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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Lad: A Dog, by Albert Payson Terhune
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Lad: A Dog
+
+Author: Albert Payson Terhune
+
+Release Date: February 6, 2012 [EBook #38777]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LAD: A DOG ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Paul Clark and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+file was produced from images generously made available
+by The Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  [ Transcriber's Note:
+
+    Every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as
+    possible, including inconsistencies in spelling, punctuation and
+    hyphenation. Some corrections of spelling and punctuation have
+    been made. They are listed at the end of the text.
+
+    OE ligatures have been expanded.
+
+    Italic text has been marked with _underscores_.
+  ]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+LAD: A DOG
+
+
+[Illustration: (_From a photograph by Lacy Van Wagenen_)]
+
+
+
+
+  LAD: A DOG
+
+  BY
+  ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE
+
+  NEW YORK
+  E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
+  681 FIFTH AVENUE
+
+  Copyright 1919
+  By E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
+
+  _All Rights Reserved_
+
+  _First Printing,           April, 1919_
+  _Second Printing,           June, 1919_
+  _Third Printing,            July, 1919_
+  _Fourth Printing,         August, 1919_
+  _Fifth Printing,          August, 1919_
+  _Sixth Printing,          August, 1919_
+  _Seventh Printing,        August, 1919_
+  _Eighth Printing,         August, 1919_
+  _Ninth Printing,          August, 1919_
+  _Tenth Printing,          August, 1919_
+  _Eleventh Printing,     December, 1919_
+  _Twelfth Printing,      December, 1919_
+  _Thirteenth Printing,   December, 1919_
+  _Fourteenth Printing,   December, 1919_
+  _Fifteenth Printing,    December, 1919_
+  _Sixteenth Printing,    December, 1919_
+  _Seventeenth Printing,  December, 1919_
+  _Eighteenth Printing,     August, 1921_
+  _Nineteenth Printing,      March, 1922_
+  _Twentieth Printing,      August, 1922_
+  _Twenty-first Printing,    Sept., 1922_
+  _Twenty-second Pr'ting,     Feb., 1923_
+
+  _Printed in the United States of America_
+
+  MY BOOK IS DEDICATED
+  TO THE MEMORY OF
+
+  Lad
+
+  THOROUGHBRED IN BODY AND SOUL
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER                           PAGE
+
+     I.  HIS MATE                    1
+
+    II.  "QUIET!"                   26
+
+   III.  A MIRACLE OF TWO           49
+
+    IV.  HIS LITTLE SON             74
+
+     V.  FOR A BIT OF RIBBON        97
+
+    VI.  LOST!                     126
+
+   VII.  THE THROWBACK             156
+
+  VIII.  THE GOLD HAT              180
+
+    IX.  SPEAKING OF UTILITY       218
+
+     X.  THE KILLER                251
+
+    XI.  WOLF                      297
+
+   XII.  IN THE DAY OF BATTLE      321
+
+         AFTERWORD                 347
+
+
+
+
+LAD: A DOG
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+HIS MATE
+
+
+Lady was as much a part of Lad's everyday happiness as the sunshine
+itself. She seemed to him quite as perfect, and as gloriously
+indispensable. He could no more have imagined a Ladyless life than a
+sunless life. It had never occurred to him to suspect that Lady could
+be any less devoted than he--until Knave came to The Place.
+
+Lad was an eighty-pound collie, thoroughbred in spirit as well as in
+blood. He had the benign dignity that was a heritage from endless
+generations of high-strain ancestors. He had, too, the gay courage of
+a d'Artagnan, and an uncanny wisdom. Also--who could doubt it, after
+a look into his mournful brown eyes--he had a Soul.
+
+His shaggy coat, set off by the snowy ruff and chest, was like
+orange-flecked mahogany. His absurdly tiny forepaws--in which he took
+inordinate pride--were silver white.
+
+Three years earlier, when Lad was in his first prime (before the
+mighty chest and shoulders had filled out and the tawny coat had waxed
+so shaggy), Lady had been brought to The Place. She had been brought
+in the Master's overcoat pocket, rolled up into a fuzzy gold-gray ball
+of softness no bigger than a half-grown kitten.
+
+The Master had fished the month-old puppy out of the cavern of his
+pocket and set her down, asprawl and shivering and squealing, on the
+veranda floor. Lad had walked cautiously across the veranda, sniffed
+inquiry at the blinking pigmy who gallantly essayed to growl defiance
+up at the huge welcomer--and from that first moment he had taken her
+under his protection.
+
+First it had been the natural impulse of the thoroughbred--brute or
+human--to guard the helpless. Then, as the shapeless yellow baby grew
+into a slenderly graceful collie, his guardianship changed to stark
+adoration. He was Lady's life slave.
+
+And she bullied him unmercifully--bossed the gentle giant in a
+shameful manner, crowding him from the warmest spot by the fire,
+brazenly yet daintily snatching from between his jaws the choicest
+bone of their joint dinner, hectoring her dignified victim into
+lawn-romps in hot weather when he would far rather have drowsed under
+the lakeside trees.
+
+Her vagaries, her teasing, her occasional little flurries of temper,
+were borne by Lad not meekly, but joyously. All she did was, in his
+eyes, perfect. And Lady graciously allowed herself to be idolized,
+for she was marvelously human in some ways. Lad, a thoroughbred
+descended from a hundred generations of thoroughbreds, was less human
+and more disinterested.
+
+Life at The Place was wondrous pleasant for both the dogs. There were
+thick woods to roam in, side by side; there were squirrels to chase
+and rabbits to trail. (Yes, and if the squirrels had played fair and
+had not resorted to unsportsmanly tactics by climbing trees when close
+pressed, there would doubtless have been squirrels to catch as well as
+to chase. As for the rabbits, they were easier to overtake. And Lady
+got the lion's share of all such morsels.)
+
+There was the ice-cool lake to plunge into for a swim or a wallow,
+after a run in the dust and July heat. There was a deliciously
+comfortable old rug in front of the living-room's open fire whereon to
+lie, shoulder to shoulder, on the nights when the wind screamed
+through bare trees and the snow scratched hungrily at the panes.
+
+Best of all, to them both, there were the Master and the Mistress;
+especially the Mistress.
+
+Any man with money to make the purchase may become a dog's _owner_.
+But no man--spend he ever so much coin and food and tact in the
+effort--may become a dog's _Master_ without the consent of the
+dog. Do you get the difference? And he whom a dog once unreservedly
+accepts as Master is forever that dog's God.
+
+To both Lad and Lady, from the first, the man who bought them was
+not the mere owner but the absolute Master. To them he was the
+unquestioned lord of life and death, the hearer and answerer, the
+Eternal Law; his the voice that must be obeyed, whatever the command.
+
+From earliest puppyhood, both Lad and Lady had been brought up within
+the Law. As far back as they could remember, they had known and obeyed
+The Place's simple code.
+
+For example: All animals of the woods might lawfully be chased; but
+the Mistress' prize chickens and the other little folk of The Place
+must be ignored no matter how hungry or how playful a collie might
+chance to be. A human, walking openly or riding down the drive into
+The Place by daylight, must not be barked at except by way of friendly
+announcement. But anyone entering the grounds from other ingress than
+the drive, or anyone walking furtively or with a tramp slouch, must be
+attacked at sight.
+
+Also, the interior of the house was sacrosanct. It was a place for
+perfect behavior. No rug must be scratched, nothing gnawed or played
+with. In fact, Lady's one whipping had followed a puppy-frolic effort
+of hers to "worry" the huge stuffed bald eagle that stood on a
+papier-mache stump in the Master's study, just off the big living-room
+where the fireplace was.
+
+That eagle, shot by himself as it raided the flock of prize chickens,
+was the delight of the Master's heart. And at Lady's attempt on it, he
+had taught her a lesson that made her cringe for weeks thereafter at
+bare sight of the dog-whip. To this day, she would never walk past the
+eagle without making the widest possible detour around it.
+
+But that punishment had been suffered while she was still in the
+idiotic days of puppyhood. After she was grown, Lady would no more
+have thought of tampering with the eagle or with anything else in the
+house than it would occur to a human to stand on his head in church.
+
+Then, early one spring, came Knave--a showy, magnificent collie;
+red-gold of coat save for a black "saddle," and with alert topaz eyes.
+
+Knave did not belong to the Master, but to a man who, going to Europe
+for a month, asked him to care for the dog in his absence. The Master,
+glad to have so beautiful an ornament to The Place, had willingly
+consented. He was rewarded when, on the train from town, an admiring
+crowd of commuters flocked to the baggage-car to stare at the
+splendid-looking collie.
+
+The only dissenting note in the praise-chorus was the grouchy old
+baggage-man's.
+
+"Maybe he's a thoroughbred, like you say," drawled the old fellow to
+the Master, "but I never yet saw a yellow-eyed, prick-eared dog I'd
+give hell-room to."
+
+Knave showed his scorn for such silly criticism by a cavernous yawn.
+
+"Thoroughbred?" grunted the baggage-man. "With them streaks of
+pinkish-yeller on the roof of his mouth? Ever see a thoroughbred that
+didn't have a black mouth-roof?"
+
+But the old man's slighting words were ignored with disdain by the
+crowd of volunteer dog-experts in the baggage-car. In time the Master
+alighted at his station, with Knave straining joyously at the
+leash. As the Master reached The Place and turned into the drive, both
+Lad and Lady, at sound of his far-off footsteps, came tearing around
+the side of the house to greet him.
+
+On simultaneous sight and scent of the strange dog frisking along at
+his side, the two collies paused in their madly joyous onrush. Up went
+their ruffs. Down went their heads.
+
+Lady flashed forward to do battle with the stranger who was monopolizing
+so much of the Master's attention. Knave, not at all averse to battle
+(especially with a smaller dog), braced himself and then moved
+forward, stiff-legged, fangs bare.
+
+But of a sudden his head went up; his stiff-poised brush broke into
+swift wagging; his lips curled down. He had recognized that his
+prospective foe was not of his own sex. (And nowhere, except among
+humans, does a full-grown male ill-treat or even defend himself
+against the female of his species.)
+
+Lady, noting the stranger's sudden friendliness, paused irresolute in
+her charge. And at that instant Lad darted past her. Full at Knave's
+throat he launched himself.
+
+The Master rasped out:
+
+"Down, Lad! _Down!_"
+
+Almost in midair the collie arrested his onset--coming to earth
+bristling, furious and yet with no thought but to obey. Knave, seeing
+his foe was not going to fight, turned once more toward Lady.
+
+"Lad," ordered the Master, pointing toward Knave and speaking with
+quiet intentness, "let him alone. Understand? Let him _alone_."
+
+And Lad understood--even as years of training and centuries of
+ancestry had taught him to understand every spoken wish of the
+Master's. He must give up his impulse to make war on this intruder
+whom at sight he hated. It was the Law; and from the Law there was no
+appeal.
+
+With yearningly helpless rage he looked on while the newcomer was
+installed on The Place. With a wondering sorrow he found himself
+forced to share the Master's and Mistress' caresses with this
+interloper. With growing pain he submitted to Knave's gay attentions
+to Lady, and to Lady's evident relish of the guest's companionship.
+Gone were the peaceful old days of utter contentment.
+
+Lady had always regarded Lad as her own special property--to tease and
+to boss and to despoil of choice food-bits. But her attitude toward
+Knave was far different. She coquetted, human-fashion, with the
+gold-and-black dog--at one moment affecting to scorn him, at another
+meeting his advances with a delighted friendliness.
+
+She never presumed to boss him as she had always bossed Lad. He
+fascinated her. Without seeming to follow him about, she was forever
+at his heels. Lad, cut to the heart at her sudden indifference toward
+his loyal self, tried in every way his simple soul could devise to win
+back her interest. He essayed clumsily to romp with her as the
+lithely graceful Knave romped, to drive rabbits for her on their
+woodland rambles, to thrust himself, in a dozen gentle ways, upon her
+attention.
+
+But it was no use. Lady scarcely noticed him. When his overtures of
+friendship chanced to annoy her, she rewarded them with a snap or with
+an impatient growl. And ever she turned to the all-conquering Knave in
+a keenness of attraction that was all but hypnotic.
+
+As his divinity's total loss of interest in himself grew too apparent
+to be doubted, Lad's big heart broke. Being only a dog and a
+Grail-knight in thought, he did not realize that Knave's newness and
+his difference from anything she had known, formed a large part of
+Lady's desire for the visitor's favor; nor did he understand that such
+interest must wane when the novelty should wear off.
+
+All Lad knew was that he loved her, and that for the sake of a flashy
+stranger she was snubbing him.
+
+As the Law forbade him to avenge himself in true dog-fashion by
+fighting for his Lady's love, Lad sadly withdrew from the unequal
+contest, too proud to compete for a fickle sweetheart. No longer did
+he try to join in the others' lawn-romps, but lay at a distance, his
+splendid head between his snowy little forepaws, his brown eyes sick
+with sorrow, watching their gambols.
+
+Nor did he thrust his undesired presence on them during their woodland
+rambles. He took to moping, solitary, infinitely miserable. Perhaps
+there is on earth something unhappier than a bitterly aggrieved
+dog. But no one has ever discovered that elusive something.
+
+Knave from the first had shown and felt for Lad a scornful indifference.
+Not understanding the Law, he had set down the older collie's
+refusal to fight as a sign of exemplary, if timorous prudence, and he
+looked down upon him accordingly. One day Knave came home from the
+morning run through the forest without Lady. Neither the Master's
+calls nor the ear-ripping blasts of his dog-whistle could bring her
+back to The Place. Whereat Lad arose heavily from his favorite
+resting-place under the living-room piano and cantered off to the
+woods. Nor did he return.
+
+Several hours later the Master went to the woods to investigate,
+followed by the rollicking Knave. At the forest edge the Master
+shouted. A far-off bark from Lad answered. And the Master made his way
+through shoulder-deep underbrush in the direction of the sound.
+
+In a clearing he found Lady, her left forepaw caught in the steel jaws
+of a fox-trap. Lad was standing protectingly above her, stooping now
+and then to lick her cruelly pinched foot or to whine consolation to
+her; then snarling in fierce hate at a score of crows that flapped
+hopefully in the tree-tops above the victim.
+
+The Master set Lady free, and Knave frisked forward right joyously to
+greet his released inamorata. But Lady was in no condition to
+play--then nor for many a day thereafter. Her forefoot was so
+lacerated and swollen that she was fain to hobble awkwardly on three
+legs for the next fortnight.
+
+It was on one pantingly hot August morning, a little later, that Lady
+limped into the house in search of a cool spot where she might lie and
+lick her throbbing forefoot. Lad was lying, as usual, under the piano
+in the living-room. His tail thumped shy welcome on the hardwood floor
+as she passed, but she would not stay or so much as notice him.
+
+On she limped, into the Master's study, where an open window sent a
+faint breeze through the house. Giving the stuffed eagle a wide berth,
+Lady hobbled to the window and made as though to lie down just beneath
+it. As she did so, two things happened: she leaned too much weight on
+the sore foot, and the pressure wrung from her an involuntary yelp of
+pain; at the same moment a crosscurrent of air from the other side of
+the house swept through the living-room and blew shut the door of the
+adjoining study. Lady was a prisoner.
+
+Ordinarily this would have caused her no ill-ease, for the open window
+was only thirty inches above the floor, and the drop to the veranda
+outside was a bare three feet. It would have been the simplest matter
+in the world for her to jump out, had she wearied of her chance
+captivity.
+
+But to undertake the jump with the prospect of landing her full weight
+and impetus on a forepaw that was horribly sensitive to the lightest
+touch--this was an exploit beyond the sufferer's will-power. So Lady
+resigned herself to imprisonment. She curled herself up on the floor
+as far as possible from the eagle, moaned softly and lay still.
+
+At sound of her first yelp, Lad had run forward, whining eager
+sympathy. But the closed door blocked his way. He crouched, wretched
+and anxious, before it, helpless to go to his loved one's assistance.
+
+Knave, too, loping back from a solitary prowl of the woods, seeking
+Lady, heard the yelp. His prick-ears located the sound at once. Along
+the veranda he trotted, to the open study window. With a bound he had
+cleared the sill and alighted inside the room.
+
+It chanced to be his first visit to the study. The door was usually
+kept shut, that drafts might not blow the Master's desk-papers
+about. And Knave felt, at best, little interest in exploring the
+interior of houses. He was an outdoor dog, by choice.
+
+He advanced now toward Lady, his tail a-wag, his head on one side,
+with his most irresistible air. Then, as he came forward into the
+room, he saw the eagle. He halted in wonder at sight of the enormous
+white-crested bird with its six-foot sweep of pinion. It was a wholly
+novel spectacle to Knave; and he greeted it with a gruff bark, half of
+fear, half of bravado. Quickly, however, his sense of smell told him
+this wide-winged apparition was no living thing. And ashamed of his
+momentary cowardice, he went over to investigate it.
+
+As he went, Knave cast over his shoulder a look of invitation to Lady
+to join him in his inspection. She understood the invitation, but
+memory of that puppyhood beating made her recoil from accepting
+it. Knave saw her shrink back, and he realized with a thrill that she
+was actually afraid of this lifeless thing which could harm no
+one. With due pride in showing off his own heroism before her, and
+with the scamp-dog's innate craving to destroy, he sprang growling
+upon the eagle.
+
+Down tumbled the papier-mache stump. Down crashed the huge stuffed
+bird with it; Knave's white teeth buried deep in the soft feathers of
+its breast.
+
+Lady, horror-struck at this sacrilege, whimpered in terror. But her
+plaint served only to increase Knave's zest for destruction.
+
+He hurled the bird to the floor, pinned it down with his feet and at
+one jerk tore the right wing from the body. Coughing out the mouthful
+of dusty pinions, he dug his teeth into the eagle's throat. Again
+bracing himself with his forelegs on the carcass, he gave a sharp
+tug. Head and neck came away in his mouth. And then before he could
+drop the mouthful and return to the work of demolition, he heard the
+Master's step.
+
+All at once, now, Knave proved he was less ignorant of the Law--or, at
+least, of its penalties--than might have been supposed from his act of
+vandalism. In sudden panic he bolted for the window, the silvery head
+of the eagle still, unheeded, between his jaws. With a vaulting
+spring, he shot out through the open casement, in his reckless
+eagerness to escape, knocking against Lady's injured leg as he passed.
+
+He did not pause at Lady's scream of pain, nor did he stop until he
+reached the chicken-house. Crawling under this, he deposited the
+incriminating eagle-head in the dark recess. Finding no pursuer, he
+emerged and jogged innocently back toward the veranda.
+
+The Master, entering the house and walking across the living-room
+toward the stairs, heard Lady's cry. He looked around for her,
+recognizing from the sound that she must be in distress. His eye fell
+on Lad, crouching tense and eager in front of the shut study door.
+
+The Master opened the door and went into the study.
+
+At the first step inside the room he stopped, aghast. There lay the
+chewed and battered fragments of his beloved eagle. And there, in one
+corner, frightened, with guilt writ plain all over her, cowered
+Lady. Men have been "legally" done to death on far lighter evidence
+than encompassed her.
+
+The Master was thunderstruck. For more than two years Lady had had the
+free run of the house. And this was her first sin--at that, a sin
+unworthy any well-bred dog that has graduated from puppyhood and from
+milk-teeth. He would not have believed it. He _could_ not have
+believed it. Yet here was the hideous evidence, scattered all over the
+floor.
+
+The door was shut, but the window stood wide. Through the window,
+doubtless, she had gotten into the room. And he had surprised her at
+her vandal-work before she could escape by the same opening.
+
+The Master was a just man--as humans go; but this was a crime the most
+maudlin dog-spoiler could not have condoned. The eagle, moreover, had
+been the pride of his heart--as perhaps I have said. Without a word,
+he walked to the wall and took down a braided dog-whip, dust-covered
+from long disuse.
+
+Lady knew what was coming. Being a thoroughbred, she did not try to
+run, nor did she roll for mercy. She cowered, moveless, nose to floor,
+awaiting her doom.
+
+Back swished the lash. Down it came, whistling as a man whistles whose
+teeth are broken. Across Lady's slender flanks it smote, with the full
+force of a strong driving-arm. Lady quivered all over. But she made
+no sound. She who would whimper at a chance touch to her sore foot,
+was mute under human punishment.
+
+But Lad was not mute. As the Master's arm swung back for a second
+blow, he heard, just behind, a low, throaty growl that held all the
+menace of ten thousand wordy threats.
+
+He wheeled about. Lad was close at his heels, fangs bared, eyes red,
+head lowered, tawny body taut in every sinew.
+
+The Master blinked at him, incredulous. Here was something infinitely
+more unbelievable than Lady's supposed destruction of the eagle. The
+Impossible had come to pass.
+
+For, know well, a dog does not growl at its Master. At its owner,
+perhaps; at its Master, never. As soon would a devout priest blaspheme
+his deity.
+
+Nor does a dog approach anything or anybody, growling and with lowered
+head, unless intent on battle. Have no fear when a dog barks or even
+growls at you, so long as his head is erect. But when he growls and
+lowers his head--then look out. It means but one thing.
+
+The Master had been the Master--the sublime, blindly revered and
+worshiped Master--for all the blameless years of Lad's life. And now,
+growling, head down, the dog was threatening him.
+
+It was the supreme misery, the crowning hell, of Lad's career. For the
+first time, two overpowering loves fought with each other in his
+Galahad soul. And the love for poor, unjustly blamed, Lady hurled down
+the superlove for the Master.
+
+In baring teeth upon his lord, the collie well knew what he was
+incurring. But he did not flinch. Understanding that swift death
+might well be his portion, he stood his ground.
+
+(Is there greater love? Humans--sighing swains, vow-laden suitors--can
+any of _you_ match it? I think not. Not even the much-lauded
+Antonys. They throw away only the mere world of earthly credit, for
+love.)
+
+The Master's jaw set. He was well-nigh as unhappy as the dog. For he
+grasped the situation, and he was man enough to honor Lad's proffered
+sacrifice. Yet it must be punished, and punished instantly--as any
+dog-master will testify. Let a dog once growl or show his teeth in
+menace at his Master, and if the rebellion be not put down in drastic
+fashion, the Master ceases forever to be Master and degenerates to
+mere owner. His mysterious power over his dog is gone for all time.
+
+Turning his back on Lady, the Master whirled his dog-whip in air. Lad
+saw the lash coming down. He did not flinch. He did not cower. The
+growl ceased. The orange-tawny collie stood erect. Down came the
+braided whiplash on Lad's shoulders--again over his loins, and yet
+again and again.
+
+Without moving--head up, dark tender eyes unwinking--the hero-dog took
+the scourging. When it was over, he waited only to see the Master
+throw the dog-whip fiercely into a corner of the study. Then, knowing
+Lady was safe, Lad walked majestically back to his "cave" under the
+piano, and with a long, quivering sigh he lay down.
