope forward to meet the car and escort Mack to the house, when Joel Fenno, hearing the bark, stumped out of the kitchen doorway behind him.
The old man had come from work, with Treve at his heels, a half-hour early that day. Nowhe reappeared from his bedroom, crossly uncomfortable in his store clothes; his neck teased by a frayed collar-edge and further girt with a ready-made tie of awesome coloring. If his bulls-eye emerald scarfpin had been genuine, it would have been worth more than the entire ranch. His new boots squeaked groaningly on the porch floor.
The collie, wondering at such change in his friend’s costume and bearing, halted in his scarce-begun journey toward the approaching car and stared, with head on one side.
“Sure!” growled Fenno. “Sure! Keep a-lookin’ at me, Trevy. I’m sure wuth it. If ’twasn’t that he’s leavin’ here for good, in a day or two, I’d ’a’ saw him in blue blazes before I’d ’a’ rigged me up like this, on a hot week-day; jes’ ’cause he took a idee to ask her over to eat supper with us, to-night. I feel like I was to a fun’ral, Trevy.”
As he spoke, Joel was strolling down the dusty walk, toward the gateway, to give such sour welcome as he might to his partner’s sweetheart. The collie abandoned his own intent to gambol ahead; and paced sedately along at Joel’s side.
The average high-class collie has reduced snobbishness to an art. Witness the courtesy wherewith many of them hasten to greet a well-dressedstranger, as contrasted with their fierce rebuff of a tramp.
Perhaps it was Fenno’s unwonted splendor of raiment which made Treve elect to continue the gateward walk in his company, rather than dash on ahead. Yet of late, he had more than once chosen Joel’s companionship rather than Mack’s. As they walked, Joel continued to mutter under his breath.
“She said she ‘wanted to meet her darling Royce’s dear old partner,’” he sniffed. “Well, Trevy, the pleasure’s all her’n. (Not that I’m a-grudgin’ her the treat of seein’ me.) Nothing’d do but she must come over to supper with us, Trevy. And if Sing Lee don’t cook no better’n he’s been cookin’ lately, she’s sure due to remember this supper for quite a spell. She—Whatcher smellin’ at, Trevy?” he broke off.
The dog had slowed in his walk, and was moving stiff-legged. His nostrils were sniffing the still air with queer intensity. The car was drawing to a stop, in front of the gate, twenty feet away;—quite near enough for the hated lily-of-the-valley perfume to reach the collie’s acute senses.
But it was not perfume he was smelling. It was something far more familiar and far more detested; something still too faint to reach Fenno’s grosser powers of scent.
The noisy little car stopped. Mack, on its far side, got out and hurried around the runabout, to help Reine Houston to the ground. He did not even pause in his loverly haste long enough to turn off the noisy engine; an engine whose coughing reverberations drowned all lesser sounds.
Reine did not wait for her lover to reach her side and assist her in the wholly simple task of opening the car door and stepping to earth. Coming toward the gateway, from the direction of the house, were Joel and the dog. Anxious to make a good impression on Fenno, the girl jumped down before Mack could come around from the far side of the car. Her plump hands outstretched in friendly greeting to Joel, she ran forward to meet him.
There was a patch of roadside tumbleweed between the car and the gate. The girl prepared to clear this in her stride. But she did not do so.
This because Treve suddenly abandoned his stiff-legged suspicious advance and made one lightning bound at her.
The dog did not growl, nor did he show his teeth. But he sprang with the incredible speed of a charging wolf. Clearing the patch of tumbleweed by fully twenty inches, he sent hisbody crashing with all its force against the white-clad girl.
He did not bite. His lowered head and much of his furry body smote her amidships. Back she shot, under that swift impact, banging hard against the side of the car and using up what little breath she still had in a loud screech.
Royce Mack rounded the side of the car just in time to see the dog hurl himself at the all-precious Reine.
With a yell of fury at such vile sacrilege to his angel, he sprang at Treve and kicked him.
The kick struck the dog in the short ribs with an agonizing force that doubled Treve and sent him rolling over and over in the dust. Furiously, Mack followed him up, his boot drawn back for a second and heavier kick. The girl did not cease from screaming as she gathered herself up, bruised and hysterical with fright.
As his foot swung back for the kick, Royce chanced to see Joel Fenno from the corner of his eye. The old man was also in violent action. At sight of his partner’s activities, Mack checked himself with one foot still in air.
Fenno, regardless of his own rheumatic limbs, was doing a vehement dance in the center of the low tumbleweed patch. Beneath his stamping feet writhed and twisted a fat four-foot rattlesnake.
The nasty odor of crushed cucumbers—certain sign of the pit viper—was strong enough in the air now, for even these blundering humans to get the scent which Treve had caught twenty feet away.
“I ain’t got my gun on me!” wheezed Joel, to his partner, as a final drive of his heel smashed the rattlesnake’s evil, arrow-shaped head. “But if you kick that dog ag’in, I swear t’ Gawd I’ll go in an’ git it, an’ blow your mangy face off! I seen the hull thing. This gal of your’n was jes’ a-goin’ to plant her foot in the tumbleweed, when I seen this rattler h’ist up his dirty head an’ bend it back to strike her ankle. Trevy seen it, too. An’ he pushed her out’n death’s way, when there wa’n’t neither one of us humans near enough nor quick enough to. An’ you kicked him fer savin’ her! Lord! Kicked—kicked—Trevy!”
He had left the slain snake and was hustling across to the dog.
