From beside his feet, Bobby Burns was rising.  The collie had crouched there, evidently, with some idea of guarding Brice from further harm.  He did not seem to have resented the woman’s ministrations.  But he was of no mind to let this man come any closer to his stricken idol.

Brice was sore tempted to reach out his hand and give the collie a reassuring pat and to thank him for the loyal guard he had been keeping.  Now, through the mists of memory, he recalled snarls and the bruising contact of a furry body, during the battle he so, dimly remembered, and that once his foe had cried, out, as though at the impact of rending teeth.

Yes, Bobby Burns, presumably, had learned a lesson since his interested but impersonal surveillance of Gavin’s bout with the beach comber, earlier in the afternoon.  He had begun to learn that when grown men come to a clinch, it is not mere play.

And Brice wanted to praise the gallant young dog for coming to his help.  But, as before, instinct and professional experience bade him continue to “play dead.”

“What’s that?” he heard the man demand, in surprise, as Bobby snarled again and stood threateningly between him and the prostrate Brice.

The woman answered.  And at the first sound of her voice, full memory rushed back on Gavin in a flood.  He knew where he was, and who was holding, his head on her knee.  The knowledge thrilled him, unaccountably.  With mighty effort he held to his, pose of inert senselessness.

“That’s Bobby Burns,” he heard Claire saying in reply to her brother’s first question.  “He’s guarding Mr. Brice.  When I ran out here with the water and the cloths, I found him standing above him.  But—­oh, Milo—­”

“Brice?” snapped Milo Standish, glowering on the fallen man his sister was brooding over.  “Brice?  Who’s Brice?  D’you mean that chap?  Lucky I got him, even if the other one did give me the slip!  Let me take a look at him.  If I hadn’t happened to be bringing the monkey-wrench from the garage to fix that shelf-bolt in the study, I’d never have been able to get even one of them.  I yanked free of them, while they were trying to down me, and I let this one have it with the wrench.  Before I could land on the other—­”

“Milo!” she broke in, after several vain attempts to still his vainglorious recital.  “Milo!  You’ve injured—­maybe you’ve killed—­the man who saved you from being stabbed to death!  Yet you—­”

“What are you talking about?” he demanded, bewildered.  “These two men set on me in the dark, as I was coming from—­”

“This man, here—­Mr. Brice—­” she flamed, “has saved you from being killed.  Oh, go and telephone for a doctor!  Quickly!  And send one of the maids out here with my smelling salts.  He—­”

“Thanks!” returned her brother, making no move to obey.  “But when I phone, it’ll be to the police.  Not to a doctor.  I don’t know what notion you may have gotten of this fracas.  But—­”