+
+His spirit was sick and crushed within him. For the first time in his
+thoroughbred life he had been struck. For he was one of those not
+wholly rare dogs to whom a sharp word of reproof is more effective
+than a beating--to whom a blow is not a pain, but a damning and
+overwhelming ignominy. Had a human, other than the Master, presumed
+to strike him, the assailant must have fought for life.
+
+Through the numbness of Lad's grief, bit by bit, began to smolder and
+glow a deathless hate for Knave, the cause of Lady's humiliation. Lad
+had known what passed behind that closed study door as well as though
+he had seen. For ears and scent serve a true collie quite as usefully
+as do mere eyes.
+
+The Master was little happier than was his favorite dog. For he loved
+Lad as he would have loved a human son. Though Lad did not realize it,
+the Master had "let off" Lady from the rest of her beating, in order
+not to increase her champion's grief. He simply ordered her out of the
+study.
+
+And as she limped away, the Master tried to rekindle his own
+indignation and deaden his sense of remorse by gathering together the
+strewn fragments of the eagle. It occurred to him that though the bird
+was destroyed, he might yet have its fierce-eyed silvery head mounted
+on a board, as a minor trophy.
+
+But he could not find the head.
+
+Search the study as he would, he could not find it. He remembered
+distinctly that Lady had been panting as she slunk out of the
+room. And dogs that are carrying things in their mouths cannot pant.
+She had not taken the head away with her. The absence of the head only
+deepened the whole annoying domestic mystery. He gave up trying to
+solve any of the puzzle--from Lady's incredible vandalism to this
+newest turn of the affair.
+
+Not until two days later could Lad bring himself to risk a meeting
+with Lady, the cause and the witness of his beating. Then, yearning
+for a sight of her and for even her grudged recognition of his
+presence, after his forty-eight hours of isolation, he sallied forth
+from the house in search of her.
+
+He traced her to the cool shade of a lilac clump near the outbuildings.
+There, having with one paw dug a little pit in the cool earth,
+she was curled up asleep under the bushes. Stretched out beside
+her was Knave.
+
+Lad's spine bristled at sight of his foe. But ignoring him, he moved
+over to Lady and touched her nose with his own in timid caress. She
+opened one eye, blinked drowsily and went to sleep again.
+
+But Lad's coming had awakened Knave. Much refreshed by his nap, he
+woke in playful mood. He tried to induce Lady to romp with him, but
+she preferred to doze. So, casting about in his shallow mind for
+something to play with, Knave chanced to remember the prize he had
+hidden beneath the chicken-house.
+
+Away he ambled, returning presently with the eagle's head between his
+teeth. As he ran, he tossed it aloft, catching it as it fell--a pretty
+trick he had long since learned with a tennis-ball.
+
+Lad, who had lain down as near to sleepily scornful Lady as he dared,
+looked up and saw him approach. He saw, too, with what Knave was
+playing; and as he saw, he went quite mad. Here was the thing that had
+caused Lady's interrupted punishment and his own black disgrace. Knave
+was exploiting it with manifest and brazen delight.
+
+For the second time in his life--and for the second time in three
+days--Lad broke the law. He forgot, in a trice, the command "Let him
+alone!" And noiseless, terrible, he flew at the gamboling Knave.
+
+Knave was aware of the attack, barely in time to drop the eagle's head
+and spring forward to meet his antagonist. He was three years Lad's
+junior and was perhaps five pounds heavier. Moreover, constant
+exercise had kept him in steel-and-whale-bone condition; while lonely
+brooding at home had begun of late to soften Lad's tough sinews.
+
+Knave was mildly surprised that the dog he had looked on as a dullard
+and a poltroon should have developed a flash of spirit. But he was not
+at all unwilling to wage a combat whose victory must make him shine
+with redoubled glory in Lady's eyes.
+
+Like two furry whirlwinds the collies spun forward toward each
+other. They met, upreared and snarled, slashing wolf-like for the
+throat, clawing madly to retain balance. Then down they went, rolling
+in a right unloving embrace, snapping, tearing, growling.
+
+Lad drove straight for the throat. A half-handful of Knave's golden
+ruff came away in his jaws. For except at the exact center, a
+collie's throat is protected by a tangle of hair as effective against
+assault as were Andrew Jackson's cotton-bale breastworks at New
+Orleans. And Lad had missed the exact center.
+
+Over and over they rolled. They regained their footing and reared
+again. Lad's saber-shaped tusk ripped a furrow in Knave's satiny
+forehead; and Knave's half deflected slash in return set bleeding the
+big vein at the top of Lad's left ear.
+
+Lady was wide awake long before this. Standing immovable, yet wildly
+excited--after the age-old fashion of the female brute for whom males
+battle and who knows she is to be the winner's prize--she watched
+every turn of the fight.
+
+Up once more, the dogs clashed, chest to chest. Knave, with an
+instinctive throwback to his wolf forebears of five hundred years
+earlier, dived for Lad's forelegs with the hope of breaking one of
+them between his foaming jaws.
+
+He missed the hold by a fraction of an inch. The skin alone was
+torn. And down over the little white forepaw--one of the forepaws that
+Lad was wont to lick for an hour a day to keep them snowy--ran a
+trickle of blood.
+
+That miss was a costly error for Knave. For Lad's teeth sought and
+found his left shoulder, and sank deep therein. Knave twisted and
+wheeled with lightning speed and with all his strength. Yet had not
+his gold-hued ruff choked Lad and pressed stranglingly against his
+nostrils, all the heavier dog's struggles would not have set him free.
+
+As it was, Lad, gasping for breath enough to fill his lungs, relaxed
+his grip ever so slightly. And in that fraction of a second Knave tore
+free, leaving a mouthful of hair and skin in his enemy's jaws.
+
+In the same wrench that liberated him--and as the relieved tension
+sent Lad stumbling forward--Knave instinctively saw his chance and
+took it. Again heredity came to his aid, for he tried a manoeuver
+known only to wolves and to collies. Flashing above his stumbling
+foe's head, Knave seized Lad from behind, just below the base of the
+skull. And holding him thus helpless, he proceeded to grit and grind
+his tight-clenched teeth in the slow, relentless motion that must soon
+or late eat down to and sever the spinal cord.
+
+Lad, even as he thrashed frantically about, felt there was no
+escape. He was well-nigh as powerless against a strong opponent in
+this position as is a puppy that is held up by the scruff of the neck.
+
+Without a sound, but still struggling as best he might, he awaited his
+fate. No longer was he growling or snarling.
+
+His patient, bloodshot eyes sought wistfully for Lady. And they did
+not find her.
+
+For even as they sought her, a novel element entered into the
+battle. Lady, hitherto awaiting with true feminine meekness the
+outcome of the scrimmage, saw her old flame's terrible plight, under
+the grinding jaws. And, proving herself false to all canons of
+ancestry--moved by some impulse she did not try to resist--she jumped
+forward. Forgetting the pain in her swollen foot, she nipped Knave
+sharply in the hind leg. Then, as if abashed by her unfeminine
+behavior, she drew back, in shame.
+
+But the work was done.
+
+Through the red war lust Knave dimly realized that he was attacked
+from behind--perhaps that his new opponent stood an excellent chance
+of gaining upon him such a death-hold as he himself now held.
+
+He loosed his grip and whizzed about, frothing and snapping, to face
+the danger. Before Knave had half completed his lightning whirl, Lad
+had him by the side of the throat.
+
+It was no death-grip, this. Yet it was not only acutely painful, but
+it held its victim quite as powerless as he had just now held
+Lad. Bearing down with all his weight and setting his white little
+front teeth and his yellowing tusks firmly in their hold, Lad
+gradually shoved Knave's head sideways to the ground and held it
+there.
+
+The result on Knave's activities was much the same as is obtained by
+sitting on the head of a kicking horse that has fallen. Unable to
+wrench loose, helpless to counter, in keen agony from the pinching of
+the tender throat-skin beneath the masses of ruff, Knave lost his
+nerve. And he forthwith justified those yellowish streaks in his
+mouth-roof whereof the baggage-man had spoken.
+
+He made the air vibrate with his abject howls of pain and fear. He was
+caught. He could not get away. Lad was hurting him horribly. Wherefore
+he ki-yi-ed as might any gutter cur whose tail is stepped upon.
+
+Presently, beyond the fight haze, Lad saw a shadow in front of him--a
+shadow that resolved itself in the settling dust, as the Master. And
+Lad came to himself.
+
+He loosed his hold on Knave's throat, and stood up, groggily. Knave,
+still yelping, tucked his tail between his legs and fled for his
+life--out of The Place, out of your story.
+
+Slowly, stumblingly, but without a waver of hesitation, Lad went up to
+the Master. He was gasping for breath, and he was weak from fearful
+exertion and from loss of blood. Up to the Master he went--straight up
+to him.
+
+And not until he was a scant two yards away did he see that the Master
+held something in his hand--that abominable, mischief-making eagle's
+head, which he had just picked up! Probably the dog-whip was in the
+other hand. It did not matter much. Lad was ready for this final
+degradation. He would not try to dodge it, he the double breaker of
+laws.
+
+Then--the Master was kneeling beside him. The kind hand was caressing
+the dog's dizzy head, the dear voice--a queer break in it--was saying
+remorsefully:
+
+"Oh Lad! Laddie! I'm so sorry. So sorry! You're--you're more of a man
+than I am, old friend. I'll make it up to you, somehow!"
+
+And now besides the loved hand, there was another touch, even more
+precious--a warmly caressing little pink tongue that licked his
+bleeding foreleg.
+
+Lady--timidly, adoringly--was trying to stanch her hero's wounds.
+
+"Lady, I apologize to you too," went on the foolish Master. "I'm
+sorry, girl."
+
+Lady was too busy soothing the hurts of her newly discovered mate to
+understand. But Lad understood. Lad always understood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+"QUIET"
+
+
+To Lad the real world was bounded by The Place. Outside, there were a
+certain number of miles of land and there were an uncertain number of
+people. But the miles were uninspiring, except for a cross-country
+tramp with the Master. And the people were foolish and strange folk
+who either stared at him--which always annoyed Lad--or else tried to
+pat him; which he hated. But The Place was--The Place.
+
+Always, he had lived on The Place. He felt he owned it. It was
+assuredly his to enjoy, to guard, to patrol from high road to lake. It
+was his world.
+
+The denizens of every world must have at least one deity to worship.
+Lad had one: the Master. Indeed, he had two: the Master and the
+Mistress. And because the dog was strong of soul and chivalric,
+withal, and because the Mistress was altogether lovable, Lad placed
+her altar even above the Master's. Which was wholly as it should have
+been.
+
+There were other people at The Place--people to whom a dog must be
+courteous, as becomes a thoroughbred, and whose caresses he must
+accept. Very often, there were guests, too. And from puppyhood, Lad
+had been taught the sacredness of the Guest Law. Civilly, he would
+endure the pettings of these visiting outlanders. Gravely, he would
+shake hands with them, on request. He would even permit them to paw
+him or haul him about, if they were of the obnoxious, dog-mauling
+breed. But the moment politeness would permit, he always withdrew,
+very quietly, from their reach and, if possible, from their sight as
+well.
+
+Of all the dogs on The Place, big Lad alone had free run of the house,
+by day and by night.
+
+He slept in a "cave" under the piano. He even had access to the sacred
+dining-room, at mealtimes--where always he lay to the left of the
+Master's chair.
+
+With the Master, he would willingly unbend for a romp at any or all
+times. At the Mistress' behest he would play with all the silly
+abandon of a puppy; rolling on the ground at her feet, making as
+though to seize and crush one of her little shoes in his mighty jaws;
+wriggling and waving his legs in air when she buried her hand in the
+masses of his chest-ruff; and otherwise comporting himself with
+complete loss of dignity.
+
+But to all except these two, he was calmly unapproachable. From his
+earliest days he had never forgotten he was an aristocrat among
+inferiors. And, calmly aloof, he moved among his subjects.
+
+Then, all at once, into the sweet routine of the House of Peace, came
+Horror.
+
+It began on a blustery, sour October day. The Mistress had crossed the
+lake to the village, in her canoe, with Lad curled up in a furry heap
+in the prow. On the return trip, about fifty yards from shore, the
+canoe struck sharply and obliquely against a half-submerged log that a
+Fall freshet had swept down from the river above the lake. At the
+same moment a flaw of wind caught the canoe's quarter. And, after the
+manner of such eccentric craft, the canvas shell proceeded to turn
+turtle.
+
+Into the ice-chill waters splashed its two occupants. Lad bobbed to
+the top, and glanced around at the Mistress to learn if this were a
+new practical joke. But, instantly, he saw it was no joke at all, so
+far as she was concerned.
+
+Swathed and cramped by the folds of her heavy outing skirt, the
+Mistress was making no progress shoreward. And the dog flung himself
+through the water toward her with a rush that left his shoulders and
+half his back above the surface. In a second he had reached her and
+had caught her sweater-shoulder in his teeth.
+
+She had the presence of mind to lie out straight, as though she were
+floating, and to fill her lungs with a swift intake of breath. The
+dog's burden was thus made infinitely lighter than if she had
+struggled or had lain in a posture less easy for towing. Yet he made
+scant headway, until she wound one hand in his mane, and, still lying
+motionless and stiff, bade him loose his hold on her shoulder.
+
+In this way, by sustained effort that wrenched every giant muscle in
+the collie's body, they came at last to land.
+
+Vastly rejoiced was Lad, and inordinately proud of himself. And
+the plaudits of the Master and the Mistress were music to him.
+Indefinably, he understood he had done a very wonderful thing and
+that everybody on The Place was talking about him, and that all were
+trying to pet him at once.
+
+This promiscuous handling he began to find unwelcome. And he retired
+at last to his "cave" under the piano to escape from it. Matters soon
+quieted down; and the incident seemed at an end.
+
+Instead, it had just begun.
+
+For, within an hour, the Mistress--who, for days had been half-sick
+with a cold--was stricken with a chill, and by night she was in the
+first stages of pneumonia.
+
+Then over The Place descended Gloom. A gloom Lad could not understand
+until he went upstairs at dinner-time to escort the Mistress, as
+usual, to the dining-room. But to his light scratch at her door there
+was no reply. He scratched again and presently Master came out of the
+room and ordered him down-stairs again.
+
+Then from the Master's voice and look, Lad understood that something
+was terribly amiss. Also, as she did not appear at dinner and as he
+was for the first time in his life forbidden to go into her room, he
+knew the Mistress was the victim of whatever mishap had befallen.
+
+A strange man, with a black bag, came to the house early in the
+evening; and he and the Master were closeted for an interminable time
+in the Mistress' room. Lad had crept dejectedly upstairs behind them;
+and sought to crowd into the room at their heels. The Master ordered
+him back and shut the door in his face.
+
+Lad lay down on the threshold, his nose to the crack at the bottom of
+the door, and waited. He heard the murmur of speech.
+
+Once he caught the Mistress' voice--changed and muffled and with a
+puzzling new note in it--but undeniably the Mistress'. And his tail
+thumped hopefully on the hall floor. But no one came to let him
+in. And, after the mandate to keep out, he dared not scratch for
+admittance.
+
+The doctor almost stumbled across the couchant body of the dog as he
+left the room with the Master. Being a dog-owner himself, the doctor
+understood and his narrow escape from a fall over the living obstacle
+did not irritate him. But it reminded him of something.
+
+"Those other dogs of yours outside there," he said to the Master, as
+they went down the stairs, "raised a fearful racket when my car came
+down the drive, just now. Better send them all away somewhere till she
+is better. The house must be kept perfectly quiet."
+
+The Master looked back, up the stairway; at its top, pressed close
+against the Mistress' door, crouched Lad. Something in the dog's
+heartbroken attitude touched him.
+
+"I'll send them over to the boarding-kennels in the morning," he
+answered. "All except Lad. He and I are going to see this through,
+together. He'll be quiet, if I tell him to."
+
+All through the endless night, while the October wind howled and
+yelled around the house, Lad lay outside the sick-room door, his nose
+between his absurdly small white paws, his sorrowful eyes wide open,
+his ears alert for the faintest sound from the room beyond.
+
+Sometimes, when the wind screamed its loudest, Lad would lift his
+head--his ruff a-bristle, his teeth glinting from under his upcurled
+lip. And he would growl a throaty menace. It was as though he heard,
+in the tempest's racket, the strife of evil gale-spirits to burst in
+through the rattling windows and attack the stricken Mistress.
+Perhaps--well, perhaps there are things visible and audible to
+dogs; to which humans were deaf and blind. Or perhaps they are not.
+
+Lad was there when day broke and when the Master, heavy-eyed from
+sleeplessness, came out. He was there when the other dogs were herded
+into the car and carried away to the boarding-kennels.
+
+Lad was there when the car came back from the station, bringing to The
+Place an angular, wooden-faced woman with yellow hair and a yellower
+suitcase--a horrible woman who vaguely smelt of disinfectants and of
+rigid Efficiency, and who presently approached the sick-room, clad and
+capped in stiff white. Lad hated her.
+
+He was there when the doctor came for his morning visit to the
+invalid. And again he tried to edge his own way into the room, only to
+be rebuffed once more.
+
+"This is the third time I've nearly broken my neck over that miserable
+dog," chidingly announced the nurse, later in the day, as she came out
+of the room and chanced to meet the Master on the landing. "Do please
+drive him away. _I've_ tried to do it, but he only snarls at me. And
+in a dangerous case like this----"
+
+"Leave him alone," briefly ordered the Master.
+
+But when the nurse, sniffing, passed on, he called Lad over to
+him. Reluctantly, the dog quitted the door and obeyed the summons.
+
+"Quiet!" ordered the Master, speaking very slowly and distinctly. "You
+must keep quiet. _Quiet!_ Understand?"
+
+Lad understood. Lad always understood. He must not bark. He must move
+silently. He must make no unnecessary sound. But, at least, the Master
+had not forbidden him to snarl softly and loathingly at that
+detestable white-clad woman every time she stepped over him.
+
+So there was one grain of comfort.
+
+Gently, the Master called him downstairs and across the living-room,
+and put him out of the house. For, after all, a shaggy eighty-pound
+dog is an inconvenience stretched across a sick-room doorsill.
+
+Three minutes later, Lad had made his way through an open window into
+the cellar and thence upstairs; and was stretched out, head between
+paws, at the threshold of the Mistress' room.
+
+On his thrice-a-day visits, the doctor was forced to step over him,
+and was man enough to forbear to curse. Twenty times a day, the nurse
+stumbled over his massive, inert body, and fumed in impotent rage. The
+Master, too, came back and forth from the sick-room, with now and then
+a kindly word for the suffering collie, and again and again put him
+out of the house.
+
+But always Lad managed, by hook or crook, to be back on guard within a
+minute or two. And never once did the door of the Mistress' room open
+that he did not make a strenuous attempt to enter.
+
+Servants, nurse, doctor, and Master repeatedly forgot he was there,
+and stubbed their toes across his body. Sometimes their feet drove
+agonizingly into his tender flesh. But never a whimper or growl did
+the pain wring from him. "_Quiet!_" had been the command, and he was
+obeying.
+
+And so it went on, through the awful days and the infinitely worse
+nights. Except when he was ordered away by the Master, Lad would not
+stir from his place at the door. And not even the Master's authority
+could keep him away from it for five minutes a day.
+
+The dog ate nothing, drank practically nothing, took no exercise;
+moved not one inch, of his own will, from the doorway. In vain did the
+glories of Autumn woods call to him. The rabbits would be thick, out
+yonder in the forest, just now. So would the squirrels--against which
+Lad had long since sworn a blood-feud (and one of which it had ever
+been his futile life ambition to catch).
+
+For him, these things no longer existed. Nothing existed; except his
+mortal hatred of the unseen Something in that forbidden room--the
+Something that was seeking to take the Mistress away with It. He
+yearned unspeakably to be in that room to guard her from her nameless
+Peril. And they would not let him in--these humans.
+
+Wherefore he lay there, crushing his body close against the door
+and--waiting.
+
+And, inside the room, Death and the Napoleonic man with the black bag
+fought their "no-quarter" duel for the life of the still, little white
+figure in the great white bed.
+
+One night, the doctor did not go home at all. Toward dawn the Master
+lurched out of the room and sat down for a moment on the stairs, his
+face in his hands. Then and then only, during all that time of
+watching, did Lad leave the doorsill of his own accord.
+
+Shaky with famine and weariness, he got to his feet, moaning softly,
+and crept over to the Master; he lay down beside him, his huge head
+athwart the man's knees; his muzzle reaching timidly toward the
+tight-clenched hands.
+
+Presently the Master went back into the sickroom. And Lad was left
+alone in the darkness--to wonder and to listen and to wait. With a
+tired sigh he returned to the door and once more took up his heartsick
+vigil.
+
+Then--on a golden morning, days later, the doctor came and went with
+the look of a Conqueror. Even the wooden-faced nurse forgot to grunt
+in disgust when she stumbled across the dog's body. She almost
+smiled. And presently the Master came out through the doorway. He
+stopped at sight of Lad, and turned back into the room. Lad could
+hear him speak. And he heard a dear, _dear_ voice make answer; very
+weakly, but no longer in that muffled and foreign tone which had so
+frightened him. Then came a sentence the dog could understand.
+
+"Come in, old friend," said the Master, opening the door and standing
+aside for Lad to enter.
+
+At a bound, the collie was in the room. There lay the Mistress. She
+was very thin, very white, very feeble. But she was there. The dread
+Something had lost the battle.
+
+Lad wanted to break forth into a peal of ecstatic barking that would
+have deafened every one in the room. The Master read the wish and
+interposed,
+
+"_Quiet!_"
+
+Lad heard. He controlled the yearning. But it cost him a world of
+will-power to do it. As sedately as he could force himself to move, he
+crossed to the bed.
+
+The Mistress was smiling at him. One hand was stretched weakly forth
+to stroke him. And she was saying almost in a whisper, "Lad! Laddie!"
+
+That was all. But her hand was petting him in the dear way he loved so
+well. And the Master was telling her all over again how the dog had
+watched outside her door. Lad listened--not to the man's praise, but
+to the woman's caressing whisper--and he quivered from head to
+tail. He fought furiously with himself once again, to choke back the
+rapturous barking that clamored for utterance. He knew this was no
+time for noise. Even without the word of warning, he would have known
+it. For the Mistress was whispering. Even the Master was speaking
+scarce louder.
+
+But one thing Lad realized: the black danger was past. The Mistress
+was alive! And the whole house was smiling. That was enough. And the
+yearning to show, in noise, his own wild relief, was all but
+irresistible. Then the Master said:
+
+"Run on, Lad. You can come back by-and-by."
+
+And the dog gravely made his way out of the room and out of the house.