Treve had gotten gaspingly to his feet. No whimper had been wrung from him by the anguishing pain of the kick in his tender short-ribs. No snarl nor other sign of wrath had shown resentment at this brutality—a brutality for which any human stranger would have been attacked by him right murderously.
Instead, the great dog stood stock-still in theroad, his glorious coat dust-smeared, his mighty body a-tremble. His soft eyes were fixed on the man who had kicked him—the man who had been his god—the man whose sweetheart the collie had risked his own life to save.
This was the man to whom he had given loyal and worshipful service since long before he could remember. And now his god had turned on him;—had not punished him, for punishment implies earlier fault; but had half-killed him for no fault at all.
The deepset dark eyes were terrible in their heartbreak. Royce Mack, blinking stupidly, felt their look sear into him. Slowly he stared from the stricken dog to the dead snake. Then his eyes fell upon Reine Houston.
At sight of the snake, and at comprehension of what Treve had averted from her by that wild leap, Reine collapsed, blubbering and quaking, on the running-board of the car.
Drawn by supreme impulse, Royce turned his back on the collie and hurried over to her. Treve was forgotten.
With babbled love words Mack sought to reassure and comfort the girl and to learn if she were badly hurt. In this tender employment he was interrupted by Joel Fenno’s rasping voice. The old man had been examining Treve, withthe tender touch of a nurse, and crooning softly to the hurt collie. Now he turned grimly on his partner.
“Best boost your young lady into the car,” he snarled, “an’ trundle her back to Ova. She ain’t li’ble to have much ap’tite left, after what’s happened. Besides, Sing Lee’s salaraytus biscuits ain’t no good example for a new-mown bride to take to heart for future use. More’n that, she’s met me. That’s what she come here for, wa’n’t it? She’s met me. Likewise, she’s saw me dance. She’s met Treve ag’n, too. Met him reel sudden an’ personal. That’s why she’s still alive. S’pose you traipse back to Ova with her; an’ leave me an’ Trevy to ourselves. We kind of need to be left thataway. If you don’t mind. So long!”
His wizened hand on the dog’s ruff, he strode back to the house, shutting the door loudly behind Treve and himself.
It was late when Royce Mack got back from Ova, that evening. Joel was sitting up for him. Royce said nothing to his partner, but went at once to Treve, who had come slowly forward to meet him.
His hands roamed remorsefully over the dog, and he seemed trying to say something. Treve was looking up into Royce’s face with that samestrickenly reproachful expression that the man had not been able to get out of his memory all evening.
“If you’re huntin’ for broken ribs or for rupture,” commented Joel as he watched his partner’s exploring hands, “there ain’t any. Small thanks to you; an’ by a mir’cle of heaven. Treve’s all right. Except you’ve smashed suthin’ in the heart an’ the soul of him that you can’t unsmash. That’s all you done.”
The old man’s toneless voice irked Mack.
“Can you blame me?” he challenged. “What else could I do? I saw him spring at her and knock her down. I thought he was killing her. It seemed the only way to—”
“To prove you’re a born fool?” supplemented Joel. “You didn’t need to prove it to me. Nor, when she’s knowed you a while longer, you won’t need to prove it to her, neither. Why would he be killin’ her? Hey? We’ve had him all these years; an’ he never yet did a thing that wa’n’t wiser’n the wisest thingyouever did. Nor yet he never did anything that was rotten. You might ’a’ knowed he had some reason for actin’ so. Anyhow, there’s lots better ways for a man to show he’s a dog’s inferior, than by kickin’ him.”
“Let it go at that!” muttered Royce, sullenly;harder hit than he cared to show, by the look in his collie chum’s dark eyes. “I’ll make it up to him, somehow. I—”
“Make it up to him?” mocked Fenno. “How? By tellin’ him you’ve forgave him, maybe? Or by gettin’ him a nice gold watch an’ wearin’ it for him till he’s old enough to take care of it? ‘Make it up to him!’Lord!”
Royce turned wrathfully on his expressionless partner.
“I don’t see what business it is of yours!” he snapped. “You’ve always hated the dog. You’ve always called him worthless and said you wished we could be rid of him. Well, you’ll be rid of him, all right. In less than a week he and I will be out of here for good.”
“Where do you get that stuff about ‘him and you?’You’llbe gone. But Treve’s as much mine as he’s yours.”
Royce glanced at his scowling partner in genuine surprise.
“You don’t mean to say you’re going to be cantankerous aboutthat, too?” he exclaimed. “Why, Joel, you hate the very sight of the dog! You’ve hated him from the beginning. You’ve never had a decent word for him. I don’t believe you ever spoke to him in his life, except to give him some order or else to swear at him. Andnow you talk about his being as much yours as mine. Well, let’s come to a showdown. What do you want for your share in him?”
Joel made no immediate answer. He was peering through the dim candle-light at Treve. The old man’s thin lips moved rhythmically, as though he were chewing the mysterious cud of senility. His chin quivered. Otherwise his leathery face was blank. It gave no sign of the turmoil behind it.
But Treve understood. With all a collie’s strange trick of reading human emotion behind a wordless and expressionless mask, he knew his friend was acutely unhappy. The dog got to his feet and came over to Fenno, pressing his furry bulk against the rancher’s lean legs and thrusting a sympathetic muzzle into the tough palm. He whined softly, his gaze fixed on Joel’s.
From long habit, in the presence of others, Fenno made as though to repulse the dog’s friendliness. Then, with a little intake of breath, he bent over the collie and caught the classic head almost roughly between his hands.
“Treve!” he mumbled, thickly. “Trevy, you and me know all about that, don’t we? We’re—we’re good pals, me and you, Trevy. The best pals there ever was.”
