It was a merry band that trotted over the crest of a slope in the winding road. There was Owney, harness and medals, his whiskers every which way. And there were the floppy-eared, pop-eyed Pekes with their pug noses sampling the wind. Their long, silky coats were covered with dust and Chinese cockleburs. But they were happy. They made up silly songs to tease Owney who listened with a grin in his mustache.

Oh, it's fine to be in China When the tea is in the cup And we'd rather be the Emperor's dogs Than a U. S. postal pup!

They were singing and playing so hard that they were almost on top of a group of ragged men coming up the other side of the sloping road before they knew it.

The men had fierce faces. Some of them carried pitchforks. Others had swords and old rifles. The two men at the head of the band rode small, ragged ponies with dusty coats and slanty eyes.

There was a rattle of shouts as the men saw the dogs and ran toward them.

They were bandits. Chinese bandits.

"Run!" barked the Pekes. Suddenly all six dogs were part of a tangle of reaching men and stabbing pitchforks. The horses plunged. One of the bandits fired his rifle into the air. One of the Pekes bolted down the road with a horse right behind him. Its rider carried a spear. He tried to stick the scampering dog.

"I wasn't having any of that," growled Owney. "I'd been around big American horses all my life. I wasn't about to have a little Pekinese hurt by a skinny Chinese pony."

Owney exploded from the dust clouds and raced to overtake the horse and its rider. The little dog nipped at the horse's fetlock and then jumped for its throat. The horse reared and tossed its rider into a ditch by the roadside. Owney scurried back among the tangle of men and dogs.

Then, rising above the shouting, there was the brazen blast of a bugle note, and galloping down the road came the Imperial Cavalry.

Bandits scattered like jelly beans from a broken bag.

"Just like a movie," said Gib excitedly.

"I didn't think it was play," said Owney.

The cavalry leader caught the two bandits who had ridden the ponies. His men tied their hands and feet, slung them over the backs of their own horses and took them away.

Gib saw it. There were five pert Pekes riding in the big pockets of five Imperial troopers, and Owney trotting steadily beside the cavalry leader at the head of his men. And that's the way they went back to the palace at Süchow by the river.

"They took us in together," Owney recalled. "Washed us with perfumed soap and combed the snarls out of our coats. And they fed us choice pieces of meat."

The little dog chuckled.

"They did my toenails, my paw claws, you know. Polished them up and painted them red. They cleaned my harness and shined up my medals. Oh, everything. Then they let us sleep together on a silk pad stuffed with Chinese goose feathers. We didn't see the Emperor until the next day."

"Had he cut off any heads?" asked Gib.

"Not even the ambassador's," said Owney. "He was so glad to have his prized dog family back with him. And they did love him, you know. He petted me. I was a little nervous about those long fingernails. And he thanked me for saving his pets from the bandits. That cavalry leader told him that I had fought well. He said the United States and China would be friends forever. Then he turned me over to the man who had brought us into the palace in the beginning, the one in the blue uniform with the stern look.

"The last I saw of him, he was feeding the Pekes Chinese candy, and they barked good-bye to me.

"The ambassador was waiting for me outside the palace grounds. They hadn't allowed him in."

"How was he?" Gib wanted to know.

"Mad," said Owney. "He didn't' say a word all the way back to Shanghai on the Choo & Choo & Choo. He mailed me out the next day. Took me aboard ship himself at midnight and gave me a little kick to help me up the gangplank. He thought nobody saw him. He was wrong."

Gib laughed and hugged the dog.

"I know," he said, "I know who saw. A German, a Frenchman, two Englishmen, two Russians and three Chinese postal officials. That's who."

Gib looked at his watch. It was nearly three o'clock in the morning in the Smithsonian. He felt uneasy again, as if he certainly should do something, find somebody, try something, anything. But Owney was talking.

"The ship was the P and O vessel that had brought me from Japan to China. Had the same captain too. He was glad to see me in sort of a strict way. 'Hear you've been stirring up the natives,' he said. 'You'll be under orders here. I've quite a few concerning you. You're confined to shipboard although I may give you a shore run now and then.' I liked him anyway." "Where did you go from China?"