+
+The minute he was out-of-doors, he proceeded to go crazy. Nothing but
+sheer mania could excuse his actions during the rest of that day. They
+were unworthy of a mongrel puppy. And never before in all his
+blameless, stately life had Lad so grossly misbehaved as he now
+proceeded to do. The Mistress was alive. The Horror was past. Reaction
+set in with a rush. As I have said, Lad went crazy.
+
+Peter Grimm, the Mistress's cynical and temperamental gray cat, was
+picking its dainty way across the lawn as Lad emerged from the house.
+
+Ordinarily, Lad regarded Peter Grimm with a cold tolerance. But now,
+he dashed at the cat with a semblance of stark wrath. Like a furry
+whirlwind he bore down upon the amazed feline. The cat, in dire
+offense, scratched his nose with a quite unnecessary virulence and
+fled up a tree, spitting and yowling, tail fluffed out as thick as a
+man's wrist.
+
+Seeing that Peter Grimm had resorted to unsportsmanly tactics by
+scrambling whither he could not follow, Lad remembered the need for
+silence and forbore to bark threats at his escaped victim. Instead,
+he galloped to the rear of the house where stood the dairy.
+
+The dairy door was on the latch. With his head Lad butted it open and
+ran into the stone-floored room. A line of full milk-pans were ranged
+side by side on a shelf. Rising on his hind-legs and bracing his
+forepaws on the shelf, Lad seized edges of the deep pans, one after
+another, between his teeth, and, with a succession of sharp jerks
+brought them one and all clattering to the floor.
+
+Scampering out of the dairy, ankle deep in a river of spilt milk, and
+paying no heed to the cries of the scandalized cook, he charged forth
+in the open again. His eye fell on a red cow, tethered by a long chain
+in a pasture-patch beyond the stables.
+
+She was an old acquaintance of his, this cow. She had been on The
+Place since before he was born. Yet, to-day Lad's spear knew no
+brother. He tore across the lawn and past the stables, straight at
+the astonished bovine. In terror, the cow threw up her tail and sought
+to lumber away at top speed. Being controlled by her tether she could
+run only in a wide circle. And around and around this circle Lad drove
+the bellowing brute as fast as he could make her run, until the
+gardener came panting to her relief.
+
+But neither the gardener nor any other living creature could stay
+Lad's rampage that day. He fled merrily up to the Lodge at the gate,
+burst into its kitchen and through to the refrigerator. There, in a
+pan, he found a raw leg of mutton. Seizing this twelve-pound morsel in
+his teeth and dodging the indignant housewife, he careered out into
+the highway with his prize, dug a hole in the roadside ditch and was
+gleefully preparing to bury the mutton therein, when its outraged
+owner rescued it.
+
+A farmer was jogging along the road behind a half-dozing horse. A
+painful nip on the rear hind-leg turned the nag's drowsy jog into a
+really industrious effort at a runaway. Already, Lad had sprung clear
+of the front wheel. As the wagon bumped past him, he leaped upward;
+deftly caught a hanging corner of the lap-robe and hauled it free of
+the seat.
+
+Robe in mouth, he capered off into a field; playfully keeping just out
+of the reach of the pursuing agrarian; and at last he deposited the
+stolen treasure in the heart of a bramble-patch a full half-mile from
+the road.
+
+Lad made his way back to The Place by a wide detour that brought him
+through the grounds of a neighbor of the Master's.
+
+This neighbor owned a dog--a mean-eyed, rangy and mangy pest of a
+brute that Lad would ordinarily have scorned to notice. But, most
+decidedly, he noticed the dog now. He routed it out of its kennel and
+bestowed upon it a thrashing that brought its possessor's entire
+family shrieking to the scene of conflict.
+
+Courteously refusing to carry the matter further, in face of a
+half-dozen shouting humans, Lad cantered homeward.
+
+From the clothes-line, on the drying-ground at The Place, fluttered a
+large white object. It was palpably a nurse's uniform--palpably _the_
+nurse's uniform. And Lad greeted its presence there with a grin of
+pure bliss.
+
+In less than two seconds the uniform was off the line, with three huge
+rents marring its stiff surface. In less than thirty seconds, it was
+reposing in the rich black mud on the verge of the lake, and Lad was
+rolling playfully on it.
+
+Then he chanced to remember his long-neglected enemies, the squirrels,
+and his equally-neglected prey, the rabbits. And he loped off to the
+forest to wage gay warfare upon them. He was gloriously, idiotically,
+criminally happy. And, for the time, he was a fool.
+
+All day long, complaints came pouring in to the Master. Lad had
+destroyed the whole "set" of cream. Lad had chased the red cow till it
+would be a miracle if she didn't fall sick of it. Lad had scared poor
+dear little Peter Grimm so badly that the cat seemed likely to spend
+all the rest of its nine lives squalling in the tree-top and crossly
+refusing to come down.
+
+Lad had spoiled a Sunday leg of mutton, up at the Lodge. Lad had made
+a perfectly respectable horse run madly away for nearly twenty-five
+feet, and had given the horse's owner a blasphemous half-mile run over
+a plowed field after a cherished and ravished lap-robe. Lad had
+well-nigh killed a neighbor's particularly killable dog. Lad had
+wantonly destroyed the nurse's very newest and most expensive
+uniform. All day it was Lad--Lad--Lad!
+
+Lad, it seemed, was a storm-center, whence radiated complaints that
+ran the whole gamut from tears to lurid profanity; and, to each and
+every complainant, the Master made the same answer:
+
+"Leave him alone. We're just out of hell--Lad and I! He's doing the
+things I'd do myself, if I had the nerve."
+
+Which, of course, was a manifestly asinine way for a grown man to
+talk.
+
+Long after dusk, Lad pattered meekly home, very tired and quite
+sane. His spell of imbecility had worn itself out. He was once more
+his calmly dignified self, though not a little ashamed of his babyish
+pranks, and mildly wondering how he had come to behave so.
+
+Still, he could not grieve over what he had done. He could not grieve
+over anything just yet. The Mistress was alive! And while the
+craziness had passed, the happiness had not. Tired, drowsily at peace
+with all the world, he curled up under the piano and went to sleep.
+
+He slept so soundly that the locking of the house for the night did
+not rouse him. But something else did. Something that occurred long
+after everyone on The Place was sound asleep. Lad was joyously
+pursuing, through the forest aisles of dreamland, a whole army of
+squirrels that had not sense enough to climb trees--when in a moment,
+he was wide awake and on guard. Far off, very far off, he heard a man
+walking.
+
+Now, to a trained dog there is as much difference in the sound of
+human footfalls as, to humans, there is a difference in the aspect of
+human faces. A belated countryman walking along the highway, a
+furlong distant, would not have awakened Lad from sleep. Also, he knew
+and could classify, at any distance, the footsteps of everyone who
+lived on The Place. But the steps that had brought him wide awake and
+on the alert to-night, did not belong to one of The Place's people;
+nor were they the steps of anybody who had a right to be on the
+premises.
+
+Someone had climbed the fence, at a distance from the drive, and was
+crossing the grounds, obliquely, toward the house. It was a man, and
+he was still nearly two hundred yards away. Moreover, he was walking
+stealthily; and pausing every now and then as if to reconnoiter.
+
+No human, at that distance, could have heard the steps. No dog could
+have helped hearing them. Had the other dogs been at home instead of
+at the boarding-kennels, The Place would by this time have been
+re-echoing with barks. Both scent and sound would have given them
+ample warning of the stranger's presence.
+
+To Lad, on the lower floor of the house, where every window was
+shut, the aid of scent was denied. Yet his sense of hearing was
+enough. Plainly, he heard the softly advancing steps--heard and read
+them. He read them for an intruder's--read them for the steps of a man
+who was afraid to be heard or seen, and who was employing all the
+caution in his power.
+
+A booming, trumpeting bark of warning sprang into Lad's throat--and
+died there. The sharp command "_Quiet!_" was still in force. Even in
+his madness, that day, he had uttered no sound. He strangled back the
+tumultuous bark and listened in silence. He had risen to his feet and
+had come out from under the piano. In the middle of the living-room he
+stood, head lowered, ears pricked. His ruff was abristle. A ridge of
+hair rose grotesquely from the shaggy mass of coat along his
+spine. His lips had slipped back from his teeth. And so he stood and
+waited.
+
+The shuffling, soft steps were nearer now. Down through the trees they
+came, and then onto the springy grass of the lawn. Now they crunched
+lightly on the gravel of the drive. Lad moved forward a little and
+again stood at attention.
+
+The man was climbing to the veranda. The vines rustled ever so
+slightly as he brushed past them. His footfall sounded lightly on the
+veranda itself.
+
+Next there was a faint clicking noise at the old-fashioned lock of one
+of the bay windows. Presently, by half inches, the window began to
+rise. Before it had risen an inch, Lad knew the trespasser was a
+negro. Also that it was no one with whose scent he was familiar.
+
+Another pause, followed by the very faintest scratching, as the negro
+ran a knife-blade along the crack of the inner wooden blinds in search
+of the catch.
+
+The blinds parted slowly. Over the window-sill the man threw a
+leg. Then he stepped down, noiselessly into the room.
+
+He stood there a second, evidently listening.
+
+And, before he could stir or breathe, something in the darkness hurled
+itself upon him.
+
+Without so much as a growl of warning, eighty pounds of muscular,
+hairy energy smote the negro full in the chest. A set of hot-breathing
+jaws flashed for his jugular vein, missed it by a half-inch, and the
+graze left a red-hot searing pain along the negro's throat. In the
+merest fraction of a moment, the murderously snapping jaws sank into
+the thief's shoulder. It is collie custom to fight with a running
+accompaniment of snarling growls. But Lad did not give voice. In
+total silence he made his onslaught. In silence, he sought and gained
+his hold.
+
+The negro was less considerate of the Mistress' comfort. With a
+screech that would have waked every mummy in Egypt, he reeled back,
+under that first unseen impact, lost his balance and crashed to the
+hardwood floor, overturning a table and a lamp in his fall. Certain
+that a devil had attacked him there in the black darkness, the man
+gave forth yell after yell of mortal terror. Frantically, he strove to
+push away his assailant and his clammy hand encountered a mass of fur.
+
+The negro had heard that all the dogs on The Place had been sent away
+because of the Mistress' illness. Hence his attempt at burglary. Hence
+also, his panic fear when Lad had sprung on him.
+
+But with the feel of the thick warm fur, the man's superstitious
+terror died. He knew he had roused the house; but there was still
+time to escape if he could rid himself of this silent, terrible
+creature. He staggered to his feet. And, with the knife he still
+clutched, he smote viciously at his assailant.
+
+Because Lad was a collie, Lad was not killed then and there. A bulldog
+or a bull-terrier, attacking a man, seeks for some convenient
+hold. Having secured that hold--be it good or bad--he locks his jaws
+and hangs on. You can well-nigh cut his head from his body before he
+will let go. Thus, he is at the mercy of any armed man who can keep
+cool long enough to kill him.
+
+But a collie has a strain of wolf in his queer brain. He seeks a hold,
+it is true. But at an instant's notice, he is ready to shift that hold
+for a better. He may bite or slash a dozen times in as many seconds
+and in as many parts of the body. He is everywhere at once--he is
+nowhere in particular. He is not a pleasant opponent.
+
+Lad did not wait for the negro's knife to find his heart. As the man
+lunged, the dog transferred his profitless shoulderhold to a grip on
+the stabbing arm. The knife blade plowed an ugly furrow along his
+side. And the dog's curved eye-tooth slashed the negro's arm from
+elbow to wrist, clean through to the bone.
+
+The knife clattered to the floor. The negro wheeled and made a leap
+for the open window; he had not cleared half the space when Lad
+bounded for the back of his neck. The dog's upper set of teeth raked
+the man's hard skull, carrying away a handful of wool and flesh; and
+his weight threw the thief forward on hands and knees again. Twisting,
+the man found the dog's furry throat; and with both hands sought to
+strangle him; at the same time backing out through the window. But it
+is not easy to strangle a collie. The piles of tumbled ruff-hair form
+a protection no other breed of dog can boast. Scarcely had the hands
+found their grip when one of them was crushed between the dog's
+vise-like jaws.
+
+The negro flung off his enemy and turned to clear the veranda at a
+single jump. But before he had half made the turn, Lad was at his
+throat again, and the two crashed through the vines together and down
+onto the driveway below. The entire combat had not lasted for more
+than thirty seconds.
+
+The Master, pistol and flashlight in hand, ran down to find the
+living-room amuck with blood and with smashed furniture, and one of
+the windows open. He flashed the electric ray through the window. On
+the ground below, stunned by striking against a stone jardiniere in
+his fall, the negro sprawled senseless upon his back. Above him
+was Lad, his searching teeth at last having found their coveted
+throat-hold. Steadily, the great dog was grinding his way through
+toward the jugular.
+
+There was a deal of noise and excitement and light after that. The
+negro was trussed up and the local constable was summoned by
+telephone. Everybody seemed to be doing much loud talking.
+
+Lad took advantage of the turmoil to slip back into the house and to
+his "cave" under the piano; where he proceeded to lick solicitously
+the flesh wound on his left side.
+
+He was very tired; and he was very unhappy and he was very much
+worried. In spite of all his own precautions as to silence, the negro
+had made a most ungodly lot of noise. The commandment "_Quiet!_" had
+been fractured past repair. And, somehow, Lad felt blame for it
+all. It was really his fault--and he realized it now--that the man had
+made such a racket. Would the Master punish him? Perhaps. Humans have
+such odd ideas of Justice. He----
+
+Then it was that the Master found him; and called him forth from his
+place of refuge. Head adroop, tail low, Lad crept out to meet his
+scolding. He looked very much like a puppy caught tearing a new rug.
+
+But suddenly, the Master and everyone else in the room was patting him
+and telling him how splendid he was. And the Master had found the deep
+scratch on his side and was dressing it, and stopping every minute or
+so, to praise him again. And then, as a crowning reward, he was taken
+upstairs for the Mistress to stroke and make much of.
+
+When at last he was sent downstairs again, Lad did not return to
+his piano-lair. Instead, he went out-of-doors and away from The
+Place. And, when he thought he was far enough from the house, he
+solemnly sat down and began to bark.
+
+It was good--_passing_ good--to be able to make a noise again. He had
+never before known how needful to canine happiness a bark really
+is. He had long and pressing arrears of barks in his system. And
+thunderously he proceeded to divest himself of them for nearly half an
+hour.
+
+Then, feeling much, _much_ better, he ambled homeward, to take up
+normal life again after a whole fortnight of martyrdom.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+A MIRACLE OF TWO
+
+
+The connecting points between the inner and outer Lad were a pair of
+the wisest and darkest and most sorrowful eyes in all dogdom--eyes
+that gave the lie to folk who say no dog has a soul. There are such
+dogs once in a human generation.
+
+Lad had but one tyrant in all the world. That was his dainty
+gold-and-white collie-mate, Lady; Lady, whose affections he had won in
+fair life-and-death battle with a younger and stronger dog; Lady, who
+bullied him unmercifully and teased him and did fearful things to his
+stately dignity; and to whom he allowed liberties that would have
+brought any other aggressor painfully near to death.
+
+Lady was high-strung and capricious; a collie de luxe. Lad and she
+were as oddly contrasted a couple, in body and mind, as one could find
+in a day's journey through their North Jersey hinterland. To The
+Place (at intervals far too few between to suit Lad), came human
+guests; people, for the most part, who did not understand dogs and who
+either drew away in causeless fear from them or else insisted on
+patting or hauling them about.
+
+Lad detested guests. He met their advances with cold courtesy, and, as
+soon as possible, got himself out of their way. He knew the Law far
+too well to snap or to growl at a guest. But the Law did not compel
+him to stay within patting distance of one.
+
+The careless caress of the Mistress or the Master--especially of the
+Mistress--was a delight to him. He would sport like an overgrown
+puppy with either of these deities; throwing dignity to the four
+winds. But to them alone did he unbend--to them and to his adored
+tyrant, Lady.
+
+To The Place, of a cold spring morning, came a guest; or two
+guests. Lad at first was not certain which. The visible guest was a
+woman. And, in her arms she carried a long bundle that might have been
+anything at all.
+
+Long as was the bundle, it was ridiculously light. Or, rather,
+pathetically light. For its folds contained a child, five years old; a
+child that ought to have weighed more than forty pounds and weighed
+barely twenty. A child with a wizened little old face, and with a
+skeleton body which was powerless from the waist down.
+
+Six months earlier, the Baby had been as vigorous and jolly as a
+collie pup. Until an invisible Something prowled through the land,
+laying Its finger-tips on thousands of such jolly and vigorous
+youngsters, as frost's fingers are laid on autumn flowers--and with
+the same hideous effect.
+
+This particular Baby had not died of the plague, as had so many of her
+fellows. At least, her brain and the upper half of her body had not
+died.
+
+Her mother had been counseled to try mountain air for the hopeless
+little invalid. She had written to her distant relative, the Mistress,
+asking leave to spend a month at The Place.
+
+Lad viewed the arrival of the adult guest with no interest and with
+less pleasure. He stood, aloof, at one side of the veranda, as the
+newcomer alighted from the car.
+
+But, when the Master took the long bundle from her arms and carried it
+up the steps, Lad waxed curious. Not only because the Master handled
+his burden so carefully, but because the collie's uncanny scent-power
+told him all at once that it was human.
+
+Lad had never seen a human carried in this manner. It did not make
+sense to him. And he stepped, hesitantly, forward to investigate.
+
+The Master laid the bundle tenderly on the veranda hammock-swing, and
+loosed the blanket-folds that swathed it. Lad came over to him, and
+looked down into the pitiful little face.
+
+There had been no baby at The Place for many a year. Lad had seldom
+seen one at such close quarters. But now the sight did something queer
+to his heart--the big heart that ever went out to the weak and
+defenseless, the heart that made a playfully snapping puppy or a
+cranky little lapdog as safe from his terrible jaws as was Lady
+herself.
+
+He sniffed in friendly fashion at the child's pathetically upturned
+face. Into the dull baby-eyes, at sight of him, came a look of pleased
+interest--the first that had crossed their blankness for many a long
+day. Two feeble little hands reached out and buried themselves
+lovingly in the mass of soft ruff that circled Lad's neck.
+
+The dog quivered all over, from nose to brush, with joy at the
+touch. He laid his great head down beside the drawn cheek, and
+positively reveled in the pain the tugging fingers were inflicting on
+his sensitive throat.
+
+In one instant, Lad had widened his narrow and hard-established circle
+of Loved Ones, to include this half-dead wisp of humanity.
+
+The child's mother came up the steps in the Master's wake. At sight of
+the huge dog, she halted in quick alarm.
+
+"Look out!" she shrilled. "He may attack her! Oh, _do_ drive him
+away!"
+
+"Who? Lad," queried the Mistress. "Why, Lad wouldn't harm a hair of
+her head if his life depended on it! See, he adores her already. I
+never knew him to take to a stranger before. And she looks brighter
+and happier, too, than she has looked in months. Don't make her cry by
+sending him away from her."
+
+"But," insisted the woman, "dogs are full of germs. I've read so. He
+might give her some terrible----"
+
+"Lad is just as clean and as germless as I am," declared the Mistress,
+with some warmth. "There isn't a day he doesn't swim in the lake, and
+there isn't a day I don't brush him. He's----"
+
+"He's a collie, though," protested the guest, looking on in uneasy
+distaste, while Baby secured a tighter and more painful grip on the
+delighted dog's ruff. "And I've always heard collies are awfully
+treacherous. Don't you find them so?"
+
+"If we did," put in the Master, who had heard that same asinine
+question until it sickened him, "if we found collies were treacherous,
+we wouldn't keep them. A collie is either the best dog or the worst
+dog on earth. Lad is the best. We don't keep the other kind. I'll call
+him away, though, if it bothers you to have him so close to Baby.
+Come, Lad!"
+
+Reluctantly, the dog turned to obey the Law; glancing back, as he
+went, at the adorable new idol he had acquired; then crossing
+obediently to where the Master stood.
+
+The Baby's face puckered unhappily. Her pipestem arms went out toward
+the collie. In a tired little voice she called after him:
+
+"Dog! _Doggie!_ Come back here, right away! I love you, Dog!"
+
+Lad, vibrating with eagerness, glanced up at the Master for leave to
+answer the call. The Master, in turn, looked inquiringly at his
+nervous guest. Lad translated the look. And, instantly, he felt an
+unreasoning hate for the fussy woman.
+
+The guest walked over to her weakly gesticulating daughter and
+explained:
+
+"Dogs aren't nice pets for sick little girls, dear. They're rough;
+and besides, they bite. I'll find Dolly for you as soon as I unpack:"
+
+"Don't want Dolly," fretted the child. "Want the dog! He isn't
+rough. He won't bite. Doggie! I love you! Come _here!_"
+
+Lad looked up longingly at the Master, his plumed tail a-wag, his ears
+up, his eyes dancing. One hand of the Master's stirred toward the
+hammock in a motion so imperceptible that none but a sharply watchful
+dog could have observed it.
+
+Lad waited for no second bidding. Quietly, unobtrusively, he crossed
+behind the guest, and stood beside his idol. The Baby fairly squealed
+with rapture, and drew his silken head down to her face.
+
+"Oh, well!" surrendered the guest, sulkily. "If she won't be happy any
+other way, let him go to her. I suppose it's safe, if you people say
+so. And it's the first thing she's been interested in, since----_No_,
+darling," she broke off, sternly. "You shall _not_ kiss him! I draw
+the line at that. Here! Let Mamma rub your lips with her handkerchief."
+
+"Dogs aren't made to be kissed," said the Master, sharing, however,
+Lad's disgust at the lip-scrubbing process. "But she'll come to less
+harm from kissing the head of a clean dog than from kissing the mouths
+of most humans. I'm glad she likes Lad. And I'm still gladder that he
+likes her. It's almost the first time he ever went to an outsider of
+his own accord."
+
+That was how Lad's idolatry began. And that, too, was how a miserably
+sick child found a new interest in life.
+
+Every day, from morning to dusk, Lad was with the Baby. Forsaking his
+immemorial "cave" under the music-room piano, he lay all night outside
+the door of her bedroom. In preference even to a romp through the
+forest with Lady, he would pace majestically alongside the invalid's
+wheelchair as it was trundled along the walks or up and down the
+veranda.
+
+Forsaking his post on the floor at the left of the Master's seat, at
+meals--a place that had been his alone since puppyhood--he lay always
+behind the Baby's table couch. This to the vast discomfort of the maid
+who had to step over him in circumnavigating the board, and to the
+open annoyance of the child's mother.