Royce Mack looked on, dumbfounded. Therewas caress in Fenno’s thin voice and in his rough grasp of the dog. Treve, too, was behaving as though he were well accustomed to such signs of affection from the man.
“I—I thought—” began Mack, “I thought—”
“No, ye didn’t!” crossly denied Fenno, the barriers down. “You never ‘thought,’ in all your born days. If you’d knowed what it meant to think, you’d ’a’ knowed a white man couldn’t go hatin’ Trevy, like I made out I hated him. Nobody could. And likewise you’d ’a’ remembered how he kept me alive that day down by Ova, when I was throwed and crippled up and couldn’t stir to help myself; an’ how he brang water to me; an’ how he flagged you and brangyouto me, besides. An’ now you go jawin’ about takin’ him away; an’ askin’ what do I want for my share of him. Well, I want just a even billion dollars for my share of Trevy. I ain’t sellin’. I’m buyin’. Now whatcher want foryourshare of him? Speak up! If I got it, I’ll pay.”
Royce pondered a moment. He could not fathom this phase of the old man. Then a solution came to him.
“Remember the day we got him?” asked Mack. “Remember how we made dice marks on a lump of sugar, out to the foreman shack, to see which owned him? He ate the sugar, and wecompromised by owning him between us. Suppose we throw dice again to see who owns him? Loser to give up all claim to him. How about it?”
“Nope,” refused Joel, stubbornly. “Lemme buy him off’n you, Mack. I’ll pay—”
“I’m not selling him,” as stubbornly insisted Royce, enamored of his own sporting idea. “I’m giving you your chance. Take it or leave it. You ought to be glad I don’t suggest we let him go to whichever of us he chooses.”
Joel winced. Then, despondently, he clumped across the room to the shelf where lay the parcheesi game. Choosing a cylinder cup and a pair of dice, he came back to the table. On the way he paused to pat furtively the collie’s silken ears.
“Best two out of three?” suggested Royce.
“Nope,” said Fenno. “One throw. When a tooth’s got to come out, a single yank is best. You throw first.”
Royce took the dice-cup and shook it with relish. Nothing could beat him. He knew that. In his present streak of luck, when a glorious bride and a legacy were falling to his lot, a bout of chance with his Jonah-like old partner could not fail to bring him success—and Treve.
Expertly he chucked the dice out on the table, in the flickering candle-flare. Over and over the white cubes tumbled and hopped and rolled; coming to a halt, at last, barely an inch fromthe table edge and almost side by side. Both men leaned forward to read the pips on the exposed top surfaces of the dice.
A six and a five! Eleven! Unbeatable except by a next-to-impossible Twelve.
Joel’s face set itself like wrinkled granite. He made no other outward sign of distress. Treve, at sound of the noisily rattling dice, had gotten interestedly to his feet, and stood with his head on a level with the deal table, watching.
Royce swept up the dice and tossed them into the cup; passing it across to Fenno. With hand as steady as a boy’s, the old man accepted the cup and sulkily he threw the two dice upon the board.
The jar of a heavy tread on the porch made both men turn their heads. Visitors at such an hour were unheard-of. Toni, the chief herdsman, stamped in to report the straying of a bunch of sheep that had nosed a hole in the rotting wattles of the home fold. Instinctively the partners glanced back to the dice.
There lay the little cubes, just under the candle’s nearest rays.
Two sixes! Twelve!
There had been fewer than nine chances in a hundred that Joel could have made such a throw. Yet, his proverbial hoodoo was broken. Luck, for once, seemed to have gravitated his way.
Fenno made no comment, but bent over to pat Treve with an odd new air of personal possession, while Mack listened scowlingly to Toni’s tale of the lost sheep.
“Suppose you andyourdog chase out with Toni and round ’em up?” said Royce, at last, turning maliciously to his partner. “They’re not mine any longer, you know. Any more than Treve is. For once I’ll have the fun of going to bed and letting the rest of the outfit do the hustling. Good-night.”
At dusk, three days later, the one livery car from Santa Carlotta stopped at the ranch gate to carry Royce Mack and his belongings to the distant railroad, whence the night train was to bear him eastward to his bride.
Herders piled the car with luggage; then stood at the gate to say good-by to their former boss. Joel loitered in the doorway; Treve beside him, Fenno was frowning and fidgeting.
Royce came up to him with outstretched hand. For a moment the old man ignored the hand. Once more his jaws were at work with senility’s cud. Suddenly he burst forth:
“Trevy’s your’n! Take him along East with you!”
There was a world of stifled heartache and stark misery in the grouchy old voice.
“What the blue blazes!” sputtered Royce in amaze. “D’you mean to say you don’t want him, after all the fuss you made? He—”
“Yep!” snarled old Fenno. “I want him more’n I want my right leg. An’ I reckon I’ll be twice as lonesome without him as I’d be without the two of my legs. But I—I don’t want him the way I won him. I thought I did. But I don’t. It—it sticks in my throat. He’s a square dog, Trevy is. He ain’t goin’ to be won by no crooked trick. So I— Oh, take him along an’ shut up!”
Royce continued to stare in bewilderment. His owlish aspect angered Joel.
“We shook dice for him,” expounded Fenno, sourly. “You throwed a six an’ a five. I throwed a six an’ a one. You looked back to see who was buttin’ into the room that time of night. I flicked the one-spot over, an’ made it a six. Take him along. I—I— Trevy, son,” he ended, a frog in his throat as he laid a shaky hand on the collie’s head, “you see for yourself, I couldn’t keep you, that way; you bein’ so clean an’ decent; an’ me cheatin’ to get you. I—”
To his astonishment, Royce Mack broke into a shout of laughter.
