near by. On the afternoon of the third day, Jennings stooped down and peered underneath the corncrib. It was set low to the ground, and two sides were boarded up. On the unboarded side, weeds had grown. It was quite dark underneath.

At first Jennings could not be sure what that dim suggestion of white 10 could be. Then he pushed aside the weeds and peered more closely, his eyes growing more accustomed to the dark. Finally he straightened up and called loudly: "Here he is, folks!"

They all came running, Mrs. Jennings leaving her supper to burn if need be, Frank dropping his ax at the woodpile. When they reached him, Tom Jennings was stooping down and 20 pleading: "Come, Mac! Come, old man! We are all here."

But the white figure did not stir. At last Frank wormed his long body toward the setter and gently pulled him forth. They examined him all over, but at first could find no sign of injury. It was Frank who saw and understood. Frank had always had a way of knowing what was the matter with 30 animals. "He's blind," said the youth.

Some of the neighbors, when they heard, said that Jennings ought to put the dog out of his misery. But no such thought ever entered the head of any member of the Jennings family. They built him a kennel underneath the bedroom window. They taught him where to find his plate of food on the kitchen steps. Soon he learned to find his way 40 about the yard.

At first Mac ran into things-into the corner of the house, into the woodpile, or into the chicken coops. He never whimpered when he did so, but looked humbled and ashamed.

At

last he located each object and calculated respective distances; and before the summer was over he avoided obstacles as if he had eyes.

You would not have known the dog 50 was blind but for the fact that when he drew near the steps or near a doorhe learned to open screen doors with his paws he would raise his front foot, and feel about like a blind man with a stick.

One day at dinner Jennings spoke to his family. "I don't want any of you children ever to leave anything about the yard that Mac can stumble 60 over. Mother, whenever you move a chicken-coop, please call him and show him where it is." They all agreed.

Then Mac began to follow his master to the field and to the store up the road. Neighbors grinned and said they had often heard of a blind man led by a dog, but never before of a blind dog led by a man. They never said this, though, in Tom Jennings's presence.

As summer waned and hunting season approached, Tom Jennings, a great hunter, bought a pointer to take the place of Mac in the field.

20

70

It was hard to have to leave Mac at home on the first day of the winter's hunting. Though Tom had tried to keep the matter of his going a secret, the blind dog had sensed the preparations. He had smelled the oiling of so boots. boots. He had heard the click of

shells dropped into hunting-coat pockets. And, at the end, the frantic barkings of the pointer, whom Tom had tried in vain to keep silent, told him as plainly as a shout. Mac tried to follow, and they had to tie him up.

In the middle of the afternoon Mrs. Jennings turned the dog loose. He stayed close to her for a while, follow- 90

ing her in and out of the kitchen and about the yard. But as the time drew near for the return of the hunters, he began to sniff the air in every direction, his nose held high.

At last Mac smelled them coming across the fields and made his way eagerly through the yard and toward them. And now it was, as he saw the 10 blind dog coming, that a happy thought struck Tom Jennings. Instead of coming to the house he waited at the edge of the yard; and when Mac reached him, he took out of his hunting coat a bird and handed it to the dog. "Take it to the missus," he said.

Straight to the kitchen and up the steps the dog went, happy and proud. Mrs. Jennings opened the door, face 20 beaming. The children all ran out to

see.

And though it consumed time, Tom remained standing where he was and handed the blind dog bird after bird. After that, this procedure came to be a regular part of Tom's hunts.

Soon Mac learned to rear gently up on the kitchen table and place the birds on the top. Each bird he placed near the preceding one, rooting them 30 gently with his nose into a conical pile. "Mac's pile" it came to be called by the children, returning from school and hurrying into the kitchen. And while they talked to him and bragged about the regular pile he had made, he would stand with wagging tail, his sightless eyes raised to their faces as if he saw.

Another summer passed, a summer of other thunderstorms, of which Mac 40 was afraid no more. Another bird season rolled around. And then, one day, the dog begged so hard with his unseeing eyes that Tom allowed him to go. After that Tom always let him go. For a wonderful thing had hap

pened. Blind Mac was no longer useless! He could still hunt!

First he seemed to be "backstanding" Nell, the pointer; that is, when she set, he advanced slightly in front 50 of Tom and set, too. But since Mac could not see, it was plain that it was the birds themselves he was setting and not Nell. Then, a little later in the same day, and while Nell was nowhere in sight, the dog suddenly trotted ahead and came to a beautiful stand. All excited, Tom advanced, and a covey of birds rose. The gun barked twice, and two birds tumbled. 60 "Fetch, Mac!" cried Tom. And straight to the birds the unerring nose took him, and he retrieved them both, trembling with joy.

From this time Mac was an object of charity no more. Had Tom Jennings not been a man of tender heart, but only a hunter out after meat, he still would have taken the dog along. Just as in people, when one sense is 70 destroyed, others grow more than normally keen, so it was with Mac. Never, declared Tom, could a dog smell birds so far; never did bird dog have a nose that told him so exactly where they were.

Fortunately, the route over which Tom hunted lay in extensive river bottoms, cultivated in corn. There were few fences, and Mac soon learned so where they were. There were no woods, and only an occasional thicket that Mac could circle with a fair degree of safety. Nell did all the wide ranging. Now and then Mac fell into a ditch or creek. It was always pitiful to Tom to see this. But each time the dog found his way out and went on un

50. set, crouched, or stood, with nose pointed in the direction of the game. 63. retrieved, found and brought in the game. 84. ranging, seeking of game.

daunted, head high, tail wagging as if with a perpetual and inward joy.