+
+Baby, as the days went on, lost none of her first pleasure in her
+shaggy playmate. To her, the dog was a ceaseless novelty. She loved to
+twist and braid the great white ruff on his chest, to toy with his
+sensitive ears, to make him "speak" or shake hands or lie down or
+stand up at her bidding. She loved to play a myriad of intricate
+games with him--games ranging from _Beauty and the Beast_, to _Fairy
+Princess and Dragon_.
+
+Whether as _Beast_ (to her _Beauty_) or in the more complex and
+exacting role of _Dragon_, Lad entered wholesouledly into every such
+game. Of course, he always played his part wrong. Equally, of course,
+Baby always lost her temper at his stupidity, and pummeled him, by way
+of chastisement, with her nerveless fists--a punishment Lad accepted
+with a grin of idiotic bliss.
+
+Whether because of the keenly bracing mountain air or because of her
+outdoor days with a chum who awoke her dormant interest in life, Baby
+was growing stronger and less like a sallow ghostling. And, in the
+relief of noting this steady improvement, her mother continued to
+tolerate Lad's chumship with the child, although she had never lost
+her own first unreasoning fear of the big dog.
+
+Two or three things happened to revive this foolish dread. One of them
+occurred about a week after the invalid's arrival at The Place.
+
+Lady, being no fonder of guests than was Lad, had given the veranda
+and the house itself a wide berth. But one day, as Baby lay in the
+hammock (trying in a wordy irritation to teach Lad the alphabet), and
+as the guest sat with her back to them, writing letters, Lady trotted
+around the corner of the porch.
+
+At sight of the hammock's queer occupant, she paused, and stood
+blinking inquisitively. Baby spied the graceful gold-and-white
+creature. Pushing Lad to one side, she called, imperiously:
+
+"Come here, new Doggie. You pretty, _pretty_ Doggie!"
+
+Lady, her vanity thus appealed to, strolled mincingly forward. Just
+within arm's reach, she halted again. Baby thrust out one hand, and
+seized her by the ruff to draw her into petting-distance.
+
+The sudden tug on Lady's fur was as nothing to the haulings and
+maulings in which Lad so meekly reveled. But Lad and Lady were by no
+means alike, as I think I have said. Boundless patience and a
+chivalrous love for the Weak, were not numbered among Lady's erratic
+virtues. She liked liberties as little as did Lad; and she had a far
+more drastic way of resenting them.
+
+At the first pinch of her sensitive skin there was an instant flash of
+gleaming teeth, accompanied by a nasty growl and a lightning-quick
+forward lunge of the dainty gold-white head. As the wolf slashes at a
+foe--and as no animals but wolf and collie know how to--Lady slashed
+murderously at the thin little arm that sought to pull her along.
+
+And Lad, in the same breath, hurled his great bulk between his mate
+and his idol. It was a move unbelievably swift for so large a dog. And
+it served its turn.
+
+The eye-tooth slash that would have cut the little girl's arm to the
+bone, sent a red furrow athwart Lad's massive shoulder.
+
+Before Lady could snap again, or, indeed, could get over her surprise
+at her mate's intervention, Lad was shouldering her off the edge of
+the veranda steps. Very gently he did this, and with no show of
+teeth. But he did it with much firmness.
+
+In angry amazement at such rudeness on the part of her usually
+subservient mate, Lady snarled ferociously, and bit at him.
+
+Just then, the child's mother, roused from her letter-writing by the
+turmoil, came rushing to her endangered offspring's rescue.
+
+"He growled at Baby," she reported hysterically, as the noise brought
+the Master out of his study and to the veranda on the run. "He
+_growled_ at her, and then he and that other horrid brute got to
+fighting, and----"
+
+"Pardon me," interposed the Master, calling both dogs to him, "but Man
+is the only animal to maltreat the female of his kind. No male dog
+would fight with Lady. Much less would Lad--Hello!" he broke
+off. "Look at his shoulder, though! That was meant for Baby. Instead
+of scolding Lad, you may thank him for saving her from an ugly slash.
+I'll keep Lady chained up, after this."
+
+"But----"
+
+"But, with Lad beside her, Baby is in just about as much danger as
+she would be with a guard of forty U. S. Regulars," went on the
+Master. "Take my word for it. Come along, Lady. It's the kennel for
+you for the next few weeks, old girl. Lad, when I get back, I'll wash
+that shoulder for you."
+
+With a sigh, Lad went over to the hammock and lay down, heavily. For
+the first time since Baby's advent at The Place, he was unhappy--very,
+_very_ unhappy. He had had to jostle and fend off Lady, whom he
+worshipped. And he knew it would be many a long day before his
+sensitively temperamental mate would forgive or forget. Meantime, so
+far as Lady was concerned, he was in Coventry.
+
+And just because he had saved from injury a Baby who had meant no harm
+and who could not help herself! Life, all at once, seemed dismayingly
+complex to Lad's simple soul.
+
+He whimpered a little, under his breath; and lifted his head toward
+Baby's dangling hand for a caress that might help make things
+easier. But Baby had been bitterly chagrined at Lady's reception of
+her friendly advances. Lady could not be punished for this. But Lad
+could.
+
+She slapped the lovingly upthrust muzzle with all her feeble
+force. For once, Lad was not amused by the castigation. He sighed, a
+second time; and curled up on the floor beside the hammock, in a right
+miserable heap; his head between his tiny forepaws, his great
+sorrowful eyes abrim with bewildered grief.
+
+Spring drowsed into early summer. And, with the passing days, Baby
+continued to look less and less like an atrophied mummy, and more like
+a thin, but normal, child of five. She ate and slept, as she had not
+done for many a month.
+
+The lower half of her body was still dead. But there was a faint glow
+of pink in the flat cheeks, and the eyes were alive once more. The
+hands that pulled at Lad, in impulsive friendliness or in punishment,
+were stronger, too. Their fur-tugs hurt worse than at first. But the
+hurt always gave Lad that same twinge of pleasure--a twinge that
+helped to ease his heart's ache over the defection of Lady.
+
+On a hot morning in early June, when the Mistress and the Master had
+driven over to the village for the mail, the child's mother wheeled
+the invalid chair to a tree-roofed nook down by the lake--a spot whose
+deep shade and lush long grass promised more coolness than did the
+veranda.
+
+It was just the spot a city-dweller would have chosen for a nap--and
+just the spot through which no countryman would have cared to venture,
+at that dry season, without wearing high boots.
+
+Here, not three days earlier, the Master had killed a copperhead
+snake. Here, every summer, during the late June mowing, The Place's
+scythe-wielders moved with glum caution. And seldom did their progress
+go unmarked by the scythe-severed body of at least one snake.
+
+The Place, for the most part, lay on hillside and plateau, free from
+poisonous snakes of all kinds, and usually free from mosquitoes as
+well. The lawn, close-shaven, sloped down to the lake. To one side
+of it, in a narrow stretch of bottom-land, a row of weeping willows
+pierced the loose stone lake-wall.
+
+Here, the ground was seldom bone-dry. Here, the grass grew rankest.
+Here, also, driven to water by the drought, abode eft, lizard
+and an occasional snake, finding coolness and moisture in the long
+grass, and a thousand hiding places amid the stone-crannies or the
+lake-wall.
+
+If either the Mistress or the Master had been at home on this morning,
+the guest would have been warned against taking Baby there at all. She
+would have been doubly warned against the folly which she now
+proceeded to commit--of lifting the child from the wheel-chair, and
+placing her on a spread rug in the grass, with her back to the low
+wall.
+
+The rug, on its mattress of lush grasses, was soft. The lake breeze
+stirred the lower boughs of the willows. The air was pleasantly cool
+here, and had lost the dead hotness that brooded over the higher
+ground.
+
+The guest was well pleased with her choice of a resting place. Lad was
+not.
+
+The big dog had been growingly uneasy from the time the wheel-chair
+approached the lake-wall. Twice he put himself in front of it; only
+to be ordered aside. Once the wheels hit his ribs with jarring
+impact. As Baby was laid upon her grassy bed, Lad barked loudly and
+pulled at one end of the rug with his teeth.
+
+The guest shook her parasol at him and ordered him back to the
+house. Lad obeyed no orders, save those of his two deities. Instead of
+slinking away, he sat down beside the child; so close to her that his
+ruff pressed against her shoulder. He did not lie down as usual, but
+sat--tulip ears erect, dark eyes cloudy with trouble; head turning
+slowly from side to side, nostrils pulsing.
+
+To a human, there was nothing to see or hear or smell--other than the
+cool beauty of the nook, the soughing of the breeze in the willows,
+the soft fragrance of a June morning. To a dog, there were faint
+rustling sounds that were not made by the breeze. There were equally
+faint and elusive scents that the human nose could not register.
+Notably, a subtle odor as of crushed cucumbers. (If ever you have
+killed a pit-viper, you know that smell.)
+
+The dog was worried. He was uneasy. His uneasiness would not let him
+sit still. It made him fidget and shift his position; and, once or
+twice, growl a little under his breath.
+
+Presently, his eyes brightened, and his brush began to thud gently on
+the rug-edge. For, a quarter mile above, The Place's car was turning
+in from the highway. In it were the Mistress and the Master, coming
+home with the mail. Now everything would be all right. And the onerous
+duties of guardianship would pass to more capable hands.
+
+As the car rounded the corner of the house and came to a stop at the
+front door, the guest caught sight of it. Jumping up from her seat on
+the rug, she started toward it in quest of mail. So hastily did she
+rise that she dislodged one of the wall's small stones and sent it
+rattling down into a wide crevice between two larger rocks.
+
+She did not heed the tinkle of stone on stone; nor a sharp little hiss
+that followed, as the falling missile smote the coils of a sleeping
+copperhead snake in one of the wall's lowest cavities. But Lad heard
+it. And he heard the slithering of scales against rocksides, as the
+snake angrily sought new sleeping quarters.
+
+The guest walked away, all ignorant of what she had done. And, before
+she had taken three steps, a triangular grayish-ruddy head was pushed
+out from the bottom of the wall.
+
+Twistingly, the copperhead glided out onto the grass at the very edge
+of the rug. The snake was short, and thick, and dirty, with a distinct
+and intricate pattern interwoven on its rough upper body. The head
+was short, flat, wedge-shaped. Between eye and nostril, on either
+side, was the sinister "pinhole," that is the infallible mark of the
+poison-sac serpent.
+
+(The rattlesnake swarms among some of the stony mountains of the North
+Jersey hinterland; though seldom, nowadays, does it venture into
+the valleys. But the copperhead--twin brother in murder to the
+rattler--still infests meadow and lakeside. Smaller, fatter, deadlier
+than the diamond-back, it gives none of the warning which redeems the
+latter from complete abhorrence. It is a creature as evil as its own
+aspect--and name. Copperhead and rattlesnake are the only pit-vipers
+left now between Canada and Virginia.)
+
+Out from its wall-cranny oozed the reptile. Along the fringe of the
+rug it moved for a foot or two; then paused uncertain--perhaps
+momentarily dazzled by the light. It stopped within a yard of the
+child's wizened little hand that rested idle on the rug. Baby's other
+arm was around Lad, and her body was between him and the snake.
+
+Lad, with a shiver, freed himself from the frail embrace and got
+nervously to his feet.
+
+There are two things--and perhaps _only_ two things--of which the best
+type of thoroughbred collie is abjectly afraid and from which he will
+run for his life. One is a mad dog. The other is a poisonous
+snake. Instinct, and the horror of death, warn him violently away from
+both.
+
+At stronger scent, and then at sight of the copperhead, Lad's stout
+heart failed him. Gallantly had he attacked human marauders who had
+invaded The Place. More than once, in dashing fearlessness, he had
+fought with dogs larger than himself. With a d'Artagnan-like gaiety
+of zest, he had tackled and deflected a bull that had charged head
+down at the Mistress.
+
+Commonly speaking, he knew no fear. Yet now he was afraid; tremulously,
+quakingly, _sickly_ afraid. Afraid of the deadly thing that was
+halting within three feet of him, with only the Baby's fragile body
+as a barrier between.
+
+Left to himself, he would have taken, incontinently, to his heels.
+With the lower animal's instinctive appeal to a human in moments
+of danger, he even pressed closer to the helpless child at his
+side, as if seeking the protection of her humanness. A great wave of
+cowardice shook the dog from foot to head.
+
+The Master had alighted from the car; and was coming down the hill,
+toward his guest, with several letters in his hand. Lad cast a
+yearning look at him. But the Master, he knew, was too far away to be
+summoned in time by even the most imperious bark.
+
+And it was then that the child's straying gaze fell on the snake.
+
+With a gasp and a shudder, Baby shrank back against Lad. At least, the
+upper half of her body moved away from the peril. Her legs and feet
+lay inert. The motion jerked the rug's fringe an inch or two,
+disturbing the copperhead. The snake coiled, and drew back its
+three-cornered head, the forklike maroon tongue playing fitfully.
+
+With a cry of panic-fright at her own impotence to escape, the child
+caught up a picture book from the rug beside her, and flung it at the
+serpent. The fluttering book missed its mark. But it served its
+purpose by giving the copperhead reason to believe itself attacked.
+
+Back went the triangular head, farther than ever; and then flashed
+forward. The double move was made in the minutest fraction of a
+second.
+
+A full third of the squat reddish body going with the blow, the
+copperhead struck. It struck for the thin knee, not ten inches away
+from its own coiled body. The child screamed again in mortal terror.
+
+Before the scream could leave the fear-chalked lips, Baby was knocked
+flat by a mighty and hairy shape that lunged across her toward her
+foe.
+
+And the copperhead's fangs sank deep in Lad's nose.
+
+He gave no sign of pain; but leaped back. As he sprang his jaws caught
+Baby by the shoulder. The keen teeth did not so much as bruise her
+soft flesh as he half-dragged, half-threw her into the grass behind
+him.
+
+Athwart the rug again, Lad launched himself bodily upon the coiled
+snake.
+
+As he charged, the swift-striking fangs found a second mark--this time
+in the side of his jaw.
+
+An instant later the copperhead lay twisting and writhing and
+thrashing impotently among the grassroots; its back broken, and its
+body seared almost in two by a slash of the dog's saber-like tusk.
+
+The fight was over. The menace was past. The child was safe.
+
+And, in her rescuer's muzzle and jaw were two deposits of mortal
+poison.
+
+Lad stood panting above the prostrate and crying Baby. His work was
+done; and instinct told him at what cost. But his idol was unhurt and
+he was happy. He bent down to lick the convulsed little face in mute
+plea for pardon for his needful roughness toward her.
+
+But he was denied even this tiny consolation. Even as he leaned
+downward he was knocked prone to earth by a blow that all but
+fractured his skull.
+
+At the child's first terrified cry, her mother had turned back.
+Nearsighted and easily confused, she had seen only that the dog
+had knocked her sick baby flat, and was plunging across her body.
+Next, she had seen him grip Baby's shoulder with his teeth and
+drag her, shrieking, along the ground.
+
+That was enough. The primal mother-instinct (that is sometimes almost
+as strong in woman as in lioness--or cow), was aroused. Fearless of
+danger to herself, the guest rushed to her child's rescue. As she ran
+she caught her thick parasol by the ferule and swung it aloft.
+
+Down came the agate-handle of the sunshade on the head of the dog. The
+handle was as large as a woman's fist, and was composed of a single
+stone, set in four silver claws.
+
+As Lad staggered to his feet after the terrific blow felled him, the
+impromptu weapon arose once more in air, descending this time on his
+broad shoulders.
+
+Lad did not cringe--did not seek to dodge or run--did not show his
+teeth. This mad assailant was a woman. Moreover, she was a guest, and
+as such, sacred under the Guest Law which he had mastered from
+puppyhood.
+
+Had a man raised his hand against Lad--a man other than the Master or
+a guest--there would right speedily have been a case for a hospital,
+if not for the undertaker. But, as things now were, he could not
+resent the beating.
+
+His head and shoulders quivered under the force and the pain of the
+blows. But his splendid body did not cower. And the woman, wild with
+fear and mother-love, continued to smite with all her random strength.
+
+Then came the rescue.
+
+At the first blow the child had cried out in fierce protest at her
+pet's ill-treatment. Her cry went unheard.
+
+"Mother!" she shrieked, her high treble cracked with anguish. "Mother!
+Don't! _Don't!_ He kept the snake from eating me! He----!"
+
+The frantic woman still did not heed. Each successive blow seemed to
+fall upon the little onlooker's own bare heart. And Baby, under the
+stress, went quite mad.
+
+Scrambling to her feet, in crazy zeal to protect her beloved playmate,
+she tottered forward three steps, and seized her mother by the skirt.
+
+At the touch the woman looked down. Then her face went yellow-white;
+and the parasol clattered unnoticed to the ground.
+
+For a long instant the mother stood thus; her eyes wide and glazed,
+her mouth open, her cheeks ashy--staring at the swaying child who
+clutched her dress for support and who was sobbing forth incoherent
+pleas for the dog.
+
+The Master had broken into a run and into a flood of wordless
+profanity at sight of his dog's punishment. Now he came to an abrupt
+halt and was glaring dazedly at the miracle before him.
+
+The child had risen and had walked.
+
+The child had _walked!_--she whose lower motive-centers, the wise
+doctors had declared, were hopelessly paralyzed--she who could never
+hope to twitch so much as a single toe or feel any sensation from the
+hips downward!
+
+Small wonder that both guest and Master seemed to have caught, for the
+moment, some of the paralysis that so magically departed from the
+invalid!
+
+And yet--as a corps of learned physicians later agreed--there was no
+miracle--no magic--about it. Baby's was not the first, nor the
+thousandth case in pathologic history, in which paralyzed sensory
+powers had been restored to their normal functions by means of a
+shock.
+
+The child had had no malformation, no accident, to injure the spine or
+the co-ordination between limbs and brain. A long illness had left her
+powerless. Country air and new interest in life had gradually built
+up wasted tissues. A shock had re-established communication between
+brain and lower body--a communication that had been suspended; not
+broken.
+
+When, at last, there was room in any of the human minds for aught but
+blank wonder and gratitude, the joyously weeping mother was made to
+listen to the child's story of the fight with the snake--a story
+corroborated by the Master's find of the copperhead's half-severed
+body.
+
+"I'll--I'll get down on my knees to that heaven-sent dog," sobbed the
+guest, "and apologize to him. Oh, I wish some of you would beat me as
+I beat him! I'd feel so much better! Where is he?"
+
+The question brought no answer. Lad had vanished. Nor could eager
+callings and searchings bring him to view. The Master, returning from
+a shout-punctuated hunt through the forest, made Baby tell her story
+all over again. Then he nodded.
+
+"I understand," he said, feeling a ludicrously unmanly desire to
+cry. "I see how it was. The snake must have bitten him, at least
+once. Probably oftener, and he knew what that meant. Lad knows
+everything--_knew_ everything, I mean. If he had known a little less
+he'd have been human. But--if he'd been human, he probably wouldn't
+have thrown away his life for Baby."
+
+"Thrown away his life," repeated the guest. "I--I don't understand.
+Surely I didn't strike him hard enough to----"
+
+"No," returned the Master, "but the snake did."
+
+"You mean, he has----?"
+
+"I mean it is the nature of all animals to crawl away, alone, into the
+forest to die. They are more considerate than we. They try to cause no
+further trouble to those they have loved. Lad got his death from the
+copperhead's fangs. He knew it. And while we were all taken up with
+the wonder of Baby's cure, he quietly went away--to die."
+
+The Mistress got up hurriedly, and left the room. She loved the great
+dog, as she loved few humans. The guest dissolved into a flood of
+sloppy tears.
+
+"And I beat him," she wailed. "I beat him--horribly! And all the time
+he was dying from the poison he had saved my child from! Oh, I'll
+never forgive myself for this, the longest day I live."
+
+"The longest day is a long day," drily commented the Master. "And
+self-forgiveness is the easiest of all lessons to learn. After all,
+Lad was only a dog. That's why he is dead."
+
+The Place's atmosphere tingled with jubilation over the child's
+cure. Her uncertain, but always successful, efforts at walking were an
+hourly delight.
+
+But, through the general joy, the Mistress and the Master could not
+always keep their faces bright. Even the guest mourned frequently,
+and loudly, and eloquently the passing of Lad. And Baby was openly
+inconsolable at the loss of her chum.
+
+At dawn on the morning of the fourth day, the Master let himself
+silently out of the house, for his usual before-breakfast cross-country
+tramp--a tramp on which, for years, Lad had always been his companion.
+Heavy-hearted, the Master prepared to set forth alone.
+
+As he swung shut the veranda door behind him, Something arose stiffly
+from a porch rug--Something the Master looked at in a daze of
+unbelief.
+
+It was a dog--yet no such dog as had ever before sullied the cleanness
+of The Place's well-scoured veranda.
+
+The animal's body was lean to emaciation. The head was swollen--though,
+apparently, the swelling had begun to recede. The fur, from spine
+to toe, from nose to tail-tip, was one solid and shapeless mass of
+caked mud.
+
+The Master sat down very suddenly on the veranda floor beside the
+dirt-encrusted brute, and caught it in his arms, sputtering disjointedly:
+
+"Lad!--_Laddie!_--Old _friend!_ You're alive again!
+You're--you're--_alive!_"
+
+Yes, Lad had known enough to creep away to the woods to die. But,
+thanks to the wolf-strain in his collie blood, he had also known how
+to do something far wiser than die.
+
+Three days of self-burial, to the very nostrils, in the mysteriously
+healing ooze of the marshes, behind the forest, had done for him what
+such mud-baths have done for a million wild creatures. It had drawn
+out the viper-poison and had left him whole again--thin, shaky on the
+legs, slightly swollen of head--but _whole_.
+
+"He's--he's awfully dirty, though! Isn't he?" commented the guest,
+when an idiotic triumph-yell from the Master had summoned the whole
+family, in sketchy attire, to the veranda. "Awfully dirty and----"
+
+"Yes," curtly assented the Master, Lad's head between his caressing
+hands. "'Awfully dirty.' That's why he's still alive."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+HIS LITTLE SON
+
+
+Lad's mate Lady was the only one of the Little People about The Place
+who refused to look on Lad with due reverence. In her frolic-moods she
+teased him unmercifully; in a prettily imperious way she bossed and
+bullied him--for all of which Lad adored her. He had other reasons,
+too, for loving Lady--not only because she was dainty and beautiful,
+and was caressingly fond of him, but because he had won her in fair
+mortal combat with the younger and showier Knave.
+
+For a time after Knave's routing, Lad was blissfully happy in Lady's
+undivided comradeship. Together they ranged the forests beyond The
+Place in search of rabbits. Together they sprawled shoulder to
+shoulder on the disreputable old fur rug in front of the living-room
+fire. Together they did joyous homage to their gods, the Mistress and
+the Master.