“When I put Reine on the Pullman to go East,” said Royce, “I told her about our throwing dice for Treve. I was still sore over losinghim. D’you know what she said? Said she was tickled to death that I’d lost. Said she can’t bear dogs, and that she’d never be able to endure having Treve around after the savage way he upset her. She said she’d always be afraid of him, and that she’d have insisted, anyway, on my leaving him behind. That settles it.... Good-by, Treve, old friend. Good-by, Joel. Luck to the pair of you!”
Late into the warm evening, Joel Fenno sat silent on the porch. At his feet, in drowsy contentment, lay Treve. The old man’s face was aglow with wordless happiness. Every now and then he would stoop to stroke the sleeping dog. Then he would listen delightedly to the responsive lazy thump of Treve’s tail on the boards.
Life was worth while, after all. It was great to have a chum that was all one’s own, and to sit thus with him at the close of day. No more bickerings, no more jawing, no more need to pretend he didn’t like this wonderful collie of his. It wasfineto be alive!
“Trevy,” he exhorted, solemnly, as he knocked out his final pipe and prepared to go indoors, “don’t you ever let me ketch you throwin’ dice crooked. But if ever you do, don’t go blabbin’ about it. Not one time in a trillion-an’-seven, c’d you expec’ to find a girl who’d square it all for you, like that pudgy Reine person done forme. An’, Trevy, lemme say ag’in, for the sev’ralth time, right here,—of all the dogs that ever happened—you’re—you’re that dog. Now le’s quit jabberin’ an’ go to sleep!”
I have drawn upon one of our Sunnybank collies for the name and the aspect and certain traits of this book’s hero. The real Treve was my chum, and one of the strangest and most beautiful collies I have known.
Dog aristocrats have two names; one whereby they are registered in the American Kennel Club’s immortal studbook and one by which they are known at home. The first of these is called the “pedigree name.” The second is the “kennel name.” Few dogs know or answer to their own high-sounding pedigree names. In speaking to them their kennel names alone are used.
For example, my grand old Bruce’s pedigree name was Sunnybank Goldsmith;—a term that meant nothing to him. My Champion Sunnybank Sigurdson (greatest of Treve’s sons), responds only to the name of “Squire.” Sunnybank Lochinvar is “Roy.”
Treve’s pedigree name was “Sunnybank Sigurd.” And in time he won his right to the hard-sought and harder-earned prefix of “CHAMPION”;—the supreme crown of dogdom.
We named him Sigurd—the Mistress and I—inhonor of the collie of Katharine Lee Bates; a dog made famous the world over by his owner’s exquisite book, “Sigurd, Our Golden Collie.”
But here difficulties set in.
It is all very well to shout “Sigurd!” to a collie when he is the only dog in sight. But when there is a rackety and swirling and excited throng of them, the call of “Sigurd!” has an unlucky sibilant resemblance to the exhortation, “Sic ’im!” And misunderstandings—not to say strife—are prone to follow. So we sought a one-syllable kennel name for our golden collie pup. My English superintendent, Robert Friend, suggested “Treve.”
The pup took to it at once.
He was red-gold-and-snow of coat; a big slender youngster, with the true “look of eagles” in his deepset dark eyes. In those eyes, too, burned an eternal imp of mischief.
I have bred or otherwise acquired hundreds of collies in my time. No two of them were alike. That is the joy of collies. But most of them had certain well-defined collie characteristics in common with their blood-brethren. Treve had practically none. He was not like other collies or like a dog of any breed.
Gloriously beautiful, madly alive in every inch of him, he combined the widest and most irreconcilable range of traits.
For him there were but three people on earth;—the Mistress, myself and Robert Friend. To us he gave complete allegiance, if in queer form. The rest of mankind, with one exception—a girl—did not exist, so far as he was concerned; unless the rest of mankind undertook to speak to him or to pat him. Then, instantly, such familiarity was rewarded by a murderous growl and a most terrifying bite.
The bite was delivered with a frightful show of ferocity. And it had not the force to crush the wing of a fly.
Strangers, assailed thus, were startled. Some were frankly scared. They would stare down in amaze at the bitten surface, marveling that there was neither blood nor teeth-mark nor pain. For the attack always had an appearance of man-eating fury.
Treve would allow the Mistress to pat him—in moderation. But if I touched him, in friendliness, he would toss his beautiful head and dart out of reach, barking angrily back at me. It was the same when Robert tried to pet him.
Once or twice a day he would come up to me, laying his head across my arm or knee; growling with the utmost vehemence and gnawing at my sleeve for a minute at a time. I gather that this was a form of affection. He did it to nobody else.
Also, when I went to town for the day, he would mope around for awhile; then would take my cap from the hall table and carry it into my study. All day long he would lie there, one paw on the cap, and growl fierce menace to all who ventured near. On my return home at night, he gave me scarcely a glance and drew disgustedly away as usual when I held out my hand to pat him.
In the evenings, on the porch or in front of the living room fire, he would stroll unconcernedly about until he made sure I was not noticing. Then he would curl himself on the floor in front of me, pressing his furry body close to my ankles; and would lie there for hours.
The Mistress alone he forbore to bite. He loved her. But she was a grievous disappointment to him. From the first, she saw through his vehement show of ferocity and took it at its true value. Try as he would, he could not frighten her. Try as he would, he could not mask his adoration for her.
