And the shrinking cataract hadn't caused Pete's muzzle to return to saltand-pepper from an almost solid white, had it? Anderson had noticed that in the pickup truck as they headed down to Augusta. She had almost driven off the road.

How much of this was Etheridge seeing and not being prepared to admit he was seeing? Quite a bit, Anderson guessed, but part of it was just that Etheridge wasn't Doc Daggett.

Daggett had seen Peter at least twice a year during the first ten years of Peter's life … and then there were the things that came up, like the time Pete had mixed in with a porcupine, for instance, and Daggett had removed the quills, one by one, whistling the theme music from The Bridge on the

River Kwai as he did so, soothing the trembling year-old dog with one big, kindly hand. On another occasion Peter had come limping home with a backside full of birdshot – a cruel present from a hunter either too stupid to look before he shot or perhaps sadistic enough to inflict misery on a dog because he couldn't find a partridge or pheasant to inflict it on. Dr Daggett would have seen all the changes in Peter, and would not have been able to deny them even if he had wished to. Dr Daggett would have taken off his pink-rimmed glasses, polished them on his white coat, and said something like: We have to find out where he's been and what he's gotten into, Roberta. This is serious. Dogs don't just get younger, and that is what Peter appears to be doing. That would have forced Anderson to reply: I know where he's been, and I've got a pretty good idea of what did it. And that would have taken a lot of the pressure off, wouldn't it? But old Doc Daggett had sold the practice to Etheridge, who seemed nice enough, but who was still something of a stranger, and retired to Florida.