+
+Then in the late summer a new rival appeared--to be accurate, three
+rivals. And they took up all of Lady's time and thought and love. Poor
+old Lad was made to feel terribly out in the cold. The trio of rivals
+that had so suddenly claimed Lady's care were fuzzy and roly-poly, and
+about the size of month-old kittens. In brief, they were three
+thoroughbred collie puppies.
+
+Two of them were tawny brown, with white forepaws and chests. The
+third was not like Lad in color, but like the mother--at least, all of
+him not white was of the indeterminate yellowish mouse-gray which, at
+three months or earlier, turns to pale gold.
+
+When they were barely a fortnight old--almost as soon as their big
+mournful eyes opened--the two brown puppies died. There seemed no
+particular reason for their death, except the fact that a collie is
+always the easiest or else the most impossible breed of dog to raise.
+
+The fuzzy grayish baby alone was left--the puppy which was soon to
+turn to white and gold. The Mistress named him "Wolf."
+
+Upon Baby Wolf the mother-dog lavished a ridiculous lot of attention--so
+much that Lad was miserably lonely. The great collie would try
+with pathetic eagerness, a dozen times a day, to lure his mate
+into a woodland ramble or into a romp on the lawn, but Lady met
+his wistful advances with absorbed indifference or with a snarl.
+Indeed when Lad ventured overnear the fuzzy baby, he was warned
+off by a querulous growl from the mother or by a slash of her shiny
+white teeth.
+
+Lad could not at all understand it. He felt no particular interest--only
+a mild and disapproving curiosity--in the shapeless little whimpering
+ball of fur that nestled so helplessly against his beloved mate's
+side. He could not understand the mother-love that kept Lady with
+Wolf all day and all night. It was an impulse that meant nothing
+to Lad.
+
+After a week or two of fruitless effort to win back Lady's interest,
+Lad coldly and wretchedly gave up the attempt. He took long solitary
+walks by himself in the forest, retired for hours at a time to sad
+brooding in his favorite "cave" under the living-room piano, and tried
+to console himself by spending all the rest of his day in the company
+of the Mistress and the Master. And he came thoroughly to disapprove
+of Wolf. Recognizing the baby intruder as the cause of Lady's
+estrangement from himself, he held aloof from the puppy.
+
+The latter was beginning to emerge from his newborn shapelessness. His
+coat's texture was changing from fuzz to silk. Its color was turning
+from gray into yellow. His blunt little nose was lengthening and
+growing thin and pointed. His butter-ball body was elongating, and his
+huge feet and legs were beginning to shape up. He looked more like a
+dog now, and less like an animated muff. Also within Wolf's youthful
+heart awoke the devil of mischief, the keen urge of play. He found
+Lady a pleasant-enough playfellow up to a certain point. But a
+painfully sharp pinch from her teeth or a reproving and breath-taking
+slap from one of her forepaws was likely to break up every game that
+she thought had gone far enough; when Wolf's clownish roughness at
+length got on her hair-trigger nerves.
+
+So, in search of an additional playmate, the frolicsome puppy turned
+to Lad, only to find that Lad would not play with him at all. Lad
+made it very, very clear to everyone--except to the fool puppy
+himself--that he had no desire to romp or to associate in any way with
+this creature which had ousted him from Lady's heart! Being cursed
+with a soul too big and gentle to let him harm anything so helpless as
+Wolf, he did not snap or growl, as did Lady, when the puppy teased. He
+merely walked away in hurt dignity.
+
+Wolf had a positive genius for tormenting Lad. The huge collie, for
+instance, would be snoozing away a hot hour on the veranda or under
+the wistaria vines. Down upon him, from nowhere in particular, would
+pounce Wolf.
+
+The puppy would seize his sleeping father by the ear, and drive his
+sharp little milk-teeth fiercely into the flesh. Then he would brace
+himself and pull backward, possibly with the idea of dragging Lad
+along the ground.
+
+Lad would wake in pain, would rise in dignified unhappiness to his
+feet and start to walk off--the puppy still hanging to his ear. As
+Wolf was a collie and not a bulldog, he would lose his grip as his fat
+little body left the ground. Then, at a clumsy gallop, he would pursue
+Lad, throwing himself against his father's forelegs and nipping the
+slender ankles. All this was torture to Lad, and dire mortification
+too--especially if humans chanced to witness the scene. Yet never did
+he retaliate; he simply got out of the way.
+
+Lad, nowadays, used to leave half his dinner uneaten, and he took to
+moping in a way that is not good for dog or man. For the moping had in
+it no ill-temper--nothing but heartache at his mate's desertion, and a
+weary distaste for the puppy's annoying antics. It was bad enough for
+Wolf to have supplanted him in Lady's affection, without also making
+his life a burden and humiliating him in the eyes of his gods.
+
+Therefore Lad moped. Lady remained nervously fussy over her one
+child. And Wolf continued to be a lovable, but unmitigated, pest. The
+Mistress and the Master tried in every way to make up to Lad for the
+positive and negative afflictions he was enduring, but the sorrowing
+dog's unhappiness grew with the days.
+
+Then one November morning Lady met Wolf's capering playfulness with a
+yell of rage so savage as to send the puppy scampering away in mortal
+terror, and to bring the Master out from his study on a run. For no
+normal dog gives that hideous yell except in racking pain or in
+illness; and mere pain could not wring such a sound from a thoroughbred.
+
+The Master called Lady over to him. Sullenly she obeyed, slinking up
+to him in surly unwillingness. Her nose was hot and dry; her soft
+brown eyes were glazed, their whites a dull red. Her dense coat was
+tumbled.
+
+After a quick examination, the Master shut her into a kennel-room and
+telephoned for a veterinary.
+
+"She is sickening for the worst form of distemper," reported the vet'
+an hour later, "perhaps for something worse. Dogs seldom get distemper
+after they're a year old, but when they do it's dangerous. Better let
+me take her over to my hospital and isolate her there. Distemper runs
+through a kennel faster than cholera through a plague-district. I may
+be able to cure her in a month or two--or I may not. Anyhow, there's
+no use in risking your other dogs' lives by leaving her here."
+
+So it was that Lad saw his dear mate borne away from him in the
+tonneau of a strange man's car.
+
+Lady hated to go. She whimpered and hung back as the vet' lifted her
+aboard. At sound of her whimper Lad started forward, head low, lips
+writhing back from his clenched teeth, his shaggy throat vibrant with
+growls. At a sharp word of command from the Master, he checked his
+onset and stood uncertain. He looked at his departing mate, his dark
+eyes abrim with sorrow, then glanced at the Master in an agony of
+appeal.
+
+"It's all right, Laddie," the Master tried to console him, stroking
+the dog's magnificent head as he spoke. "It's all right. It's the only
+chance of saving her."
+
+Lad did not grasp the words, but their tone was reassuring. It told
+him, at least, that this kidnaping was legal and must not be
+prevented. Sorrowfully he watched the chugging car out of sight, up
+the drive. Then with a sigh he walked heavily back to his "cave"
+beneath the piano.
+
+Lad, alone of The Place's dogs, was allowed to sleep in the house at
+night, and even had free access to that dog-forbidden spot, the
+dining-room. Next morning, as soon as the doors were opened, he dashed
+out in search of Lady. With some faint hope that she might have been
+brought back in the night, he ransacked every corner of The Place for
+her.
+
+He did not find Lady. But Wolf very promptly found Lad. Wolf was
+lonely, too--terribly lonely. He had just spent the first solitary
+night of his three-month life. He missed the furry warm body into
+whose shelter he had always cuddled for sleep. He missed his
+playmate--the pretty mother who had been his fond companion.
+
+There are few things so mournful as the eyes of even the happiest
+collie pup; this morning, loneliness had intensified the melancholy
+expression in Wolf's eyes. But at sight of Lad, the puppy gamboled
+forward with a falsetto bark of joy. The world was not quite empty,
+after all. Though his mother had cruelly absented herself, here was a
+playfellow that was better than nothing. And up to Lad frisked the
+optimistic little chap.
+
+Lad saw him coming. The older dog halted and instinctively turned
+aside to avoid the lively little nuisance. Then, halfway around, he
+stopped and turned back to face the puppy.
+
+Lady was gone--gone, perhaps, forever. And all that was left to remind
+Lad of her was this bumptious and sharp-toothed little son of hers.
+Lady had loved the youngster--Lady, whom Lad so loved. Wolf alone was
+left; and Wolf was in some mysterious way a part of Lady.
+
+So, instead of making his escape as the pest cantered toward him, Lad
+stood where he was. Wolf bounded upward and as usual nipped merrily
+at one of Lad's ears. Lad did not shake off his tormentor and stalk
+away. In spite of the pain to the sensitive flesh, he remained
+quiet, looking down at the joyful puppy with a sort of sorrowing
+friendliness. He seemed to realize that Wolf, too, was lonely and that
+the little dog was helpless.
+
+Tired of biting an unprotesting ear, Wolf dived for Lad's white
+forelegs, gnawing happily at them with a playfully unconscious
+throwback to his wolf ancestors who sought thus to disable an enemy by
+breaking the foreleg bone. For all seemingly aimless puppy-play had
+its origin in some ancestral custom.
+
+Lad bore this new bother unflinchingly. Presently Wolf left off the
+sport. Lad crossed to the veranda and lay down. The puppy trotted over
+to him and stood for a moment with ears cocked and head on one side as
+if planning a new attack on his supine victim; then with a little
+satisfied whimper, he curled up close against his father's shaggy side
+and went to sleep.
+
+Lad gazed down at the slumberer in some perplexity. He seemed even
+inclined to resent the familiarity of being used for a pillow. Then,
+noting that the fur on the top of the puppy's sleepy head was rumpled,
+Lad bent over and began softly to lick back the tousled hair into
+shape with his curving tongue--his raspberry-pink tongue with the
+single queer blue-black blot midway on its surface. The puppy mumbled
+drowsily in his sleep and nestled more snugly to his new protector.
+
+And thus Lad assumed formal guardianship of his obstreperous little
+son. It was a guardianship more staunch by far than Lady's had
+been of late. For animal mothers early wear out their zealously
+self-sacrificing love for their young. By the time the latter are able
+to shift for themselves, the maternal care ceases. And, later on, the
+once-inseparable relationship drops completely out of mind.
+
+Paternity, among dogs, is, from the very first, no tie at all. Lad,
+probably, had no idea of his relationship to his new ward. His
+adoption of Wolf was due solely to his own love for Lady and to the
+big heart and soul that stirred him into pity for anything helpless.
+
+Lad took his new duties very seriously indeed. He not only accepted
+the annoyance of Wolf's undivided teasing, but he assumed charge of
+the puppy's education as well--this to the amusement of everyone on
+The Place. But everyone's amusement was kept from Lad. The sensitive
+dog would rather have been whipped than laughed at. So both the
+Mistress and Master watched the educational process with outwardly
+straight faces.
+
+A puppy needs an unbelievable amount of educating. It is a task to
+wear threadbare the teacher's patience and to do all kinds of things
+to the temper. Small wonder that many humans lose patience and temper
+during the process and idiotically resort to the whip, to the boot-toe
+and to bellowing--in which case the puppy is never decently educated,
+but emerges from the process with a cowed and broken spirit or with an
+incurable streak of meanness that renders him worthless.
+
+Time, patience, firmness, wisdom, temper-control, gentleness--these be
+the six absolute essentials for training a puppy. Happy the human who
+is blessed with any three of these qualities. Lad, being only a dog,
+was abundantly possessed of all six. And he had need of them.
+
+To begin with, Wolf had a joyous yearning to tear up or bury every
+portable thing that could be buried or torn. He had a craze for
+destruction. A dropped lace handkerchief, a cushion left on the
+grass, a book or a hat lying on a veranda-chair--these and a thousand
+other things he looked on as treasure-trove, to be destroyed as
+quickly and as delightedly as possible.
+
+He also enjoyed taking a flying leap onto the face or body of any
+hammock-sleeper. He would howl long and lamentably, nearly every
+night, at the moon. If the night were moonless, he howled on general
+principles. He thrilled with bliss at a chance to harry and terrify
+the chickens or peacocks or pigeons or any others of The Place's
+Little People that were safe prey for him. He tried this form of
+bullying once--only once--on the Mistress' temperamental gray cat,
+Peter Grimm. For the rest of the day Wolf nursed a scratched nose and
+a torn ear--which, for nearly a week, taught him to give all cats a
+wide berth; or, at most, to bark harrowingly at them from a safe
+distance.
+
+Again, Wolf had an insatiable craving to find out for himself whether
+or not everything on earth was good to eat. Kipling writes of puppies'
+experiments in trying to eat soap and blacking. Wolf added to this
+limited fare a hundred articles, from clothespins to cigars. The
+climax came when he found on the veranda-table a two-pound box of
+chocolates, from which the wrapping-paper and gilt cord had not yet
+been removed. Wolf ate not only all the candy, but the entire box and
+the paper and the string--after which he was tumultuously and horribly
+ill.
+
+The foregoing were but a small percentage of his gay sins. And on
+respectable, middle-aged Lad fell the burden of making him into a
+decent canine citizen. Lad himself had been one of those rare puppies
+to whom the Law is taught with bewildering ease. A single command or
+prohibition had ever been enough to fix a rule in his almost uncannily
+human brain. Perhaps if the two little brown pups had lived, one or
+both of them might have taken after their sire in character. But Wolf
+was the true son of temperamental, wilful Lady, and Lad had his job
+cut out for him in educating the puppy.
+
+It was a slow, tedious process. Lad went at it, as he went at
+everything--with a gallant dash, behind which was an endless supply of
+resource and endurance. Once, for instance, Wolf leaped barkingly upon
+a filmy square of handkerchief that had just fallen from the Mistress'
+belt. Before the destructive little teeth could rip the fine cambric
+into rags, the puppy found himself, to his amazement, lifted gently
+from earth by the scruff of his neck and held thus, in midair, until
+he dropped the handkerchief.
+
+Lad then deposited him on the grass--whereupon Wolf pounced once more
+upon the handkerchief, only to be lifted a second time, painlessly but
+terrifyingly, above earth. After this was repeated five times, a gleam
+of sense entered the puppy's fluff-brain, and he trotted sulkily away,
+leaving the handkerchief untouched.
+
+Again, when he made a wild rush at the friendly covey of peacock
+chicks, he found he had hurled himself against an object as immobile
+as a stone wall. Lad had darted in between the pup and the chicks,
+opposing his own big body to the charge. Wolf was bowled clean over
+by the force of the impact, and lay for a minute on his back, the
+breath knocked clean out of his bruised body.
+
+It was a longer but easier task to teach him at whom to bark and at
+whom not to bark. By a sharp growl or a menacing curl of the lips, Lad
+silenced the youngster's clamorous salvo when a guest or tradesman
+entered The Place, whether on foot or in a car. By his own thunderously
+menacing bark he incited Wolf to a like outburst when some peddler
+or tramp sought to slouch down the drive toward the house.
+
+The full tale of Wolf's education would require many profitless pages
+in the telling. At times the Mistress and the Master, watching from
+the sidelines, would wonder at Lad's persistency and would despair of
+his success. Yet bit by bit--and in a surprisingly short time for so
+vast an undertaking--Wolf's character was rounded into form. True, he
+had the ever-goading spirits of a true puppy. And these spirits
+sometimes led him to smash even such sections of the law as he fully
+understood. But he was a thoroughbred, and the son of clever
+parents. So he learned, on the whole, with gratifying speed--far more
+quickly than he could have been taught by the wisest human.
+
+Nor was his education a matter of constant drudgery. Lad varied it by
+taking the puppy for long runs in the December woods and relaxed to
+the extent of romping laboriously with him at times.
+
+Wolf grew to love his sire as he had never loved Lady. For the
+discipline and the firm kindliness of Lad were having their effect on
+his heart as well as on his manners. They struck a far deeper note
+within him than ever had Lady's alternating affection and crossness.
+
+In truth, Wolf seemed to have forgotten Lady. But Lad had not. Every
+morning, the moment he was released from the house, Lad would trot
+over to Lady's empty kennel to see if by any chance she had come back
+to him during the night. There was eager hope in his big dark eyes as
+he hurried over to the vacant kennel. There was dejection in every
+line of his body as he turned away from his hopeless quest.
+
+Late gray autumn had emerged overnight into white early winter. The
+ground of The Place lay blanketed in snow. The lake at the foot of the
+lawn was frozen solid from shore to shore. The trees crouched away
+from the whirling north wind as if in shame at their own black
+nakedness. Nature, like the birds, had flown south, leaving the
+northern world as dead and as empty and as cheerless as a deserted
+bird's-nest.
+
+The puppy reveled in the snow. He would roll in it and bite it,
+barking all the while in an ecstasy of excitement. His gold-and-white
+coat was thicker and shaggier now, to ward off the stinging cold. And
+the snow and the roaring winds were his playfellows rather than his
+foes.
+
+Most of all, the hard-frozen lake fascinated him. Earlier, when Lad
+had taught him to swim, Wolf had at first shrunk back from the chilly
+black water. Now, to his astonishment, he could run on that water as
+easily--if somewhat sprawlingly--as on land. It was a miracle he never
+tired of testing. He spent half his time on the ice, despite an
+occasional hard tumble or involuntary slide.
+
+Once and once only--in all her six-week absence and in his own
+six-week loneliness--had Lad discovered anything to remind him of his
+lost mate; and that discovery caused him for the first time in his
+blameless life to break the most sacred of The Place's simple
+Laws--the inviolable Guest-Law.
+
+It was on a day in late November. A runabout came down the drive to
+the front door of the house. In it rode the vet' who had taken Lady
+away. He had stopped for a moment on his way to Paterson, to report as
+to Lady's progress at his dog-hospital.
+
+Lad was in the living-room at the time. As a maid answered the summons
+at the door, he walked hospitably forward to greet the unknown guest.
+The vet' stepped into the room by one door as the Master entered it by
+the other--which was lucky for the vet'.
+
+Lad took one look at the man who had stolen Lady. Then, without a
+sound or other sign of warning, he launched his mighty bulk straight
+at the vet's throat.
+
+Accustomed though he was to the ways of dogs, the vet' had barely time
+to brace himself and to throw one arm in front of his throat. And then
+Lad's eighty pounds smote him on the chest, and Lad's powerful jaws
+closed viselike on the forearm that guarded the man's throat. Deep
+into the thick ulster the white teeth clove their way--through
+ulster-sleeve and undercoat sleeve and the sleeves of a linen shirt
+and of flannels--clear through to the flesh of the forearm.
+
+"_Lad!_" shouted the Master, springing forward.
+
+In obedience to the sharp command, Lad loosed his grip and dropped to
+the floor--where he stood quivering with leashed fury.
+
+Through the rage-mists that swirled over his brain, he knew he had
+broken the Law. He had never merited punishment. He did not fear it.
+But the Master's tone of fierce disapproval cut the sensitive dog soul
+more painfully than any scourge could have cut his body.
+
+"Lad!" cried the Master again, in rebuking amazement.
+
+The dog turned, walked slowly over to the Master and lay down at his
+feet. The Master, without another word, opened the front door and
+pointed outward. Lad rose and slunk out. He had been ordered from the
+house, and in a stranger's presence!
+
+"He thinks I'm responsible for his losing Lady," said the vet',
+looking ruefully at his torn sleeve. "That's why he went for me. I
+don't blame the dog. Don't lick him."
+
+"I'm not going to lick him," growled the Master. "I'd as soon thrash
+a woman. Besides, I've just punished him worse than if I'd taken an
+ax-handle to him. Send me a bill for your coat."
+
+In late December came a thaw--a freak thaw that changed the white
+ground to brown mud and rotted the smooth surface of the lake-ice to
+gray slush. All day and all night the trees and the eaves sent forth a
+dreary _drip-drip-drip_. It was the traditional January Thaw--set
+forward a month.
+
+On the third and last morning of the thaw Wolf galloped down to the
+lake as usual. Lad jogged along at his side. As they reached the
+margin, Lad sniffed and drew back. His weird sixth sense somehow told
+him--as it tells an elephant--that there was danger ahead.
+
+Wolf, however, was at the stage of extreme youth when neither dogs nor
+humans are bothered by premonitions. Ahead of him stretched the huge
+sheet of ice whereon he loved to gambol. Straightway he frisked out
+upon it.
+
+A rough growl of warning from Lad made him look back, but the lure of
+the ice was stronger than the call of duty.
+
+The current, at this point of the lake, twisted sharply landward in a
+half-circle. Thus, for a few yards out, the rotting ice was still
+thick, but where the current ran, it was thin, and as soggy as wet
+blotting-paper--as Wolf speedily discovered.
+
+He bounded on the thinner ice driving his hind claws into the slushy
+surface for his second leap. He was dismayed to find that the ice
+collapsed under the pounding feet. There was a dull, sloppy sound. A
+ten-foot ice-cake broke off from the main sheet; breaking at once into
+a dozen smaller cakes; and Wolf disappeared, tail first, into the
+swift-running water beneath.
+
+To the surface he came, at the outer edge of the hole. He was mad,
+clear through, at the prank his beloved lake had played on him. He
+struck out for shore. On the landward side of the opening his forefeet
+clawed helplessly at the unbroken ledge of ice. He had not the
+strength or the wit to crawl upon it and make his way to land. The
+bitter chill of the water was already paralyzing him. The strong
+current was tugging at his hindquarters. Anger gave way to panic. The
+puppy wasted much of his remaining strength by lifting up his voice in
+ear-splitting howls.
+
+The Mistress and the Master, motoring into the drive from the highway
+nearly a quarter-mile distant, heard the racket. The lake was plainly
+visible to them through the bare trees, even at that distance, and
+they took in the impending tragedy at a glance. They jumped out of the
+car and set off at a run to the water-edge. The way was long and the
+ground was heavy with mud. They could not hope to reach the lake
+before the puppy's strength should fail.
+
+But Lad was already there. At Wolf's first cry, Lad sprang out on the
+ice that heaved and chucked and cracked under his greater weight. His
+rush carried him to the very edge of the hole, and there, leaning
+forward and bracing all four of his absurdly tiny white paws, he
+sought to catch the puppy by the neck and lift him to safety. But
+before his rescuing jaws could close on Wolf's fur, the decayed ice
+gave way beneath his weight, and the ten-foot hole was widened by
+another twenty feet of water.
+
+Down went Lad with a crash, and up he came, in almost no time, a few
+feet away from where Wolf floundered helplessly among the chunks of
+drifting ice. The breaking off of the shoreward mass of ice, under
+Lad's pressure, had left the puppy with no foothold at all. It had
+ducked him and had robbed him even of the chance to howl.
+
+His mouth and throat full of water, Wolf strangled and splashed in a
+delirium of terror. Lad struck out for him, butting aside the
+impending ice-chunks with his great shoulders, and swimming with a
+rush that lifted a third of his tawny body out of water. His jaws
+gripped Wolf by the middle of the back, and he swam thus with him
+toward shore. At the edge of the shoreward ice he gave a heave which
+called on every numbing muscle of the huge frame, and which--in spite
+of the burden he held--again lifted his head and shoulders high above
+water.