Again and again he would lie down for a nap at her feet; only to waken presently with a thundrous growl and a snarl, and with a lunge of bared teeth at her caressing hand. The hand would continue to caress; and his show of fury was met with a laugh and with the comment:
“You’ve had a good sleep, and now you’ve waked up in a nice homicidal rage.”
Failing to alarm her, the dog would look sheepishly at the laughing face and then cuddle down again at her feet to be petted.
There was another side to his play of indifference and of wrath. True, he would toss his head and back away, barking, when Robert or myself tried to pat him. But at the quietly spoken word, “Treve!”, he would come straight up to us and, if need be, stand statue-like for an hour at a time, while he was groomed or otherwise handled.
In brief, he was the naughtiest and at the same time the most unfailingly obedient dog I have owned. No matter how far away he might be, the single voicing of his name would bring him to me in a swirling rush.
In the show-ring he was a problem. At times he showed as proudly and as spectacularly as any attitude-striking tragedian. Again, if he did not chance to like his surroundings or if the ring-side crowd displeased him, he prepared to loaf in slovenly fashion through his paces on the block and in the parade. At such times the showing of Treve became as much an art as is the guiding of a temperamental race-horse to victory. It called for tact; even for trickery.
In the first place, during these fits of ill-humor,he would start around the ring, in the preliminary parade, with his tail arched high over his back; although he knew, as well as did I, that a collie’s tail should be carried low, in the ring.
I commanded: “Tail down!” Down would come the tail. But at the same time would come a savage growl and a sensational snap at my wrist. The spectators pointed out to one another the incurably fierce collie. Fellow-exhibitors in the ring would edge away. The judge—if he were an outsider—would eye Treve with strong apprehension.
It was the same when I whispered, “Foot out!” as he deliberately turned one white front toe inward in coming to a halt on the judging block. A similar snarl and feather-light snap followed the command.
The worst part of the ordeal came when the judge began to “go over” him with expert hands, to test the levelness of his mouth, the spring of his ribs, his general soundness and the texture of his coat. An exhibitor is not supposed to speak to a judge in the ring except to answer a question. But if the judge were inspecting Treve for the first time, I used to mumble conciliatingly, the while:
“He’s only in play, Judge. The dog’s perfectly gentle.”
This, as Treve resented the stranger’shandling, by growl-fringed bites at the nearest part of the judicial anatomy.
A savage dog does not make a hit with the average judge. There is scant joyance in being chewed, in the pursuit of one’s judging-duties. Yet, as a rule, judges took my word as to Treve’s gentleness; especially after one sample of his biteless biting. Said Vinton Breese, the famed “all-rounder” dog-judge, after an Interstate show:
“I feel slighted. Sigurd forgot to bite me to-day. It’s the first time.”
The Mistress made up a little song, in which Treve’s name occurred oftener than almost all its other words. Treve was inordinately proud of this song. He would stand, growling softly, with his head on one side, for an indefinite time, listening to her sing it. He used to lure her into chanting this super-personal ditty by trotting to the piano and then running back to her.
Nature intended him for a staunch, clever, implicitly obedient, gentle collie, without a single bad trait, and possessed of rare sweetness. He tried his best to make himself thoroughly mean and savage and treacherous. He met with pitifully poor success in his chosen rôle. The sweetness and the obedient gentleness stuck forth, past all his best efforts to mask them in ferocity.
Once, when he bit with overmuch unction at a guest who tried to pat him, I spoke sharply to him and emphasized my rebuke by a light slap on the shoulder. The dog was heart-broken. Crouching at my feet, his head on my boot, he sobbed exactly like a frightened child. He spent hours trying pitifully to make friends with me again.
It was so when his snarl and his nip at the legs of one of the other dogs led to warlike retaliation. At once Treve would rush to me for protection and for comfort. From the safe haven of my knees he would hurl threats at his assailant and defy him to carry the quarrel further. There was no fight in him. At the same time there was no taint of cowardice. He bore pain or discomfort or real danger unflinchingly.
One of his chief joys was to ransack the garage and stables for sponges and rags which were stored there for cleaning the cars. These he would carry, one by one, to the long grass or to the lake, and deposit them there. When the men hid these choice playthings out of his way he would stand on his hindlegs and explore the shelves and low beam-corners in search of them; never resting till he found one or more to bear off.
He would lug away porch cushions andcarelessly-deserted hats and wraps, and deposit them in all sorts of impossible places; never by any chance bringing them back.
From puppyhood, he did not once eat a whole meal of his own accord. Always he must be fed by hand. Even then he would not touch any food but cooked meat.
Normally, the solution to this would have been to let him go hungry until he was ready to eat. But a valuable show-and-stud collie cannot be allowed to become a skeleton and lifeless for lack of food, any more than a winning race-horse can be permitted to starve away his strength and speed.
Treve’s daily pound-and-a-half of broiled chuck steak was cut in small pieces and set before him on a plate. Then began the eternal task of making him eat it. Did we turn our backs on him for a single minute—the food had vanished when next we looked.
But it had not vanished down Treve’s dainty throat. Casual search revealed every missing morsel of meat shoved neatly out of sight under the edges of the plate or else hidden in the grass or under nearby boards or handfuls of straw.
This daily meal was a game. Treve enjoyed it immensely. Not being blessed with patience, I abhorred it. So Robert Friend took the dutyof feeding him. At sound of Robert’s distant knife, whetted to cut up the meat, Treve would come flying to the hammock where I sat writing. At a bound he was in my lap, all fours and all fur—the entire sixty pounds of him—and with his head thrust under one of the hammock cushions.
