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him, he leaps forward again, tossing and catching it before him and zig-zagging through them as the Sunday football player might return the much sought-after ball. After he has gone through and eluded them all, he looks back over his shoulder and again, like an elated athlete, tosses the mitt high in what seems like an imaginary end zone. Then he seizes it once more and lopes in a wide circle around his pursuers, eventually coming closer and closer to them until once more their stretching hands are able to actually touch his shoulders and back and haunches, although he continues always to wriggle free. He is touched but never captured, which is the nature of the game. Then he is gone. As suddenly as he came. Istrain my eyes in the direction of the adjoining street, towards the house where I have often seen him, always within a yard enclosed by woven links of chain. I see the flash of his silhouette, outlined perhaps against the snow or the light cast by the street lamps or the moon. It arcs upwards and seems to hang for an instant high above the top of the fence and then it descends on the other side. He lands on his shoulder in a fluff of snow and with a half roll regains his feet and vanishes within the shadow of his owner’s house.
    “What are you looking at?” asks my wife.
    “That golden collie-like dog from the other street was just playing with the children in the snow.”
    “But he’s always in that fenced-in yard.”
    “I guess not always. He jumped the fence just now and went back in. I guess the owners and the rest of us think he’s fenced in but he knows he’s not. He probably comes out every night and leads an exciting life. I hope they don’t see his tracks or they’ll probably begin to chain him.”
    “What are the children doing?”
    “They look tired now from chasing the dog. They’ll probably soon be back in. I think I’ll go downstairs and wait for them and make myself a cup of coffee.”
    “Okay.”
    I look once more towards the fenced-in yard but the dog is nowhere to be seen.
    I first saw such a dog when I was twelve and he came as a pup of about two months in a crate to the railroad station which was about eight miles from where we lived. Someone must have phoned or dropped in to say: “Your dog’s at the station.”
    He had come to Cape Breton in response to a letter and a cheque which my father had sent to Morrisburg, Ontario. We had seen the ads for “cattle collie dogs” in the
Family Herald
, which was the farm newspaper of the time, and we were in need of a good young working dog.
    His crate was clean and neat and there was still a supply of dog biscuits with him and a can in the corner to hold water. The baggage handlers had looked after him well on the trip east, and he appeared in good spirits. He had a white collar and chest and four rather large white paws and a small white blaze on his forehead. The rest of him was a fluffy, golden brown, although his eyebrows and the tips of his ears as well as the end of his tail were darker, tingeing almost to black. When he grew to his full size the blackish shadings became really black, and although he had the long, heavy coat of a collie, it was in certain areas more grey than gold. He was also taller than the average collie and with a deeper chest. He seemed to be at least part German Shepherd.
    It was winter when he came and we kept him in the house where he slept behind the stove in a box lined with an old coat. Our other dogs slept mostly in the stables or outside in the lees of woodpiles or under porches or curled up on the banking of the house. We seemed to care more for him because he was smaller and it was winter and he was somehow like a visitor; and also because more was expected of him and also perhaps because we had paid money for him and thought about his coming for some time – like a “planned” child. Sceptical neighbours and relatives who thought the idea of paying money for a dog was rather exotic or frivolous