+
+He thus flung Wolf's body halfway up on the ledge of ice. The puppy's
+flying forepaws chanced to strike the ice-surface. His sharp claws bit
+into its soft upper crust. With a frantic wriggle he was out of the
+water and on top of this thicker stratum of shore-ice, and in a second
+he had regained shore and was careering wildly up the lawn toward the
+greater safety of his kennel.
+
+Yet, halfway in his flight, courage returned to the sopping-wet
+baby. He halted, turned about and, with a volley of falsetto barks,
+challenged the offending water to come ashore and fight fair.
+
+As Wolf's forepaws had gripped the ice, he had further aided his climb
+to safety by thrusting downward with his hind legs. Both his hind paws
+had struck Lad's head, their thrust had driven Lad clean under
+water. There the current caught him.
+
+When Lad came up, it was not to the surface but under the ice, some
+yards below. The top of his head struck stunningly against the
+underpart of the ice-sheet.
+
+A lesser dog would then and there have given up the struggle, or else
+would have thrashed about futilely until he drowned. Lad, perhaps on
+instinct, perhaps on reason, struck out toward the light--the spot
+where the great hole had let in sunshine through the gray ice-sheet.
+
+The average dog is not trained to swim under water. To this day, it is
+a mystery how Lad had the sense to hold his breath. He fought his way
+on, inch by inch, against the current, beneath the scratching rough
+under-surface of the ice--always toward the light. And just as his
+lungs must have been ready to burst, he reached the open space.
+
+Sputtering and panting, Lad made for shore. Presently he reached the
+ice-ledge that lay between him and the bank. He reached it just as the
+Master, squirming along, face downward and at full length, began to
+work his way out over the swaying shore-ice toward him.
+
+Twice the big dog raised himself almost to the top of the ledge. Once
+the ice broke under his weight, dousing him. The second time he got
+his fore-quarters well over the top of the ledge, and he was
+struggling upward with all his tired body when the Master's hand
+gripped his soaked ruff.
+
+With this new help, Lad made a final struggle--a struggle that
+laid him gasping but safe on the slushy surface of the thicker
+ice. Backward over the few yards that still separated them from land
+he and the Master crawled to the bank.
+
+Lad was staggering as he started forward to greet the Mistress, and
+his eyes were still dim and bloodshot from his fearful ordeal. Midway
+in his progress toward the Mistress another dog barred his path--a dog
+that fell upon him in an ecstasy of delighted welcome.
+
+Lad cleared his water-logged nostrils for a growl of protest. He had
+surely done quite enough for Wolf this day, without the puppy's trying
+to rob him now of the Mistress' caress. He was tired, and he was
+dizzy; and he wanted such petting and comfort and praise as only the
+worshipped Mistress could give.
+
+Impatience at the puppy's interference cleared the haze a little from
+Lad's brain and eyes. He halted in his shaky walk and stared,
+dumfounded. This dog which greeted him so rapturously was not Wolf. It
+was--why, it was--Lady! Oh, it was _Lady!_
+
+"We've just brought her back to you, old friend," the Master was
+telling him. "We went over for her in the car this morning. She's all
+well again, and----"
+
+But Lad did not hear. All he realized--all he wanted to realize--was
+that his mate was ecstatically nipping one of his ears to make him
+romp with her.
+
+It was a sharp nip; and it hurt like the very mischief.
+
+Lad loved to have it hurt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+FOR A BIT OF RIBBON
+
+
+Lad had never been in a city or in a crowd. To him the universe was
+bounded by the soft green mountains that hemmed in the valley and the
+lake. The Place stood on the lake's edge, its meadows running back to
+the forest. There were few houses nearer than the mile-distant
+village. It was an ideal home for such a dog as Lad, even as Lad was
+an ideal dog for such a home.
+
+A guest started all the trouble--a guest who spent a week-end at The
+Place and who loved dogs far better than he understood them. He made
+much of Lad, being loud-voiced in his admiration of the stately
+collie. Lad endured the caresses when he could not politely elude
+them.
+
+"Say!" announced the guest just before he departed, "If I had a dog
+like Lad, I'd 'show' him--at the big show at Madison Square, you
+know. It's booked for next month. Why not take a chance and exhibit
+him there? Think what it would mean to you people to have a Westminster
+blue ribbon the big dog had won! Why, you'd be as proud as Punch!"
+
+It was a careless speech and well meant. No harm might have come from
+it, had not the Master the next day chanced upon an advance notice of
+the dog-show in his morning paper. He read the press-agent's
+quarter-column proclamation. Then he remembered what the guest had
+said. The Mistress was called into consultation. And it was she, as
+ever, who cast the deciding vote.
+
+"Lad is twice as beautiful as any collie we ever saw at the Show," she
+declared, "and not one of them is half as wise or good or _human_ as
+he is. And--a blue ribbon is the greatest honor a dog can have, I
+suppose. It would be something to remember."
+
+After which, the Master wrote a letter to a friend who kept a show
+kennel of Airedales. He received this answer:
+
+  "I don't pretend to know anything, professionally, about
+  collies--Airedales being my specialty. But Lad is a beauty, as I
+  remember him, and his pedigree shows a bunch of old-time
+  champions. I'd risk it, if I were you. If you are in doubt and
+  don't want to plunge, why not just enter him for the Novice class?
+  That is a class for dogs that have never before been shown. It will
+  cost you five dollars to enter him for a single class, like
+  that. And in the Novice, he won't be up against any champions or
+  other dogs that have already won prizes. That will make it
+  easier. It isn't a grueling competition like the 'Open' or even the
+  'Limit.' If he wins as a Novice, you can enter him, another time, in
+  something more important. I'm inclosing an application-blank for
+  you to fill out and send with your entrance-fee, to the
+  secretary. You'll find his address at the bottom of the blank. I'm
+  showing four of my Airedales there--so we'll be neighbors."
+
+Thus encouraged, the Master filled in the blank and sent it with a
+check. And in due time word was returned to him that "Sunnybank Lad"
+was formally entered for the Novice class, at the Westminster Kennel
+Club's annual show at Madison Square Garden.
+
+By this time both the Mistress and the Master were infected with the
+most virulent type of the Show Germ. They talked of little else than
+the forthcoming Event. They read all the dog-show literature they
+could lay hands on.
+
+As for Lad, he was mercifully ignorant of what was in store for him.
+
+The Mistress had an inkling of his fated ordeal when she read the
+Kennel Club rule that no dog could be taken from the Garden, except
+at stated times, from the moment the show should begin, at ten
+A.M. Wednesday morning, until the hour of its close, at ten o'clock
+Saturday night. For twelve hours a day--for four consecutive
+days--every entrant must be there. By paying a forfeit fee, dog owners
+might take their pets to some nearby hotel or stable, for the
+remainder of the night and early morning--a permission which, for
+obvious reasons, would not affect most dogs.
+
+"But Lad's never been away from home a night in his life!" exclaimed
+the Mistress in dismay. "He'll be horribly lonely there, all that
+while--especially at night."
+
+By this time, with the mysterious foreknowledge of the best type of
+thoroughbred collie, Lad began to be aware that something unusual had
+crept into the atmosphere of The Place. It made him restless, but he
+did not associate it with himself--until the Mistress took to giving
+him daily baths and brushings.
+
+Always she had brushed him once a day, to keep his shaggy coat fluffy
+and burnished; and the lake had supplied him with baths that made him
+as clean as any human. But never had he undergone such searching
+massage with comb and brush as was now his portion. Never had he known
+such soap-infested scrubbings as were now his daily fate, for the week
+preceding the show.
+
+As a result of these ministrations his wavy fur was like spun silk in
+texture; and it stood out all over him like the hair of a Circassian
+beauty in a dime museum. The white chest and forepaws were like
+snow. And his sides and broad back and mighty shoulders shone like
+dark bronze.
+
+He was magnificent--but he was miserable. He knew well enough, now,
+that he was in some way the center of all this unwonted stir and
+excitement which pervaded The Place. He loathed change of any sort--a
+thoroughbred collie being ever an ultra-conservative. This particular
+change seemed to threaten his peace; also it kept his skin scraped
+with combs and his hair redolent of nasty-smelling soaps.
+
+To humans there was no odor at all in the naphtha soap with which the
+Mistress lathered the dog, and every visible atom of it was washed
+away at once with warm water. But a human's sense of smell, compared
+with the best type of collie's, is as a purblind puppy's power of
+sight in comparison to a hawk's.
+
+All over the East, during these last days before the Show, hundreds of
+high-bred dogs were undergoing preparation for an exhibition which to
+the beholder is a delight--and which to many of the canine exhibits is
+a form of unremitting torture. To do justice to the Master and the
+Mistress, they had no idea--then--of this torture. Otherwise all the
+blue ribbons ever woven would not have tempted them to subject their
+beloved chum to it.
+
+In some kennels Airedales were "plucked," by hand, to rid them of the
+last vestige of the soft gray outer coat which is an Airedale's chief
+natural beauty--and no hair of which must be seen in a show.
+"Plucking" a dog is like pulling live hairs from a human head, so far
+as the sensation goes. But show-traditions demand the anguish.
+
+In other kennels, bull-terriers' white coats were still further
+whitened by the harsh rubbing of pipeclay into the tender skin.
+Sensitive tails and still more sensitive ears were sandpapered,
+for the victims' greater beauty--and agony. Ear-interiors, also, were
+shaved close with safety-razors.
+
+Murderous little "knife-combs" were tearing blithely away at collies'
+ear-interiors and heads, to "barber" natural furriness into painful
+and unnatural trimness. Ears were "scrunched" until their wearers
+quivered with stark anguish--to impart the perfect tulip-shape;
+ordained by fashion for collies.
+
+And so on, through every breed to be exhibited--each to its own form
+of torment; torments compared to which Lad's gentle if bothersome
+brushing and bathing were a pure delight!
+
+Few of these ruthlessly "prepared" dogs were personal pets. The bulk
+of them were "kennel dogs"--dogs bred and raised after the formula for
+raising and breeding prize hogs or chickens, and with little more of
+the individual element in it. The dogs were bred in a way to bring out
+certain arbitrary "points" which count in show-judging, and which
+change from year to year.
+
+Brain, fidelity, devotion, the _human_ side of a dog--these were
+totally ignored in the effort to breed the perfect physical animal.
+The dogs were kept in kennel-buildings and in wire "runs" like
+so many pedigreed cattle--looked after by paid attendants, and trained
+to do nothing but to be the best-looking of their kind, and to win
+ribbons. Some of them did not know their owners by sight--having been
+reared wholly by hirelings.
+
+The body was everything; the heart, the mind, the namelessly
+delightful quality of the master-raised dog--these were nothing. Such
+traits do not win prizes at a bench-show. Therefore fanciers, whose
+sole aim is to win ribbons and cups, do not bother to cultivate
+them. (All of this is extraneous; but may be worth your remembering,
+next time you go to a dog-show.)
+
+Early on the morning of the Show's first day, the Mistress and the
+Master set forth for town with Lad. They went in their little car,
+that the dog might not risk the dirt and cinders of a train.
+
+Lad refused to eat a mouthful of the tempting breakfast set before him
+that day. He could not eat, when foreboding was hot in his throat. He
+had often ridden in the car. Usually he enjoyed the ride; but now he
+crawled rather than sprang into the tonneau. All the way up the drive,
+his great mournful eyes were turned back toward the house in dumb
+appeal. Every atom of spirit and gayety and dash were gone from
+him. He knew he was being taken away from the sweet Place he loved,
+and that the car was whizzing him along toward some dreaded fate. His
+heart was sick within him.
+
+To the born and bred show-dog this is an everyday occurrence--painful,
+but inevitable. To a chum-dog like Lad, it is heartbreaking. The big
+collie buried his head in the Mistress' lap and crouched hopelessly at
+her feet as the car chugged cityward.
+
+A thoroughly unhappy dog is the most thoroughly unhappy thing on
+earth. All the adored Mistress' coaxings and pettings could not rouse
+Lad from his dull apathy of despair. This was the hour when he was
+wont to make his stately morning rounds of The Place, at the heels of
+one of his two deities. And now, instead, these deities were carrying
+him away to something direfully unpleasant. A lesser dog would have
+howled or would have struggled crazily to break away. Lad stood his
+ground like a furry martyr, and awaited his fate.
+
+In an hour or so the ride ended. The car drew up at Madison Square--beside
+the huge yellowish building, arcaded and Diana-capped, which
+goes by the name of "Garden" and which is as nearly historic as
+any landmark in feverish New York is permitted to be.
+
+Ever since the car had entered Manhattan Island, unhappy Lad's
+nostrils had been aquiver with a million new and troublous odors. Now,
+as the car halted, these myriad strange smells were lost in one--an
+all-pervasive scent of dog. To a human, out there in the street, the
+scent was not observable. To a dog it was overwhelming.
+
+Lad, at the Master's word, stepped down from the tonneau onto the
+sidewalk. He stood there, dazedly sniffing. The plangent roar of the
+city was painful to his ears, which had always been attuned to the
+deep silences of forest and lake. And through this din he caught the
+muffled noise of the chorused barks and howls of many of his own kind.
+
+The racket that bursts so deafeningly on humans as they enter the
+Garden, during a dog-show, was wholly audible to Lad out in the street
+itself. And, as instinct or scent makes a hog flinch at going into a
+slaughterhouse, so the gallant dog's spirit quailed for a moment as he
+followed the Mistress and the Master into the building.
+
+A man who is at all familiar with the ways of dogs can tell at once
+whether a dog's bark denotes cheer or anger or terror or grief or
+curiosity. To such a man a bark is as expressive of meanings as are
+the inflections of a human voice. To another dog these meanings are
+far more intelligible. And in the timbre of the multiple barks and
+yells that now assailed his ears, Lad read nothing to allay his own
+fears.
+
+He was the hero of a half-dozen hard-won fights. He had once risked
+his life to save life. He had attacked tramps and peddlers and other
+stick-wielding invaders who had strayed into the grounds of The
+Place. Yet the tiniest semblance of fear now crept into his heart.
+
+He looked up at the Mistress, a world of sorrowing appeal in his
+eyes. At her gentle touch on his head and at a whisper of her loved
+voice, he moved onward at her side with no further hesitation. If
+these, his gods, were leading him to death, he would not question
+their right to do it, but would follow on as befitted a good soldier.
+
+Through a doorway they went. At a wicket a yawning veterinary glanced
+uninterestedly at Lad. As the dog had no outward and glaring signs of
+disease, the vet' did not so much as touch him, but with a nod
+suffered him to pass. The vet' was paid to inspect all dogs as they
+entered the show. Perhaps some of them were turned back by him,
+perhaps not; but after this, as after many another show, scores of
+kennels were swept by distemper and by other canine maladies, scores
+of deaths followed. That is one of the risks a dog-exhibitor must
+take--or rather that his luckless dogs must take--in spite of the fees
+paid to yawning veterinaries to bar out sick entrants.
+
+As Lad passed in through the doorway, he halted involuntarily in
+dismay. Dogs--dogs--DOGS! More than two thousand of them, from Great
+Dane to toy terrier, benched in row after row throughout the vast
+floor-space of the Garden! Lad had never known there were so many dogs
+on earth.
+
+Fully five hundred of them were barking or howling. The hideous volume
+of sound swelled to the Garden's vaulted roof and echoed back again
+like innumerable hammer-blows upon the eardrum.
+
+The Mistress stood holding Lad's chain and softly caressing the
+bewildered dog, while the Master went to make inquiries. Lad pressed
+his shaggy body closer to her knee for refuge, as he gazed blinkingly
+around him.
+
+In the Garden's center were several large inclosures of wire and
+reddish wood. Inside each inclosure were a table, a chair and a
+movable platform. The platform was some six inches high and four feet
+square. At corners of these "judging-rings" were blackboards on which
+the classes next to be inspected were chalked up.
+
+All around the central space were alleys, on each side of which were
+lines of raised "benches," two feet from the ground. The benches were
+carpeted with straw and were divided off by high wire partitions into
+compartments about three feet in area. Each compartment was to be the
+abiding-place of some unfortunate dog for the next four days and
+nights. By short chains the dogs were bound into these open-fronted
+cells.
+
+The chains left their wearers just leeway enough to stand up or lie
+down or to move to the various limits of the tiny space. In front of
+some of the compartments a wire barrier was fastened. This meant that
+the occupant was savage--in other words, that under the four-day
+strain he was likely to resent the stares or pokes or ticklings or
+promiscuous alien pattings of fifty thousand curious visitors.
+
+The Master came back with a plumply tipped attendant. Lad was
+conducted through a babel of yapping and snapping thoroughbreds of all
+breeds, to a section at the Garden's northeast corner, above which, in
+large black letters on a white sign, was inscribed "COLLIES." Here his
+conductors stopped before a compartment numbered "658."
+
+"Up, Laddie!" said the Mistress, touching the straw-carpeted bench.
+
+Usually, at this command, Lad was wont to spring to the indicated
+height--whether car-floor or table-top--with the lightness of a
+cat. Now, one foot after another, he very slowly climbed into the
+compartment he was already beginning to detest--the cell which was
+planned to be his only resting-spot for four interminable days. There
+he, who had never been tied, was ignominiously chained as though he
+were a runaway puppy. The insult bit to the depths of his sore
+soul. He curled down in the straw.
+
+The Mistress made him as comfortable as she could. She set before him
+the breakfast she had brought and told the attendant to bring him some
+water.
+
+The Master, meantime, had met a collie man whom he knew, and in
+company with this acquaintance he was walking along the collie-section
+examining the dogs tied there. A dozen times had the Master visited
+dog-shows; but now that Lad was on exhibition, he studied the other
+collies with new eyes.
+
+"Look!" he said boastfully to his companion, pausing before a bench
+whereon were chained a half-dozen dogs from a single illustrious
+kennel. "These fellows aren't in it with old Lad. See--their noses
+are tapered like tooth-picks, and the span of their heads, between the
+ears, isn't as wide as my palm; and their eyes are little and they
+slant like a Chinaman's; and their bodies are as curved as a
+grayhound's. Compared with Lad, some of them are freaks. That's all
+they are, just freaks--not all of them, of course, but a lot of them."
+
+"That's the idea nowadays," laughed the collie man patronizingly. "The
+up-to-date collie--this year's style, at least--is bred with a borzoi
+(wolfhound) head and with graceful, small bones. What's the use of
+his having brain and scenting-power? He's used for exhibition or kept
+as a pet nowadays--not to herd sheep. Long nose, narrow head----"
+
+"But Lad once tracked my footsteps two miles through a snowstorm,"
+bragged the Master; "and again on a road where fifty people had walked
+since I had; and he understands the meaning of every simple word.
+He----"
+
+"Yes?" said the collie man, quite unimpressed. "Very interesting--but
+not useful in a show. Some of the big exhibitors still care for sense
+in their dogs, and they make companions of them--Eileen Moretta, for
+instance, and Fred Leighton and one or two more; but I find most of
+the rest are just out for the prizes. Let's have a look at your dog.
+Where is he?"
+
+On the way down the alley toward Cell 658 they met the worried
+Mistress.
+
+"Lad won't eat a thing," she reported, "and he wouldn't eat before we
+left home this morning, either. He drinks plenty of water, but he
+won't eat. I'm afraid he's sick."
+
+"They hardly ever eat at a show," the collie man consoled her, "hardly
+a mouthful--most of the high-strung ones, but they drink quarts of
+water. This is your dog, hey?" he broke off, pausing at 658. "H'm!"
+
+He stood, legs apart, hands behind his back, gazing down at Lad. The
+dog was lying, head between paws, as before. He did not so much as
+glance up at the stranger, but his great wistful eyes roved from the
+Mistress to the Master and back again. In all this horrible place they
+two alone were his salvation.
+
+"H'm!" repeated the collie man thoughtfully. "Eyes too big and not
+enough slanted. Head too thick for length of nose. Ears too far
+apart. Eyes too far apart, too. Not enough 'terrier expression' in
+them. Too much bone, too much bulk. Wonderful coat, though--glorious
+coat! Best coat I've seen this five years. Great brush, too! What's he
+entered for? Novice, hey? May get a third with him at that. He's the
+true type--but old-fashioned. I'm afraid he's too old-fashioned for
+such fast company as he's in. Still, you never can tell. Only it's a
+pity he isn't a little more----"
+
+"I wouldn't have him one bit different in any way!" flashed the
+Mistress. "He's perfect as he is. You can't see that, though, because
+he isn't himself now. I've never seen him so crushed and woe-begone. I
+wish we had never brought him here."
+
+"You can't blame him," said the collie man philosophically. "Why, just
+suppose _you_ were brought to a strange place like this and chained
+into a cage and were left there four days and nights while hundreds of
+other prisoners kept screaming and shouting and crying at the top of
+their lungs every minute of the time! And suppose about a hundred
+thousand people kept jostling past your cage night and day, rubbering
+at you and pointing at you and trying to feel your ears and mouth, and
+chirping at you to shake hands, would _you_ feel very hungry or very
+chipper? A four-day show is the most fearful thing a high-strung dog
+can go through--next to vivisection. A little one-day show, for about
+eight hours, is no special ordeal, especially if the dog's Master
+stays near him all the time; but a four-day show is--is Sheol! I
+wonder the S. P. C. A. doesn't do something to make it easier."
+
+"If I'd known--if we'd known----" began the Mistress.
+
+"Most of these folks know!" returned the collie man. "They do it year
+after year. There's a mighty strong lure in a bit of ribbon. Why, look
+what an exhibitor will do for it! He'll risk his dog's health and make
+his dog's life a horror. He'll ship him a thousand miles in a tight
+crate from Show to Show. (Some dogs die under the strain of so many
+journeys.) And he'll pay five dollars for every class the dog's
+entered in. Some exhibitors enter a single dog in five or six classes.
+The Association charges one dollar admission to the show. Crowds of
+people pay the price to come in. The exhibitor gets none of the
+gate-money. All he gets for his five dollars or his twenty-five
+dollars is an off chance at a measly scrap of colored silk worth maybe
+four cents. That, and the same off-chance at a tiny cash prize that
+doesn't come anywhere near to paying his expenses. Yet, for all, it's
+the straightest sport on earth. Not an atom of graft in it, and seldom
+any profit.... So long! I wish you folks luck with 658."
+
+He strolled on. The Mistress was winking very fast and was bending
+over Lad, petting him and whispering to him. The Master looked in
+curiosity at a kennel man who was holding down a nearby collie while a
+second man was trimming the scared dog's feet and fetlocks with a pair
+of curved shears; and now the Master noted that nearly every dog but
+Lad was thus clipped as to ankle.
