Bert hesitated and went on.
He stopped thirty paces away and stood peering about him among the trees. “If I ‘aven’t been and lef’ that kitten,” he said.
Acute sorrow wrenched him for a time. The black dog came through the trees to get a better look at him and coughed that well-bred cough again. Bert resumed the road.
“She’ll do all right,” he said.... “She’ll catch things.
“She’ll do all right,” he said presently, without conviction. But if it had not been for the black dog, he would have gone back.
When he was out of sight of the house and the black dog, he went into the woods on the other side of the way and emerged after an interval trimming a very tolerable cudgel with his pocket-knife. Presently he saw an attractive-looking rock by the track and picked it up and put it in his poc