Thence, at Robert’s call, and at my own exhortation, he would come forth with mincing reluctance and approach the tempting dish of broiled steak. Looking coldly upon the food, he would lie down. To all of Robert’s allurements to eat, the dog turned a deaf ear. Once in a blue moon, he consented to swallow the steak, piece by piece, if Robert would feed it to him by hand. Oftener it was necessary to call on Wolf to act as stimulant to appetite.
“Then I’ll give it to Wolf,” Robert would threaten. “Wolf!”
Treve got to his feet with head lowered and teeth bared. Robert called Wolf, who came lazily to play his part in the daily game for a guerdon of one piece of the meat.
Six feet away from the dish, Wolf paused. But his work was done. Growling, barking, roaring, Treve attacked the dish; snatching up and bolting one morsel of meat at a time. Between every two bites he bellowed threats and insults at the placidly watching Wolf,—Wolfwho could thrash his weight in tigers and who, after Lad and Bruce died, was the acknowledged king of all the Place’s dogs.
In this way, mouthful by mouthful and with an accompaniment of raging noise that could be heard across the lake, Treve disposed of his dinner.
Yes, it was a silly thing to humor him in the game. But there was no other method of making him eat the food on which depended his continued show-form and his dynamite vitality. When it came to giving him his two raw eggs a day, there was nothing to that but forcible feeding. In solid cash prizes and in fees, Treve paid back, by many hundred per cent., the high cost of his food.
When he was little more than a puppy, he fell dangerously ill with some kind of heart trouble. Dr. Hopper said he must have medicine every half hour, day and night, until he should be better. I sat up with him for two nights.
I got little enough work done, between times, on those two nights. The suffering dog lay on a rug beside my study desk. But he was uneasy and wanted to be talked to. He was in too much pain to go to sleep. In a corner of my study was a tin biscuit box, which I kept filled with animal crackers, as occasional titbits for the collies. Every now and then, during our two-nightvigil, I took an animal cracker from the box and fed it to Treve.
By the second night he was having a beautiful time. I was not.
The study seemed to him a most delightful place. Forthwith he adopted it as his lair. By the third morning he was out of danger and indeed was practically well again. But he had acquired the study-habit; a habit which lasted throughout his short life.
From that time on, it was Treve’s study; not mine. The tin cracker box became his treasure chest; a thing to be guarded as jealously as ever was the Nibelungen Hoard or the Koh-i-noor.
If he chanced to be lying in any other room, and a dog unconsciously walked between him and the study, Treve bounded up from the soundest sleep and rushed growlingly to the study door, whence he snarled defiance at the possible intruder. If he were in the study and another dog ventured near, Treve’s teeth were bared and Treve’s forefeet were planted firmly atop the tin box; as he ordered away the potential despoiler of his hoard.
No human, save only the Mistress and myself, might enter the study unchallenged. Grudgingly, Treve conceded her right and mine to be there. But a rush at the ankles of any one else discouraged ingress. I remember my daughterstopped in there one day to speak to me; on her way for a swim. As the bathing-dressed figure appeared on the threshold, Treve made a snarling rush for it. Alternately and vehemently he bit both bare ankles.
“I wish he wouldn’t do that,” complained my daughter, annoyed. “Heticklesso, when he bites!”
No expert trainer has worked more skillfully and tirelessly over a Derby winner than did Robert Friend over that dog’s shimmering red-gold coat. For an hour or more every day, he groomed Treve, until the burnished fur stood out like a Circassian beauty’s coiffure and glowed like molten gold. The dog stood moveless throughout the long and tedious process; except when he obeyed the order to turn to one side or the other or to lift his head or to put up his paws for a brushing of the silken sleeve-ruffles.
It was Robert, too, who hit on the scheme which gave Treve his last show-victory; when the collie already had won fourteen of the needful fifteen points which should make him a Champion of Record.
Perhaps you think it is easy to pilot even the best of dogs through the gruelling ordeals that go to make up those fifteen points. Well, it is not.
Many breeders take their dogs on the various show-circuits, keeping them on the bench for three days at a time; and then, week after week, shipping them in stuffy crates from town to town, from show to show. In this way, the championship points sometimes pile up with reasonable speed;—and sometimes never at all. (Sometimes, too, the luckless dog is found dead in his crate, on arriving at the show-hall. Oftener he catches distemper and dies in more painful and leisurely fashion.)
I am too foolishly mush-hearted to inflict such torture on any of our Sunnybank collies. I never take my dogs to a show that cannot be reached by comfortable motor ride within two or three hours at most; nor to any show whence they cannot return home at the end of a single day. Thus, championship points mount up more slowly at Sunnybank than at some other kennels. But thus, too, our dogs, for the most part, stay alive and in splendid health. I sleep the sounder at night, for knowing my collie chums are not in misery in some distemper-tainted dogshow-building.
In like manner, it is a fixed rule with us never to ship a Sunnybank puppy anywhere by express to a purchaser. People must come here in person and take home the pups they buy from me. Buyers have motored to Sunnybank for pupsfrom Maine and Ohio and even from California.
These scruples of mine have earned me the good-natured guying of more sensible collie breeders.
Well, Treve had picked up fourteen of the fifteen points needed to complete his championship. The last worthwhile show of the spring season—within motor distance—was at Noble, Pa., on June 10, 1922. Incidentally, June 10, 1922, was Treve’s third birthday. His wonderful coat was at the climax of its shining fullness. By autumn he would be “out of coat”; and an out-of-coat collie stands small chance of winning.
So Robert and I drove over to Noble with him.