+
+At an adjoining cell a woman was sifting almost a pound of talcum
+powder into her dog's fur to make the coat fluffier. Elsewhere similar
+weird preparations were in progress. And Lad's only preparation had
+been baths and brushing! The Master began to feel like a fool.
+
+People all along the collie line presently began to brush dogs
+(smoothing the fur the wrong way to fluff it) and to put other
+finishing touches on the poor beasts' make-up. The collie man strolled
+back to 658.
+
+"The Novice class in collies is going to be called presently," he told
+the Mistress. "Where's your exhibition-leash and choke-collar? I'll
+help you put them on."
+
+"Why, we've only this chain," said the Mistress. "We bought it for
+Lad yesterday, and this is his regular collar--though he never has had
+to wear it. Do we have to have another kind?"
+
+"You don't have to unless you want to," said the collie man, "but it's
+best--especially, the choke-collar. You see, when exhibitors go into
+the ring, they hold their dogs by the leash close to the neck. And if
+their dogs have choke-collars, why, then they've _got_ to hold their
+heads high when the leash is pulled. They've got to, to keep from
+strangling. It gives them a fine, proud carriage of the head, that
+counts a lot with some judges. All dog-photos are taken that way. Then
+the leash is blotted out of the negative. Makes the dog look showy,
+too--keeps him from slumping. Can't slump much when you're trying not
+to choke, you know."
+
+"It's horrible! _Horrible!_" shuddered the Mistress. "I wouldn't put
+such a thing on Lad for all the prizes on earth. When I read Davis'
+wonderful 'Bar Sinister' story, I thought dog-shows were a real treat
+to dogs. I see, now, they're----"
+
+"Your class is called!" interrupted the collie man. "Keep his head
+high, keep him moving as showily as you can. Lead him close to you
+with the chain as short as possible. Don't be scared if any of the
+other dogs in the ring happen to fly at him. The attendants will look
+out for all that. Good luck."
+
+Down the aisle and to the wired gate of the north-eastern ring the
+unhappy Mistress piloted the unhappier Lad. The big dog gravely kept
+beside her, regardless of other collies moving in the same direction.
+The Garden had begun to fill with visitors, and the ring was
+surrounded with interested "rail-birds." The collie classes, as
+usual, were among those to be judged on the first day of the four.
+
+Through the gate into the ring the Mistress piloted Lad. Six other
+Novice dogs were already there. Beautiful creatures they were, and all
+but one were led by kennel men. At the table, behind a ledger flanked
+by piles of multicolored ribbons, sat the clerk. Beside the platform
+stood a wizened and elderly little man in tweeds. He was McGilead, who
+had been chosen as judge for the collie division. He was a Scot, and
+he was also a man with stubborn opinions of his own as to dogs.
+
+Around the ring, at the judge's order, the Novice collies were
+paraded. Most of them stepped high and fast and carried their heads
+proudly aloft--the thin choke-collars cutting deep into their furry
+necks. One entered was a harum-scarum puppy who writhed and bit and
+whirled about in ecstasy of terror.
+
+Lad moved solemnly along at the Mistress' side. He did not pant or
+curvet or look showy. He was miserable and every line of his splendid
+body showed his misery. The Mistress, too, glancing at the more
+spectacular dogs, wanted to cry--not because she was about to lose,
+but because Lad was about to lose. Her heart ached for him. Again she
+blamed herself bitterly for bringing him here.
+
+McGilead, hands in pockets, stood sucking at an empty brier pipe, and
+scanning the parade that circled around him. Presently he stepped up
+to the Mistress, checked her as she filed past him, and said to her
+with a sort of sorrowful kindness:
+
+"Please take your dog over to the far end of the ring. Take him into
+the corner where he won't be in my way while I am judging."
+
+Yes, he spoke courteously enough, but the Mistress would rather have
+had him hit her across the face. Meekly she obeyed his command. Across
+the ring, to the very farthest corner, she went--poor beautiful Lad
+beside her, disgraced, weeded out of the competition at the very
+start. There, far out of the contest, she stood, a drooping little
+figure, feeling as though everyone were sneering at her dear dog's
+disgrace.
+
+Lad seemed to sense her sorrow. For, as he stood beside her, head and
+tail low, he whined softly and licked her hand as if in encouragement.
+She ran her fingers along his silky head. Then, to keep from crying,
+she watched the other contestants.
+
+No longer were these parading. One at a time and then in twos, the
+judge was standing them on the platform. He looked at their teeth. He
+pressed their heads between his hands. He "hefted" their hips. He ran
+his fingers through their coats. He pressed his palm upward against
+their underbodies. He subjected them to a score of such annoyances,
+but he did it all with a quick and sure touch that not even the
+crankiest of them could resent.
+
+Then he stepped back and studied the quartet. After that he seemed to
+remember Lad's presence, and, as though by way of earning his fee, he
+slouched across the ring to where the forlorn Mistress was petting her
+dear disgraced dog.
+
+Lazily, perfunctorily, the judge ran his hand over Lad, with
+absolutely none of the thoroughness that had marked his inspection of
+the other dogs. Apparently there was no need to look for the finer
+points in a disqualified collie. The sketchy examination did not last
+three seconds. At its end the judge jotted down a number on a pad he
+held. Then he laid one hand heavily on Lad's head and curtly thrust
+out his other hand at the Mistress.
+
+"Can I take him away now?" she asked, still stroking Lad's fur.
+
+"Yes," rasped the judge, "and take this along with him."
+
+In his outstretched hand fluttered a little bunch of silk--dark blue,
+with gold lettering on it.
+
+The blue ribbon! First prize in the Novice class! And this grouchy
+little judge was awarding it--to _Lad!_
+
+The Mistress looked very hard at the bit of blue and gold in her
+fingers. She saw it through a queer mist. Then, as she stooped to
+fasten it to Lad's collar, she furtively kissed the tiny white spot on
+the top of his head.
+
+"It's something like the 'Bar Sinister' victory after all!" she
+exclaimed joyously as she rejoined the delighted Master at the ring
+gate. "But, oh, it was terrible for a minute or two, wasn't it?"
+
+Now, Angus McGilead, Esq. (late of Linlithgow, Scotland), had a
+knowledge of collies such as is granted to few men, and this very fact
+made him a wretchedly bad dog-show judge; as the Kennel Club,
+which--on the strength of his fame--had engaged his services for this
+single occasion, speedily learned. The greatest lawyer makes often the
+worst judge. Legal annals prove this; and the same thing applies to
+dog-experts. They are sane rather than judicial.
+
+McGilead had scant patience with the ultra-modern, inbred and
+grayhoundlike collies which had so utterly departed from their
+ancestral standards. At one glimpse he had recognized Lad as a dog
+after his own heart--a dog that brought back to him the murk and magic
+of the Highland moors.
+
+He had noted the deep chest, the mighty forequarters, the tiny white
+paws, the incredible wealth of outer- and under-coat, the brush, the
+grand head, and the soul in the eyes. This was such a dog as
+McGilead's shepherd ancestors had admitted as an honored equal, at
+hearth and board--such a dog, for brain and brawn and beauty, as a
+Highland master would no sooner sell than he would sell his own child.
+
+McGilead, therefore, had waved Lad aside while he judged the lesser
+dogs of his class, lest he be tempted to look too much at Lad and too
+little at them; and he rejoiced, at the last, to give honor where all
+honor was due.
+
+Through dreary hours that day Lad lay disconsolate in his cell, nose
+between paws, while the stream of visitors flowed sluggishly past
+him. His memory of the Guest-Law prevented him from showing his teeth
+when some of these passing humans paused in front of the compartment
+to pat him or to consult his number in their catalogues. But he
+accorded not so much as one look--to say nothing of a handshake--to
+any of them.
+
+A single drop of happiness was in his sorrow-cup. He had, seemingly,
+done something that made both the Master and the Mistress very, _very_
+proud of him. He did not know just why they should be for he had done
+nothing clever. In fact, he had been at his dullest. But they _were_
+proud of him--undeniably proud, and this made him glad, through all
+his black despondency.
+
+Even the collie man seemed to regard him with more approval than
+before--not that Lad cared at all; and two or three exhibitors came
+over for a special look at him. From one of these exhibitors the
+Mistress learned of a dog-show rule that was wholly new to her.
+
+She was told that the winning dog of each and every class was obliged
+to return later to the ring to compete in what was known as the
+Winners' class--a contest whose entrants included every class-victor
+from Novice to Open. Briefly, this special competition was to
+determine which class-winner was the best collie in the whole list of
+winners and, as such, entitled to a certain number of "points" toward
+a championship. There were eight of these winners.
+
+One or two such world-famed champions as Grey Mist and Southport
+Sample were in the show "for exhibition only." But the pick of the
+remaining leaders must compete in the winners' class--Sunnybank Lad
+among them. The Master's heart sank at this news.
+
+"I'm sorry!" he said. "You see, it's one thing to win as a Novice
+against a bunch of untried dogs, and quite another to compete against
+the best dogs in the show. I wish we could get out of it."
+
+"Never mind!" answered the Mistress. "Laddie has won his ribbon. They
+can't take that away from him. There's a silver cup for the Winners'
+class, though. I wish there had been one for the Novices."
+
+The day wore on. At last came the call for "Winners!" And for the
+second time poor Lad plodded reluctantly into the ring with the
+Mistress. But now, instead of novice dogs, he was confronted by the
+cream of colliedom.
+
+Lad's heartsick aspect showed the more intensely in such company. It
+grieved the Mistress bitterly to see his disconsolate air. She thought
+of the three days and nights to come--the nights when she and the
+Master could not be with him, when he must lie listening to the babel
+of yells and barks all around, with nobody to speak to him except some
+neglectful and sleepy attendant. And for the sake of a blue ribbon she
+had brought this upon him!
+
+The Mistress came to a sudden and highly unsportsmanlike resolution.
+
+Again the dogs paraded the ring. Again the judge studied them from
+between half-shut eyes. But this time he did not wave Lad to one
+side. The Mistress had noted, during the day, that McGilead had
+always made known his decisions by first laying his hand on the
+victor's head. And she watched breathless for such a gesture.
+
+One by one the dogs were weeded out until only two remained. Of these
+two, one was Lad--the Mistress' heart banged crazily--and the other
+was Champion Coldstream Guard. The Champion was a grand dog,
+gold-and-white of hue, perfect of coat and line, combining all that
+was best in the old and new styles of collies. He carried his head
+nobly aloft with no help from the choke-collar. His "tulip" ears hung
+at precisely the right curve.
+
+Lad and Coldstream Guard were placed shoulder to shoulder on the
+platform. Even the Mistress could not fail to contrast her pet's
+woe-begone aspect with the Champion's alert beauty.
+
+"Lad!" she said, very low, and speaking with slow intentness as
+McGilead compared the two. "Laddie, we're going home. Home! _Home_,
+Lad!"
+
+Home! At the word, a thrill went through the great dog. His shoulders
+squared. Up went his head and his ears. His dark eyes fairly glowed
+with eagerness as he looked expectantly up at the Mistress. _Home!_
+
+Yet, despite the transformation, the other was the finer dog--from a
+mere show viewpoint. The Mistress could see he was. Even the new
+uptilt of Lad's ears could not make those ears so perfect in shape and
+attitude as were the Champion's.
+
+With almost a gesture of regret McGilead laid his hand athwart
+Coldstream Guard's head. The Mistress read the verdict, and she
+accepted it.
+
+"Come, Laddie, dear," she said tenderly. "You're second, anyway,
+Reserve-Winner. That's _something_."
+
+"Wait!" snapped McGilead.
+
+The judge was seizing one of Champion Coldstream Guard's supershapely
+ears and turning it backward. His sensitive fingers, falling on the
+dog's head in token of victory, had encountered an odd stiffness in
+the curve of the ear. Now he began to examine that ear, and then the
+other, and thereby he disclosed a most clever bit of surgical
+bandaging.
+
+Neatly crisscrossed, inside each of the Champion's ears, was a
+succession of adhesive-plaster strips cut thin and running from tip to
+orifice. The scientific applying of these strips had painfully
+imparted to the prick-ears (the dog's one flaw) the perfect tulip-shape
+so desirable as a show-quality. Champion Coldstream Guard's silken
+ears could not have had other than ideal shape and posture if he
+had wanted them to--while that crisscross of sticky strips held
+them in position!
+
+Now, this was no new trick--the ruse that the Champion's handlers had
+employed. Again and again in bench-shows, it had been employed upon
+bull-terriers. A year or two ago a woman was ordered from the ring, at
+the Garden, when plaster was found inside her terrier's ears, but
+seldom before had it been detected in a collie--in which a prick-ear
+usually counts as a fatal blemish.
+
+McGilead looked at the Champion. Long and searchingly he looked at the
+man who held the Champion's leash--and who fidgeted grinningly under
+the judge's glare. Then McGilead laid both hands on Lad's great honest
+head--almost as in benediction.
+
+"Your dog wins, Madam," he said, "and while it is no part of a judge's
+duty to say so, I am heartily glad. I won't insult you by asking if he
+is for sale, but if ever you have to part with him----"
+
+He did not finish, but abruptly gave the Mistress the "Winning Class"
+rosette.
+
+And now, as Lad left the ring, hundreds of hands were put out to pat
+him. All at once he was a celebrity.
+
+Without returning the dog to the bench, the Mistress went directly to
+the collie man.
+
+"When do they present the cups?" she asked.
+
+"Not until Saturday night, I believe," said the man. "I congratulate
+you both on----"
+
+"In order to win his cup, Lad will have to stay in this--this
+inferno--for three days and nights longer?"
+
+"Of course. All the dogs----"
+
+"If he doesn't stay, he won't get the cup?"
+
+"No. It would go to the Reserve, I suppose, or to----"
+
+"Good!" declared the Mistress in relief. "Then he won't be defrauding
+anyone, and they can't rob him of his two ribbons because I have
+those."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked the puzzled collie man.
+
+But the Master understood--and approved.
+
+"Good!" he said. "I wanted all day to suggest it to you, but I didn't
+have the nerve. Come around to the Exhibitors' Entrance. I'll go ahead
+and start the car."
+
+"But what's the idea?" queried the collie man in bewilderment.
+
+"The idea," replied the Mistress, "is that the cup can go to any dog
+that wants it. Lad's coming _home_. He knows it, too. Just look
+at him. I promised him he should go home. We can get there by
+dinner-time, and he has a day's fast to make up for."
+
+"But," expostulated the scandalized collie man, "if you withdraw your
+dog like that, the Association will never allow you to exhibit him at
+its shows again."
+
+"The Association can have a pretty silver cup," retorted the Mistress,
+"to console it for losing Lad. As for exhibiting him again--well, I
+wouldn't lose these two ribbons for a hundred dollars, but I wouldn't
+put my worst enemy's dog to the torture of winning them over
+again--for a thousand. Come along, Lad, we're going back home."
+
+At the talisman-word, Lad broke silence for the first time in all that
+vilely wretched day. He broke it with a series of thunderously
+trumpeting barks that quite put to shame the puny noise-making efforts
+of every other dog in the show.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+LOST!
+
+
+Four of us were discussing abstract themes, idly, as men will, after a
+good dinner and in front of a country-house fire. Someone asked:
+
+"What is the saddest sight in everyday life? I don't mean the most
+gloomily tragic, but the saddest?"
+
+A frivolous member of the fireside group cited a helpless man between
+two quarreling women. A sentimentalist said:
+
+"A lost child in a city street."
+
+The Dog-Master contradicted:
+
+"A lost _dog_ in a city street."
+
+Nobody agreed with him of course; but that was because none of the
+others chanced to know dogs--to know their psychology--their souls, if
+you prefer. The dog-man was right. A lost dog in a city street is the
+very saddest and most hopeless sight in all a city street's abounding
+everyday sadness.
+
+A man between two quarreling women is an object piteous enough, heaven
+knows. Yet his plight verges too much on the grotesque to be called
+sad.
+
+A lost child?--No. Let a child stand in the middle of a crowded
+sidewalk and begin to cry. In one minute fifty amateur and professional
+rescuers have flocked to the Lost One's aid. An hour, at most,
+suffices to bring it in touch with its frenzied guardians.
+
+A lost dog?--Yes. No succoring cohort surges to the relief. A gang of
+boys, perhaps, may give chase, but assuredly not in kindness. A
+policeman seeking a record for "mad dog" shooting--a professional
+dog-catcher in quest of his dirty fee--these will show marked
+attention to the wanderer. But, again, not in kindness.
+
+A dog, at some turn in the street, misses his master--doubles back to
+where the human demigod was last seen--darts ahead once more to find
+him, through the press of other human folk--halts, hesitates, begins
+the same maneuvers all over again; then stands, shaking in panic at
+his utter aloneness.
+
+Get the look in his eyes, then--you who do not mind seeing such
+things--and answer, honestly: Is there anything sadder on earth? All
+this, before the pursuit of boys and the fever of thirst and the final
+knowledge of desolation have turned him from a handsome and prideful
+pet into a slinking outcast.
+
+Yes, a lost dog is the saddest thing that can meet the gaze of a man
+or woman who understands dogs. As perhaps my story may help to
+show--or perhaps not.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lad had been brushed and bathed, daily, for a week, until his
+mahogany-and-snow coat shone. All this, at The Place, far up in the
+North Jersey hinterland and all to make him presentable for the
+Westminster Kennel Show at New York's Madison Square Garden. After
+which, his two gods, the Mistress and the Master took him for a
+thirty-mile ride in The Place's only car, one morning.
+
+The drive began at The Place--the domain where Lad had ruled as King
+among the lesser folk for so many years. It ended at Madison Square
+Garden, where the annual four-day dog show was in progress.
+
+You have read how Lad fared at that show--how, at the close of the
+first day, when he had two victories to his credit, the Mistress had
+taken pity on his misery and had decreed that he should be taken home,
+without waiting out the remaining three days of torture-ordeal.
+
+The Master went out first, to get the car and bring it around
+to the side exit of the Garden. The Mistress gathered up Lad's
+belongings--his brush, his dog biscuits, etc., and followed, with Lad
+himself.
+
+Out of the huge building, with its reverberating barks and yells from
+two thousand canine throats, she went. Lad paced, happy and majestic,
+at her side. He knew he was going home, and the unhappiness of the
+hideous day dropped from him.
+
+At the exit, the Mistress was forced to leave a deposit of five
+dollars, "to insure the return of the dog to his bench" (to which
+bench of agony she vowed, secretly, Lad should never return). Then she
+was told the law demands that all dogs in New York City streets shall
+be muzzled.
+
+In vain she explained that Lad would be in the streets only for such
+brief time as the car would require to journey to the One Hundred and
+Thirtieth Street ferry. The door attendant insisted that the law was
+inexorable. So, lest a policeman hold up the car for such disobedience
+to the city statutes, the Mistress reluctantly bought a muzzle.
+
+It was a big, awkward thing, made of steel, and bound on with leather
+straps. It looked like a rat-trap. And it fenced in the nose and
+mouth of its owner with a wicked criss-cross of shiny metal bars.
+
+Never in all his years had Lad worn a muzzle. Never, until to-day,
+had he been chained. The splendid eighty-pound collie had been as free
+of The Place and of the forests as any human; and with no worse
+restrictions than his own soul and conscience put upon him.
+
+To him this muzzle was a horror. Not even the loved touch of the
+Mistress' dear fingers, as she adjusted the thing to his beautiful
+head, could lessen the degradation. And the discomfort of it--a
+discomfort that amounted to actual pain--was almost as bad as the
+humiliation.
+
+With his absurdly tiny white forepaws, the huge dog sought to dislodge
+the torture-implement. He strove to rub it off against the Mistress'
+skirt. But beyond shifting it so that the forehead strap covered one
+of his eyes, he could not budge it.
+
+Lad looked up at the Mistress in wretched appeal. His look held no
+resentment, nothing but sad entreaty. She was his deity. All his life
+she had given him of her gentleness, her affection, her sweet
+understanding. Yet, to-day, she had brought him to this abode of noisy
+torment, and had kept him there from morning to dusk. And now--just as
+the vigil seemed ended--she was tormenting him, to nerve-rack, by this
+contraption she had fastened over his nose. Lad did not rebel. But he
+besought. And the Mistress understood.
+
+"Laddie, dear!" she whispered, as she led him across the sidewalk to
+the curb where the Master waited for the car. "Laddie, old friend,
+I'm just as sorry about it as you are. But it's only for a few
+minutes. Just as soon as we get to the ferry, we'll take it off and
+throw it into the river. And we'll never bring you again where dogs
+have to wear such things. I promise. It's only for a few minutes."
+
+The Mistress, for once, was mistaken. Lad was to wear the accursed
+muzzle for much, _much_ longer than "a few minutes."
+
+"Give him the back seat to himself, and come in front here with me,"
+suggested the Master, as the Mistress and Lad arrived alongside the
+car. "The poor old chap has been so cramped up and pestered all day
+that he'll like to have a whole seat to stretch out on."
+
+Accordingly, the Mistress opened the door and motioned Lad to the back
+seat. At a bound the collie was on the cushion, and proceeded to curl
+up thereon. The Mistress got into the front seat with the Master. The
+car set forth on its six-mile run to the ferry.
+
+Now that his face was turned homeward, Lad might have found vast
+interest in his new surroundings, had not the horrible muzzle absorbed
+all his powers of emotion. The Milan Cathedral, the Taj Mahal, the
+Valley of the Arno at sunset--these be sights to dream of for
+years. But show them to a man who has an ulcerated tooth, or whose
+tight, new shoes pinch his soft corn, and he will probably regard them
+as Lad just then viewed the twilight New York streets.
+
+He was a dog of forest and lake and hill, this giant collie with his
+mighty shoulders and tiny white feet and shaggy burnished coat and
+mournful eyes. Never before had he been in a city. The myriad blended
+noises confused and deafened him. The myriad blended smells assailed
+his keen nostrils. The swirl of countless multicolored lights stung
+and blurred his vision. Noises, smells and lights were all jarringly
+new to him. So were the jostling masses of people on the sidewalk and
+the tangle and hustle of vehicular traffic through which the Master
+was threading the car's way with such difficulty.
+
+But, newest and most sickening of all the day's novelties was the
+muzzle.
+
+Lad was quite certain the Mistress did not realize how the muzzle was
+hurting him nor how he detested it. In all her dealings with him--or
+with anyone or anything else--the Mistress had never been unkind; and
+most assuredly not cruel. It must be she did not understand. At all
+events, she had not scolded or forbidden, when he had tried to rub the
+muzzle off. So the wearing of this new torture was apparently no part
+of the Law. And Lad felt justified in striving again to remove it.
+
+In vain he pawed the thing, first with one foot, then with both. He
+could joggle it from side to side, but that was all. And each shift of
+the steel bars hurt his tender nose and tenderer sensibilities worse
+than the one before. He tried to rub it off against the seat
+cushion--with the same distressing result.
