"SCOTCH."

King Country Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 300, 5 October 1910, Page 3

"SCOTCH."

A Canine Hero. It is a touching story of canine fidelity which Mr. Bnos A. Mills tells of his dog "Scotch" in "Wild Life on the Rockies." Master and dog had been out on a four days' excursion on the bleak mountain tops, when a little above timber-line Mr. Mills stopped to take some photographs. To do this he had to take off his sheepskin mittens, which he placed in his coat pocket, but not securely, as it proved. He goes on—

From time to time, as I climbed the summit of the continental divide, I stopped to take photographs, but on the summit the cold pierced my silk gloves, and I felt for my mittens, to find that one of them was lost.

I stooped, put an arm round Scotch and told him I had lost a mitten, and that I wanted him to go down for it, to save me trouble.

Instead of starting oil willingly, as he had invariably done before in obedience to my commands, he stood still. I thought he had misunderstood me, so I patted him, and then pointing down the slope said, '"Go for the mitten, Scotch, I will wait here for you." He started for it, but went unwillingly. He had always served me so cheerfully that I could not understand, and it was not until late the next afternoon that I realised that he had not misunderstood me, but that he had loyally, and at the risk of his life, tried to obey me. My cabin, eighteen miles away, was the nearest house, and the region was utterly wild. I waited a reasonable time for Scotch to return, but he did not come back. As it was late in the afternoon and growing

colder, I decided to go on toward my cabin, along a rout that I felt sure he would follow, and I reasoned that he would overtake me.

When at midnight he had not come I felt something was wrong. I slept two hours and decided to go to meet him. The thermometer showed fourteen below zero. I kept on going, and at two in the afternoon, twentyfour hours after I had sent Scotch back, I paused on a crag and looked below. There in the snowy world of white he lay by the mitten in the snow. He had misunderstood me, and had gone back to guard the mitten instead of to get it. After waiting for him to eat a luncheon, we started merrily toward homo, where we arrived at one o'clock in the morning.

Had I not returned, I suppose lie would have died beside the mitten. In a region cold, cheerless, oppressive, without food, and perhaps to die, he lay down by the mitten because he understood that 1 told him to. In the annals of dog heroism, I know of no greater deed.