"And I'll make it up with a new cat as well, sir--Come on, Killeny Boy.

This big fella marster he all right, you bet." And Michael listened.

Not with the smouldering, smothering, choking hysteria that still worked in the fox-terriers did he listen, nor with quivering of muscles and jumps of over-wrought nerves, but coolly, composedly, as if no battle royal had just taken place and no rips of teeth and kicks of feet still burned and ached his body.
He could not help bristling, however, when first he sniffed a trousers' leg into which his teeth had so recently torn.
"Put your hand down on him, sir," Daughtry begged.
And Captain Duncan, his own good self once more, bent and rested a firm, unhesitating hand on Michael's head.

Nay, more; he even caressed the ears and rubbed about the roots of them.

And Michael the merry-hearted, who fought like a lion and forgave and forgot like a man, laid his neck hair smoothly down, wagged his stump tail, smiled with his eyes and ears and mouth, and kissed with his tongue the hand with which a short time before he had been at war..