"London," said Owney. "It was a long way."

It was too. South from Shanghai down the East China Sea, through the Straits of Formosa, to Hong Kong. Then south again, through the South China Sea, to Singapore at the tip-end of the Malay Peninsula.

"I went ashore there with the captain," said Owney, "on a leash, to meet some British and Dutch postal people. The Dutch gave me a scroll. The captain put it in his pocket. Said he'd keep it for me until I could hang it on a wall in Albany, New York, where they understood the language."

Then west, through the Strait of Malacca, into the Indian Ocean, through flying-fish waters, past Dondra Head at the end of Ceylon, and north up the coast of India to Bombay.

"I went ashore there too. The captain took me to a club and introduced me to his friends as his 'otter hound.' He borrowed a set of clippers from a man who owned polo ponies and we went back to the ship."

"Why did he do that?" asked Gib sleepily.

"He said no 'otter hound' of his was going to make the run across the Arabian Sea, into the Gulf of Aden, wearing all the clothes I had on. So a day out of Bombay he called me to his cabin, took off my harness and medals and clipped my coat nice and short. I must say it was a relief. Especially when we got into the Red Sea on our way to the Suez Canal. It was hot. It wasn't pleasant until we passed into the Mediterranean Sea."

"We studied about Greece in school," said Gib.

"We didn't stop there. We took on coal at an island named Malta. I went ashore on a leash. We took on supplies at Gibraltar where the English had a big Army and Navy base and where they kept apes."

"Apes?"

Big overgrown monkeys that came to Gibraltar from Africa. I never saw any. How could I, on a leash? The captain told me about them. He said that they were the ones in red uniforms and that the soldiers were the ones in fur coats that lived in the caves of the Rock of Gibraltar."

"He was joking."

Maybe, but I never got off the leash to find out. Not even when the Military Governor of Gibraltar asked to see me as a Universal Postal Union representative. That captain took very good care of me with his leash but I was glad to see London and the American postal authorities waiting there for me. Anyhow, I was polite. I shook hands with him when I left the ship at Southampton for the boat train to the city. He sort of apologized for the leash. Said something about orders, and good-by."

"I expect you had lots of adventures in London," said Gib.

"No, I didn't. It was all meetings and business of the United States Post Office. There was some talk about my visiting with the Queen. But she had a pain in her shoulder and was confined. I met the Lord Mayor of London and sat with the British Board of Trade. They gave me all sorts of scrolls and medals. A man from the American Embassy put them in a green carpetbag for the Postmaster General to see later. None of the English liked me much though. I could tell. It was all business with them."

"How could you tell?"

"I was an inspector, you know. Trained to detect things. And I could hear as well as see and smell. I heard one member of the Board of Trade tell another to be nice to me. Make a do, he said. Maybe it will stop the American Congress from complaining about the price we charge 'em to carry mail in our ships. I should have taken a bite out of one or two of them, but I didn't want to cause any trouble for President Cleveland in his second term. I was glad to leave England. That's the Scotch-Irish in me."

"Were you homesick?"

"Well, I was gone one hundred thirty-two days on that round-the-world trip. Certainly, I was homesick. I could have crawled into a sack and mailed myself home. However, I finally sailed on an Inman International liner. When I saw our flag waving from her masthead I barked for ten minutes for pure joy. Can you guess how I felt when that ship came up the Narrows into New York Harbor and I saw the Statue of Liberty?"

"Not exactly," said Gib. "I've never seen it."

"I felt exalted. As if I were more than a dog, even a famous one, and bigger than a lion. I also felt hungry. New York had a very meaty smell in those days."

"Where did you go from New York? Back to Albany?"

Owney sprang to his feet. He barked sharply.

"Tacoma," he said, panting. "They mailed me back to Tacoma. It was a round-the -world trip. And that's where I started from. Tacoma!"

Owney vanished.

Gib rubbed his eyes in amazement.

He stared at the bare floor.

Where there had been a small, shaggy dog there was no dog at all. Owney had gone.