"I've seen some blind folks," said Tom once to his wife, "who looked happier to me than folks with eyes. Mac looks happier to me than dogs that can see. It's strange."

So the years passed, and blind Mac came to be a familiar figure; the chil10 dren grew, and Tom Jennings worked hard to give them an education.

First Frank, the lad, outgrew the country schools, just as he outgrew his clothes. He was a hard-working, serious-minded, intelligent boy. Then the girls, both bright, reached the next to the last grade in the country school. And Tom Jennings and Martha Jennings, his wife, determined that each 20 of them should have a college education. So Tom worked very hard and Martha saved very closely. And the fall day came when Frank left home to go to college in Greenville; then another day, the next fall, when the girls left, also. Thus Martha and Tom and Mac were left alone on the farm. "You know," said Tom once, "I sometimes think it's a strange thing, 30 Mother, that that poor dog should have been struck by lightning. I know he is only a dog; but I reckon God made him."

"Maybe there was purpose in it, Tom," said his wife.

Then hard luck came to Tom Jennings just at the time when the bills for the children's college fees were due. First the river rose and drowned some 40 of his cattle and ruined a good deal of corn that had not been gathered. He worked hard, even desperately, to save what he could and not allow the children to know. Then Tom himself was taken with a queer feeling in the chest,

a feeling of tightness and dull pain and shortness of breath. Martha pleaded with him a long time to consult a doctor before he consented to do so. The doctor listened with a 50 stethoscope placed on the farmer's chest. "Sit down, Jennings," he said at last. "Jennings, your heart leaks. You've overstrained it. You must never do any more hard manual work." "But, Doctor " Tom began.

"No buts about it. You are too good a man to drop off. You must go slow. You mustn't even walk fast. You must never run, and you must 60 not lift heavy weights. Why don't you sell your farm and move to town?"

"But the children, Doctor. I'm trying to give them a better chance than the mother or I have had."

"That's all right, Jennings. But we have to trim our sails to meet life as it is. Your heart leaks, man! You've done what you could for your children. They'll have to shift for themselves." 70

Tom Jennings drove slowly home. Martha, not knowing the purpose of his visit to town that day, had gone to see Mrs. Taylor, a neighbor. Even Mac was not in the yard to welcome him. He put up his horse, then sat down on the back steps to do the hardest thinking he had ever done.

At first it seemed to him like Providence that just recently Tom Belcher 80 had offered to buy the farm. In fact, he had called him up every day about it. He could sell it tomorrow and then he could move to Greenville. The children were paying part of their expenses. But without his help, two of them at least would have to leave college. What was more, they would have to go to work to help him now. The interest from what he could get 90

But Martha had forgotten at last; in the middle of the yard was a chicken-coop she had recently moved there. Tom started to call out a warning; then for some queer reason did not. Over the unexpected obstacle the dog stumbled and came near falling. He let out no cry. He simply went to the coop, felt it, as 10 if to locate it for the future, then came on toward the house. His head was bowed, though, as if with that shame he seemed always to feel when, because of his affliction, he happened to have an accident. But his tail was still wagging.

"Mac!" It broke from the man.

The blind dog raised his head and whiffed the air. Then he located his 20 master and came toward him. He laid his head on Tom Jennings's knee, and Tom Jennings laid his big hard hand on the blind dog's head.

"God put out your eyes, and still you do your work. And you're only a dumb brute, and I was made in the image of God!"

The rural telephone in the hall suddenly rang, and he rose and went into 30 the house. "Yes-I've decided, Tom," he said. "I'm not goin' to sell the farm."

After that there came, perforce, a change in Jennings's method of farming. Years ago Frank had besought him to diversify his crops, to study his soil, to take advantage of the information the agricultural college and the Government were glad to send.

But to Tom Jennings thinking had 40 always been harder than physical toil. Brought up right after the Civil War in a section left poverty-stricken, he could just read and write-that was all; for when he was twelve his service

35. diversify his crops, raise more than one kind of crop, in order to get better results from the soil.

between the plow handles had begun, and there he had served ever since.

Now, from necessity, he began to think and plan. He asked the agricultural college for information. That institution sent not only pamphlets 50 but a representative from an experiment station to consult with him and advise him. He sold a bit of land and bought farm machinery. He built a tenant house and installed help. And all the time Frank, who did not know of the leaking heart, also advised him by letters, and when he came home in the summer, helped wonderfully-both by hard work and by helpful advice.

No great prosperity followed. But Tom Jennings did a shade better than he had done before, and the children stayed at college. Not even Martha knew all the doctor had told him that day. Only to Mac did he talk freely.

60

"When your eyes were put out, old codger, you whetted your nose," he would say; "and when my muscles lost their engine power I whetted my 70 old rusty brain.”

Tom's children all did well at college. Frank finished an academic course, then went off to a medical college. Mary, the older girl, was studying library work; the younger girl had come to no conclusion yet. The three of them came home in summer for at least part of the season, and always came at Christmas. They 80 brought with them a different atmosphere-the atmosphere of a wider world. But the girls helped the mother in the kitchen, and Frank advised with the father about the farm. There was no feeling of shame on one side, nor of apology on the other. It was the kind of thing that has happened on thousands of American farms.

Sometimes at night Tom spoke of 90