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 mance anywhere among that ravening tribe in this world. Grimmitt contended that this wolf had blue eyes when he shot it, and a blue-eyed wolf he would have it, dead and snarling among the whisky bottles in his window.

On this point of fidelity to nature the community was divided, some holding with Grimmitt that a white wolf had blue eyes, although none could be fastened down to the declaration that he ever had met one; others scorning the contention and ridiculing the effigy as a slander against nature, wolf nature in particular. As for Grimmitt, he was ready to fight for the blue eyes of his wolf, and their fidelity to the original. It had blue eyes when alive, and blue eyes he had ordered for it dead. The taxidermist had done the best he could to meet this extraordinary specification, but had succeeded only in supplying blue eyes, not blue eyes of a wolf. Far from it, indeed. Not even human eyes. Doll's eyes, they appeared to be, large and expressionless of all wolfish ferocity, calm and untroubled and wide-staring; blue as asters by the roadside, placid as water in a porridge bowl.

Dan Gustin never had been a resident of Saunders, therefore never had been aligned in the controversy of the white wolf, although he had his own opinion in the matter, as a free rider might have, indeed. Now he went his way to the hotel to meet his charge, a bit uncomfortable, and ashamed of his mission.

Dan brisked up a bit at the sight of two men before the window displaying the white wolf, evidently engaged in a wrangle over the merits of that historic