The day was stewingly hot; the drive was long. Show-goers crowded around the splendid dog before the judging began. Bit by bit, Treve’s nerves began to fray. We kept him off his bench and in the shade, and we did what we could to steer admirers away from him. But it was no use. By the time the collie division was called into the tented ring, Treve was profoundly unhappy and cranky.
He slouched in, with no more “form” to him than a plow horse. With the rest of his class (“Open, sable-and-white”), he went through the parade. Judge Cooper called the contestants one by one up to the block; Treve last of all.My best efforts could not rouse the dog from his sullen apathy.
It was then that Robert Friend played his trump card. Standing just outside the ring, among the jam of spectators, he called excitedly:
“Wolf!I’ll give it to Wolf!”
I don’t know what the other spectators thought of this outburst. But I know the effect it had on Treve.
In a flash the great dog was alert and tense; his tulip ears up, his whole body at attention, the look of eagles in his eyes as he scanned the ringside for a glimpse of his friend, Wolf.
Judge Cooper took one long look at him. Then, without so much as laying a hand on the magnificently-showing Treve, he awarded him the blue ribbon in his class.
I had sense enough to take the dog into one corner and to keep him there, quieting and steadying him until the Winners’ Class was called. As I led him into the ring, then, to compete with the other classes’ blue ribboners, Robert called once more to the absent Wolf. Again the trick served. The collie moved and stood as if galvanized into sparkling life.
Cooper handed me the Winners’ rosette; the rosette whose acquisition made Treve a Champion of Record!
It was only about a year ago. In that littlehandful of time, the judge who made him a champion—the new-made champion himself—the dog whose name roused him from his apathy in the ring—all three are dead. I don’t think a white sportsman like Cooper would mind my linking his name with two such supreme collies, in this word of necrology. Cooper—Treve—Wolf!
(There’s lots of room in this old earth of ours for the digging of graves, isn’t there?)
Home we came with our champion—Champion Sunnybank Sigurd—who displayed so little championship dignity that, an hour after our return to the Place, he lifted my brand new Panama hat daintily from the hall-table, carried it forth from the house with a loving tenderness; laid it to rest in a patch of lakeside mud; and then rolled on it.
I was too elated over our triumph to scold him for the costly sacrilege. I am glad now that I didn’t. For a scolding or a single harsh word ever reduced him to utter heartbreak.
And so for a while, at the Place, our golden champion continued to revel in the gay zest of life.
He was the livest dog I have known. Wolf alone was his chum among all the Sunnybank collies. Wolf alone, with his mighty heart and vast wisdom and his elfin sense of fun and hislove for frolic. Wolf and Treve used to play a complicated game whose chief move consisted of a sweeping breakneck gallop for perhaps a half-mile, to the accompaniment of a fanfare of barking. Across the green lawns they would flash, like red-gold meteors; and at a pace none of their fleet-footed brethren could maintain.
One morning they started as usual on this whirlwind dash. But at the end of the first few yards, Treve swayed in his flying stride, faltered to a stop and came slowly back to me. He thrust his muzzle into my cupped hand—for the first time in his undemonstrative life—then stood wearily beside me.
A strange transformation had come over him. The best way I can describe it is to say that the glowing inward fire which always had seemed to shine through him—even to the flaming bright mass of coat—was gone. He was all at once old and sedate and massive; a dog of elderly dignity—a dignity oddly majestic. The mischief imp had fled from his eyes; the sheen and sunlight had vanished from his coat. He had ceased to be Treve.
I sent in a rush for the nearest good vet. The doctor examined the invalid with all the skilled attention due a dog whose cash value runs into four figures. Then he gave verdict.
It was the heart;—the heart that had beenflighty in puppyhood days, but which two competent vets had since pronounced as sound as the traditional bell.
For a day longer the collie lived;—at least a gravely gentle and majestic collie lived in the marvelous body that had been Treve’s. He did not suffer—or so the doctor told us—and he was content to stay very close to me; his paw or his head on my foot.
At last, stretching himself drowsily to sleep, he died.
It seemed impossible that such a swirl of glad life and mischief and beauty could have been wiped out in twenty-four little hours.
Not for our virtues nor for our general worthiness are we remembered wistfully by those who stay on. Not for our sterling qualities are we cruelly missed when missing is futile. Worthiness, in its death, does not leave behind it the grinding heartache that comes at memory of some lovably naughty or mischievous or delightfully perverse trait.
Treve’s entertaining badnesses had woven themselves into the very life of the Place. Their passing left a keen hurt. The more so because, under them, lay bedrock of staunch loyalty and gentleness.
I have not the skill to paint our eccentricallylovable chum’s word picture, except in this clumsily written sketch. If I were to attempt to make a whole book of him, the result would be a daub.
But I have tried at least to make hisnameremembered by a few readers; by giving it to the hero of this collection of stories. Perhaps some one, reading, may like the name, even if not the stories; and may call his or her next collie, “Treve”; in memory of a gallant dog that was dear to Sunnybank.
We buried him in the woods, near the house, here. A granite bowlder serves as his headstone.
Alongside that bowlder, a few days ago, we buried the Mistress’s hero collie, Wolf; close to his old-time playmate, Treve.
Perhaps you may care to hear a word or two of Wolf’s plucky death. Some of you have read his adventures in my other dog stories. More of you read of his passing. For nearly every newspaper in America printed a long account of it.
