The race was to be run next day, and that night in his room he loaded half-a-dozen shells.  It would have been a study in faces to watch him as he bent over his work, on his lips a smile.  Into the shells he packed all the powder they could stand, all the powder his trusted gun could stand, without bursting.  It was a load big enough to kill a bear, to bring down a buffalo.  It was a load that would echo and reecho in the hills.

On the morning that Larsen walked out in front of the judges and the field, Peerless II at the leash, old Swygert, with Comet at his side, he glanced around at the “field,” or spectators.  Among them was a handsome young woman, and with her, to his amazement, George Devant.  He could not help chuckling inside himself as he thought of what would happen that day, for once a gun-shy dog, always a gun-shy dog—­that was his experience.

As for Comet, he faced the straw fields eagerly, confidently, already a veteran.  Long ago fear of the gun had left him, for the most part.  There were times when at a report above his head he still trembled, and the shocked nerves in his ear gave a twinge like that of a bad tooth.  But always at the quiet voice of the old man, his god, he grew steady, and remained staunch.

Some disturbing memory did start within him to-day as he glanced at the man with the other dog.  It seemed to him as if in another and an evil world he had seen that face.  His heart began to pound fast, and his tail drooped for a moment.  Within an hour it was all to come back to him—­the terror, the panic, the agony of that far-away time.

He looked up at old Swygert, who was his god, and to whom his soul belonged, though he was booked as the property of Miss Marian Devant.  Of the arrangements he could know nothing, being a dog.  Old Swygert, having cured him, could not meet the expenses of taking him to field trials.  The girl had come to the old man’s assistance, an assistance which he had accepted only under condition that the dog should be entered as hers, with himself as handler.

“Are you ready, gentlemen?” the judges asked.

“Ready,” said Larsen and old Swygert.

And Comet and Peerless II were speeding away across that field, and behind them came handlers, and judges and spectators, all mounted.

It was a race people still talk about, and for a reason, for strange things happened that day.  At first there was nothing unusual.  It was like any other field trial.  Comet found birds, and Swygert, his handler, flushed them and shot.  Comet remained steady.  Then Peerless II found a covey, and Larsen flushed them and shot.  And so for an hour it went.

Then Comet disappeared, and old Swygert, riding hard and looking for him, went out of sight over a hill.  But Comet had not gone far.  As a matter of fact, he was near by, hidden in some high straw, pointing a covey of birds.  One of the spectators spied him, and called the judges’ attention to him.  Everybody, including Larsen, rode up to him, but still Swygert had not come back.