The Road to Dumbiedykes 



was in his throat, but the dog did not; 

 so the weight of the impending blow 

 was only felt by one. 



The boy unpacked his little trunk 

 a few days later to begin serving an in- 

 determinate sentence at office work. 

 One morning on the city street he 

 passed a Collie on a leash. The day 

 was warm and the dog was muzzled. 

 The look of hopeless despair the 

 country boy detected in that Collie's 

 eyes has not yet been forgotten, and 

 he vowed then and there that he, 

 for one, would never be a party to 

 any scheme looking towards the trans- 

 fer of any living creature of the open 

 to prison pens within a city's walls. 

 And he has kept the faith. 



What became of his own abandoned 

 dog he never knew, nor desired to know. 

 He did not seek bad news where he 

 knew there could be none that was 

 good, but he always believed that his 

 Collie must have died sooner or later 

 of something akin to a broken heart. 



[18] 