It is an account worth reading and rereading; as is every tale of clean courage. I am going to quote part of the finely-written story that appeared in theNew York Timesof June 28, 1923; a story far beyond power of mine to improve on or to equal:
“Wolf, son of Lad, is dead. The shaggy collie, with the eyes that understood and the friendly tail, made famous in the stories of Albert Payson Terhune, died like a thoroughbred. So when Wolf joined his father, in the canine Beyond, last Sunday night, there was no hanging of heads.“Wolf died a hero. But yesterday the level lawns of Sunnybank, the Terhune place at Pompton Lakes, N. J., seemed empty and the big house was curiously quiet. True, other collies were there; but so, too, was the big bowlder out in the woods with just ‘Wolf’ graven across it.“Ten years ago, when thousands of readers were following Lad’s career as told by his owner, Mr. Terhune, an interesting event took place at Sunnybank. Of all the puppies that had or have come to Sunnybank, that group of newcomers was the most mischievous. Admittedly, Lad was properly proud, but readers will remember his occasional misgivings about one of the pups. The cause of parental concern was Wolf. He was a good puppy, you know, but a trifle boisterous; maybe—yes, he was, the littlest bit inclined to wildness.“In 1918 Lad passed on; and the whole country mourned his departure. Wolf succeeded his famous father in the stories of Mr. Terhune. The son had long sinceabandoned his harum-scarum ways and had developed into a model member of the Terhune dog circle. Wolf was the property and the pet of Mrs. Terhune.“He became the cleverest of all the collies. One could talk to Wolf and get understanding and no back talk. One could depend on Wolf and get full loyalty. One could like Wolf and say so; and the soft cool nose would come poking around and the tail would begin to wag till it seemed as if Wolf would wag himself off his feet.“Wolf constituted himself warden of the Sunnybank lawns and custodian of the driveways. When motoring parties came in and endangered the lives of the puppies playing about the driveways, Wolf, at the first sound of the motor, would dash importantly down into the drive and would herd or chase every puppy out of harm’s way.“Each evening it was the habit of Wolf to saunter off on a long ‘walk.’ Three evenings ago he rambled away and—“Down in the darkness at the railroad station some folk were waiting to see the Stroudsburg express flash by. It was a few minutes late. A nondescript dog, with a hunted, homeless droop to his tail, trotted onto the tracks.“Far down the line there came the warning screech of the express. The caninetramp didn’t pay any attention to it, but sat down to scratch at a flea.“The headlight of the express shot a beam glistening along the rails. Wolf saw the dog and the danger. With a bark and a snap, the son of Lad thrust the stranger off the track and drove him to safety.“The express was whistling, for a crossing, far past the station, when they picked up what was Wolf and started for the Terhune home.”
“Wolf, son of Lad, is dead. The shaggy collie, with the eyes that understood and the friendly tail, made famous in the stories of Albert Payson Terhune, died like a thoroughbred. So when Wolf joined his father, in the canine Beyond, last Sunday night, there was no hanging of heads.
“Wolf died a hero. But yesterday the level lawns of Sunnybank, the Terhune place at Pompton Lakes, N. J., seemed empty and the big house was curiously quiet. True, other collies were there; but so, too, was the big bowlder out in the woods with just ‘Wolf’ graven across it.
“Ten years ago, when thousands of readers were following Lad’s career as told by his owner, Mr. Terhune, an interesting event took place at Sunnybank. Of all the puppies that had or have come to Sunnybank, that group of newcomers was the most mischievous. Admittedly, Lad was properly proud, but readers will remember his occasional misgivings about one of the pups. The cause of parental concern was Wolf. He was a good puppy, you know, but a trifle boisterous; maybe—yes, he was, the littlest bit inclined to wildness.
“In 1918 Lad passed on; and the whole country mourned his departure. Wolf succeeded his famous father in the stories of Mr. Terhune. The son had long sinceabandoned his harum-scarum ways and had developed into a model member of the Terhune dog circle. Wolf was the property and the pet of Mrs. Terhune.
“He became the cleverest of all the collies. One could talk to Wolf and get understanding and no back talk. One could depend on Wolf and get full loyalty. One could like Wolf and say so; and the soft cool nose would come poking around and the tail would begin to wag till it seemed as if Wolf would wag himself off his feet.
“Wolf constituted himself warden of the Sunnybank lawns and custodian of the driveways. When motoring parties came in and endangered the lives of the puppies playing about the driveways, Wolf, at the first sound of the motor, would dash importantly down into the drive and would herd or chase every puppy out of harm’s way.
“Each evening it was the habit of Wolf to saunter off on a long ‘walk.’ Three evenings ago he rambled away and—
“Down in the darkness at the railroad station some folk were waiting to see the Stroudsburg express flash by. It was a few minutes late. A nondescript dog, with a hunted, homeless droop to his tail, trotted onto the tracks.
“Far down the line there came the warning screech of the express. The caninetramp didn’t pay any attention to it, but sat down to scratch at a flea.
“The headlight of the express shot a beam glistening along the rails. Wolf saw the dog and the danger. With a bark and a snap, the son of Lad thrust the stranger off the track and drove him to safety.
“The express was whistling, for a crossing, far past the station, when they picked up what was Wolf and started for the Terhune home.”
All dogs die too soon. Many humans don’t die soon enough. A dog is only a dog. And a dog is too gorgeously normal and wholesome to be made ridiculous in death by his owner’s sloppy sentimentality.
The stories of one’s dogs, like the recital of one’s dreams, are of no special interest to others. Perhaps I have talked overlong about these two collie chums of ours. Belatedly, I ask your forgiveness if I have bored you.
Albert Payson Terhune.
“Sunnybank,”Pompton Lakes,New Jersey.