+
+Lad looked up at the backs of his gods, and whined very softly. The
+sound went unheard, in the babel of noise all around him. Nor did the
+Mistress, or the Master turn around, on general principles, to speak a
+word of cheer to the sufferer. They were in a mixup of crossways
+traffic that called for every atom of their attention, if they were to
+avoid collision. It was no time for conversation or for dog-patting.
+
+Lad got to his feet and stood, uncertainly, on the slippery leather
+cushion, seeking to maintain his balance, while he rubbed a corner of
+the muzzle against one of the supports of the car's lowered top.
+Working away with all his might, he sought to get leverage that would
+pry loose the muzzle.
+
+Just then there was a brief gap in the traffic. The Master put on
+speed, and, darting ahead of a delivery truck, sharply rounded the
+corner into a side street.
+
+The car's sudden twist threw Lad clean off his precarious balance on
+the seat, and hurled him against one of the rear doors.
+
+The door, insecurely shut, could not withstand the eighty-pound
+impact. It burst open. And Lad was flung out onto the greasy asphalt
+of the avenue.
+
+He landed full on his side, in the muck of the roadway, with a force
+that shook the breath clean out of him. Directly above his head glared
+the twin lights of the delivery truck the Master had just shot
+past. The truck was going at a good twelve miles an hour. And the dog
+had fallen within six feet of its fat front wheels.
+
+Now, a collie is like no other animal on earth. He is, at worst, more
+wolf than dog. And, at best, he has more of the wolf's lightning-swift
+instinct than has any other breed of canine. For which reason Lad was
+not, then and there, smashed, flat and dead, under the fore-wheels of
+a three-ton truck.
+
+Even as the tires grazed his fur, Lad gathered himself compactly
+together, his feet well under him, and sprang far to one side. The
+lumbering truck missed him by less than six inches. But it missed him.
+
+His leap brought him scramblingly down on all fours, out of the
+truck's way, but on the wrong side of the thoroughfare. It brought him
+under the very fender of a touring car that was going at a good pace
+in the opposite direction. And again, a leap that was inspired by
+quick instinct alone, lifted the dog free of this newest death-menace.
+
+He halted and stared piteously around in search of his deities. But in
+that glare and swelter of traffic, a trained human eye could not have
+recognized any particular car. Moreover, the Mistress and Master were
+a full half-block away, down the less crowded side street, and were
+making up for lost time by putting on all the speed they dared, before
+turning into the next westward traffic-artery. They did not look
+back, for there was a car directly in front of them, whose driver
+seemed uncertain as to his wheel control, and the Master was
+manoeuvering to pass it in safety.
+
+Not until they had reached the lower end of Riverside Drive, nearly a
+mile to the north, did either the Master or Mistress turn around for a
+word with the dog they loved.
+
+Meantime, Lad was standing, irresolute and panting, in the middle of
+Columbus Circle. Cars of a million types, from flivver to trolley,
+seemed to be whizzing directly at him from every direction at once.
+
+A bound, a dodge, or a deft shrinking back would carry him out of one
+such peril--barely out of it--when another, or fifty others, beset
+him.
+
+And, all the time, even while he was trying to duck out of danger, his
+frightened eyes and his pulsing nostrils sought the Mistress and the
+Master.
+
+His eyes, in that mixture of flare and dusk, told him nothing except
+that a host of motors were likely to kill him. But his nose told him
+what it had not been able to tell him since morning--namely, that,
+through the reek of gasoline and horseflesh and countless human
+scents, there was a nearness of fields and woods and water. And,
+toward that blessed mingling of familiar odors he dodged his
+threatened way.
+
+By a miracle of luck and skill he crossed Columbus Circle, and came to
+a standstill on a sidewalk, beside a low gray stone wall. Behind
+the wall, his nose taught him, lay miles of meadow and wood and
+lake--Central Park. But the smell of the Park brought him no scent of
+the Mistress nor of the Master. And it was they--infinitely more than
+his beloved countryside--that he craved. He ran up the street, on the
+sidewalk, for a few rods, hesitant, alert, watching in every
+direction. Then, perhaps seeing a figure, in the other direction, that
+looked familiar, he dashed at top speed, eastward, for half a
+block. Then he made a peril-fraught sortie out into the middle of the
+traffic-humming street, deceived by the look of a passing car.
+
+The car was traveling at twenty miles an hour. But, in less than a
+block, Lad caught up with it. And this, in spite of the many things
+he had to dodge, and the greasy slipperiness of the unfamiliar
+roadway. An upward glance, as he came alongside the car, told him his
+chase was in vain. And he made his precarious way to the sidewalk once
+more.
+
+There he stood, bewildered, heartsick--lost!
+
+Yes, he was lost. And he realized it--realized it as fully as would a
+city-dweller snatched up by magic and set down amid the trackless
+Himalayas. He was lost. And Horror bit deep into his soul.
+
+The average dog might have continued to waste energy and risk life by
+galloping aimlessly back and forth, running hopefully up to every
+stranger he met; then slinking off in scared disappointment and
+searching afresh.
+
+Lad was too wise for that. He was lost. His adored Mistress had
+somehow left him; as had the Master; in this bedlam place--all
+alone. He stood there, hopeless, head and tail adroop, his great heart
+dead within him.
+
+Presently he became aware once more that he was still wearing his
+abominable muzzle. In the stress of the past few minutes Lad had
+actually forgotten the pain and vexation of the thing. Now, the memory
+of it came back, to add to his despair.
+
+And, as a sick animal will ever creep to the woods and the waste
+places for solitude, so the soul-sick Lad now turned from the clangor
+and evil odors of the street to seek the stretch of country-land he
+had scented.
+
+Over the gray wall he sprang, and came earthward with a crash among
+the leafless shrubs that edged the south boundary of Central Park.
+
+Here in the Park there were people and lights and motor-cars, too, but
+they were few, and they were far off. Around the dog was a grateful
+darkness and aloneness. He lay down on the dead grass and panted.
+
+The time was late February. The weather of the past day or two had
+been mild. The brown-gray earth and the black trees had a faint odor
+of slow-coming spring, though no nostrils less acute than a dog's
+could have noted it.
+
+Through the misery at his heart and the carking pain from his muzzle,
+Lad began to realize that he was tired, also that he was hollow from
+lack of food. The long day's ordeal of the dog show had wearied him
+and had worn down his nerves more than could a fifty-mile run. The
+nasty thrills of the past half-hour had completed his fatigue. He had
+eaten nothing all day. Like most high-strung dogs at a show, he had
+drunk a great deal of water and had refused to touch a morsel of food.
+
+He was not hungry even now for, in a dog, hunger goes only with peace
+of mind, but he was cruelly thirsty. He got up from his slushy couch
+on the dead turf and trotted wearily toward the nearest branch of the
+Central Park lake. At the brink he stooped to drink.
+
+Soggy ice still covered the lake, but the mild weather had left a
+half-inch skim of water over it. Lad tried to lap up enough of this
+water to allay his craving thirst. He could not.
+
+The muzzle protruded nearly an inch beyond his nose. Either through
+faulty adjustment or from his own futile efforts to scrape it off, the
+awkward steel hinge had become jammed and would not open. Lad could
+not get his teeth a half-inch apart.
+
+After much effort he managed to protrude the end of his pink tongue
+and to touch the water with it, but it was a painful and drearily slow
+process absorbing water drop by drop in this way. More through fatigue
+than because his thirst was slaked, he stopped at last and turned away
+from the lake.
+
+The next half-hour was spent in a diligent and torturing and wholly
+useless attempt to rid himself of his muzzle.
+
+After which the dog lay panting and athirst once more; his tender nose
+sore and bruised and bleeding; the muzzle as firmly fixed in place as
+ever. Another journey to the lake and another Tantalus-effort to
+drink--and the pitifully harassed dog's uncanny brain began to work.
+
+He no longer let himself heed the muzzle. Experience of the most
+painful sort had told him he could not dislodge it nor, in that
+clamorous and ill-smelling city beyond the park wall, could he hope to
+find the Mistress and the Master. These things being certain, his mind
+went on to the next step, and the next step was--Home!
+
+Home! The Place where his happy, beautiful life had been spent, where
+his two gods abode, where there were no clang and reek and peril as
+here in New York. Home!--The House of Peace!
+
+Lad stood up. He drew in great breaths of the muggy air, and he turned
+slowly about two or three times, head up, nostrils aquiver. For a
+full minute he stood thus. Then he lowered his head and trotted
+westward. No longer he moved uncertainly, but with as much sureness as
+if he were traversing the forest behind The Place--the forest that had
+been his roaming-ground since puppyhood.
+
+(Now, this is not a fairy story, nor any other type of fanciful yarn,
+so I do not pretend to account for Lad's heading unswervingly toward
+the northwest in the exact direction of The Place, thirty miles
+distant, any more than I can account for the authenticated case of a
+collie who, in 1917, made his way four hundred miles from the home of
+a new owner in southern Georgia to the doorstep of his former and
+better loved master in the mountains of North Carolina; any more than
+I can account for the flight of a homing pigeon or for that of the
+northbound duck in Spring. God gives to certain animals a whole set of
+mystic traits which He withholds utterly from humans. No dog-student
+can doubt that, and no dog-student or deep-delving psychologist can
+explain it.)
+
+Northwestward jogged Lad, and in half a mile he came to the low
+western wall of Central Park. Without turning aside to seek a
+gateway, he cleared the wall and found himself on Eighth Avenue in the
+very middle of a block.
+
+Keeping on the sidewalk and paying no heed to the few pedestrians, he
+moved along to the next westward street and turned down it toward the
+Hudson River. So calmly and certainly did he move that none would have
+taken him for a lost dog.
+
+Under the roaring elevated road at Columbus Avenue, he trotted; his
+ears tormented by the racket of a train that reverberated above him;
+his sense so blurred by the sound that he all but forgot to dodge a
+southbound trolley car.
+
+Down the cross street to Amsterdam Avenue he bore. A patrolman on his
+way to the West Sixty-ninth Street police station to report for night
+duty, was so taken up by his own lofty thoughts that he quite forgot
+to glance at the big mud-spattered dog that padded past him.
+
+For this lack of observation the patrolman was destined to lose a good
+opportunity for fattening his monthly pay. Because, on reaching the
+station, he learned that a distressed man and woman had just been
+there in a car to offer a fifty-dollar reward for the finding of a big
+mahogany-and-white collie, answering to the name of "Lad."
+
+As the dog reached Amsterdam Avenue a high little voice squealed
+delightedly at him. A three-year-old baby--a mere fluff of gold and
+white and pink--was crossing the avenue convoyed by a fat woman in
+black. Lad was jogging by the mother and child when the latter
+discovered the passing dog.
+
+With a shriek of joyous friendliness the baby flung herself upon Lad
+and wrapped both arms about his shaggy neck.
+
+"Why _doggie!_" she shrilled, ecstatically. "Why, dear, _dear_
+doggie!"
+
+Now Lad was in dire haste to get home, and Lad was in dire misery of
+mind and body, but his big heart went out in eagerly loving answer to
+the impulsive caress. He worshipped children, and would cheerfully
+endure from them any amount of mauling.
+
+At the baby embrace and the baby voice, he stopped short in his
+progress. His plumy tail wagged in glad friendliness; his muzzled nose
+sought wistfully to kiss the pink little face on a level with his
+own. The baby tightened her hug, and laid her rose leaf cheek close to
+his own.
+
+"I love you, Miss Doggie!" she whispered in Lad's ear.
+
+Then the fat woman in black bore down upon them. Fiercely, she
+yanked the baby away from the dog. Then, seeing that the mud on
+Lad's shoulder had soiled the child's white coat, she whirled a
+string-fastened bundle aloft and brought it down with a resounding
+thwack over the dog's head.
+
+Lad winched under the heavy blow, then hot resentment blazed through
+his first instant of grieved astonishment. This unpleasant fat
+creature in black was not a man, wherefore Lad contented himself by
+baring his white teeth, and with growling deep menace far down in his
+throat.
+
+The woman shrank back scared, and she screamed loudly. On the instant
+the station-bound patrolman was beside her.
+
+"What's wrong, ma'am?" asked the bluecoat.
+
+The woman pointed a wobbly and fat forefinger at Lad, who had taken up
+his westward journey again and was halfway across the street.
+
+"Mad dog!" she sputtered, hysterically. "He--he bit me! Bit _at_ me,
+anyhow!"
+
+Without waiting to hear the last qualifying sentence, the patrolman
+gave chase. Here was a chance for honorable blotter-mention at the
+very least. As he ran he drew his pistol.
+
+Lad had reached the westward pavement of Amsterdam Avenue and was in
+the side street beyond. He was not hurrying, but his short wolf-trot
+ate up ground in deceptively quick time.
+
+By the time the policeman had reached the west corner of street and
+avenue the dog was nearly a half-block ahead. The officer, still
+running, leveled his pistol and fired.
+
+Now, anyone (but a very newly-appointed patrolman or a movie-hero)
+knows that to fire a shot when running is worse than fatal to any
+chance of accuracy. No marksman--no one who has the remotest knowledge
+of marksmanship--will do such a thing. The very best pistol-expert
+cannot hope to hit his target if he is joggling his own arm and his
+whole body by the motion of running.
+
+The bullet flew high and to the right, smashing a second-story window
+and making the echoes resound deafeningly through the narrow street.
+
+"What's up?" excitedly asked a boy, who stood beside a barrel bonfire
+with a group of chums.
+
+"Mad dog!" puffed the policeman as he sped past.
+
+At once the boys joined gleesomely in the chase, outdistancing the
+officer, just as the latter fired a second shot.
+
+Lad felt a white-hot ridge of pain cut along his left flank like a
+whip-lash. He wheeled to face his invisible foe, and he found
+himself looking at a half-dozen boys who charged whoopingly down on
+him. Behind the boys clumped a man in blue flourishing something
+bright.
+
+Lad had no taste for this sort of attention. Always he had loathed
+strangers, and these new strangers seemed bent on catching him--on
+barring his homeward way.
+
+He wheeled around again and continued his westward journey at a faster
+pace. The hue-and-cry broke into louder yells and three or four new
+recruits joined the pursuers. The yap of "Mad dog! _Mad dog!_" filled
+the air.
+
+Not one of these people--not even the policeman himself--had any
+evidence that the collie was mad. There are not two really rabid dogs
+seen at large in New York or in any other city in the course of a
+year. Yet, at the back of the human throat ever lurks that fool-cry of
+"Mad dog!"--ever ready to leap forth into shouted words at the
+faintest provocation.
+
+One wonders, disgustedly, how many thousand luckless and totally
+harmless pet dogs in the course of a year are thus hunted down and
+shot or kicked or stoned to death in the sacred name of Humanity, just
+because some idiot mistakes a hanging tongue or an uncertainty of
+direction for signs of that semi-phantom malady known as "rabies."
+
+A dog is lost. He wanders to and fro in bewilderment. Boys pelt or
+chase him. His tongue lolls and his eyes glaze with fear. Then, ever,
+rises the yell of "Mad Dog!" And a friendly, lovable pet is joyfully
+done to death.
+
+Lad crossed Broadway, threading his way through the trolley-and-taxi
+procession, and galloped down the hill toward Riverside Park. Close
+always at his heels followed the shouting crowd. Twice, by sprinting,
+the patrolman gained the front rank of the hunt, and twice he
+fired--both bullets going wide. Across West End Avenue and across
+Riverside Drive went Lad, hard-pressed and fleeing at top speed. The
+cross-street ran directly down to a pier that jutted a hundred feet
+out into the Hudson River.
+
+Along this pier flew Lad, not in panic terror, but none the less
+resolved that these howling New Yorkers should not catch him and
+prevent his going home.
+
+Onto the pier the clattering hue-and-cry followed. A dock watchman,
+as Lad flashed by, hurled a heavy joist of wood at the dog. It whizzed
+past the flying hind legs, scoring the barest of misses.
+
+And now Lad was at the pier end. Behind him the crowd raced; sure it
+had the dangerous brute cornered at last.
+
+On the string-piece the collie paused for the briefest of moments
+glancing to north and to south. Everywhere the wide river stretched
+away, unbridged. It must be crossed if he would continue his homeward
+course, and there was but one way for him to cross it.
+
+The watchman, hard at his heels, swung upward the club he carried.
+Down came the club with murderous force--upon the stringpiece
+where Lad had been standing.
+
+Lad was no longer there. One great bound had carried him over the edge
+and into the black water below.
+
+Down he plunged into the river and far, far under it, fighting his way
+gaspingly to the surface. The water that gushed into his mouth and
+nostrils was salty and foul, not at all like the water of the lake at
+the edge of The Place. It sickened him. And the February chill of the
+river cut into him like a million ice-needles.
+
+To the surface he came, and struck out valorously for the opposite
+shore much more than a mile away. As his beautiful head appeared, a
+yell went up from the clustering riff-raff at the pier end. Bits of
+wood and coal began to shower the water all around him. A pistol shot
+plopped into the river a bare six inches away from him.
+
+But the light was bad and the stream was a tossing mass of blackness
+and of light-blurs, and presently the dog swam, unscathed, beyond the
+range of missiles.
+
+Now a swim of a mile or of two miles was no special exploit for
+Lad--even in ice-cold water, but this water was not like any he had
+swum in. The tide was at the turn for one thing, and while, in a way,
+this helped him, yet the myriad eddies and cross-currents engendered
+by it turned and jostled and buffeted him in a most perplexing
+way. And there were spars and barrels and other obstacles that were
+forever looming up just in front of him or else banging against his
+heaving sides.
+
+Once a revenue cutter passed not thirty feet ahead of him. Its wake
+caught the dog and sucked him under and spun his body around and
+around before he could fight clear of it.
+
+His lungs were bursting. He was worn out. He felt as sore as if he had
+been kicked for an hour. The bullet-graze along his flank was hurting
+him as the salt water bit into it, and the muzzle half-blinded,
+half-smothered him.
+
+But, because of his hero heart rather than through his splendid
+strength and wisdom, he kept on.
+
+For an hour or more he swam until at last his body and brain were
+numb, and only the mechanical action of his wrenched muscles held him
+in motion. Twice tugs narrowly escaped running him down, and in the
+wake of each he waged a fearful fight for life.
+
+After a century of effort his groping forepaws felt the impact of a
+submerged rock, then of another, and with his last vestige of strength
+Lad crawled feebly ashore on a narrow sandspit at the base of the
+elephant-gray Palisades. There, he collapsed and lay shivering,
+panting, struggling for breath.
+
+Long he lay there, letting Nature bring back some of his wind and his
+motive-power, his shaggy body one huge pulsing ache.
+
+When he was able to move, he took up his journey. Sometimes swimming,
+sometimes on ground, he skirted the Palisades-foot to northward, until
+he found one of the several precipice-paths that Sunday picnickers
+love to climb. Up this he made his tottering way, slowly; conserving
+his strength as best he could.
+
+On the summit he lay down again to rest. Behind him, across the
+stretch of black and lamp-flecked water, rose the inky skyline of the
+city with a lurid furnace-glow between its crevices that smote the
+sky. Ahead was a plateau with a downward slope beyond it.
+
+Once more, getting to his feet, Lad stood and sniffed, turning his
+head from side to side, muzzled nose aloft. Then, his bearings taken,
+he set off again, but this time his jog-trot was slower and his light
+step was growing heavier. The terrible strain of his swim was passing
+from his mighty sinews, but it was passing slowly because he was so
+tired and empty and in such pain of body and mind. He saved his
+energies until he should have more of them to save.
+
+Across the plateau, down the slope, and then across the interminable
+salt meadows to westward he traveled; sometimes on road or path,
+sometimes across field or hill, but always in an unswerving straight
+line.
+
+It was a little before midnight that he breasted the first rise of
+Jersey hills above Hackensack. Through a lightless one-street village
+he went, head low, stride lumbering, the muzzle weighing a ton and
+composed of molten iron and hornet stings.
+
+It was the muzzle--now his first fatigue had slackened--that galled
+him worst. Its torture was beginning to do queer things to his nerves
+and brain. Even a stolid, nerveless dog hates a muzzle. More than one
+sensitive dog has been driven crazy by it.
+
+Thirst--intolerable thirst--was torturing Lad. He could not drink at
+the pools and brooks he crossed. So tight-jammed was the steel
+jaw-hinge now that he could not even open his mouth to pant, which is
+the cruelest deprivation a dog can suffer.
+
+Out of the shadows of a ramshackle hovel's front yard dived a
+monstrous shape that hurled itself ferociously on the passing collie.
+
+A mongrel watchdog--part mastiff, part hound, part anything you
+choose--had been dozing on his squatter-owner's doorstep when the
+pad-pad-pad of Lad's wearily-jogging feet had sounded on the road.
+
+Other dogs, more than one of them, during the journey had run out to
+yap or growl at the wanderer, but as Lad had been big and had followed
+an unhesitant course they had not gone to the length of actual attack.
+
+This mongrel, however, was less prudent. Or, perhaps, dog-fashion, he
+realized that the muzzle rendered Lad powerless and therefore saw
+every prospect of a safe and easy victory. At all events, he gave no
+warning bark or growl as he shot forward to the attack.
+
+Lad--his eyes dim with fatigue and road dust, his ears dulled by water
+and by noise--did not hear nor see the foe. His first notice of the
+attack was a flying weight of seventy-odd pounds that crashed against
+his flank. A double set of fangs in the same instant, sank into his
+shoulder.
+
+Under the onslaught Lad fell sprawlingly into the road on his left
+side, his enemy upon him.
+
+As Lad went down the mongrel deftly shifted his unprofitable shoulder
+grip to a far more promisingly murderous hold on his fallen victim's
+throat.
+
+A cat has five sets of deadly weapons--its four feet and its jaws. So
+has every animal on earth--human and otherwise--except a dog. A dog is
+terrible by reason of its teeth. Encase the mouth in a muzzle and a
+dog is as helpless for offensive warfare as is a newborn baby.
+
+And Lad was thus pitiably impotent to return his foe's attack.
+Exhausted, flung prone to earth, his mighty jaws muzzled, he
+seemed as good as dead.
+
+But a collie down is not a collie beaten. The wolf-strain provides
+against that. Even as he fell Lad instinctively gathered his legs
+under him as he had done when he tumbled from the car.
+
+And, almost at once, he was on his feet again, snarling horribly and
+lunging to break the mongrel's throat-grip. His weariness was
+forgotten and his wondrous reserve strength leaped into play. Which
+was all the good it did him; for he knew as well as the mongrel that
+he was powerless to use his teeth.
+
+The throat of a collie--except in one small vulnerable spot--is
+armored by a veritable mattress of hair. Into this hair the mongrel
+had driven his teeth. The hair filled his mouth, but his grinding jaws
+encountered little else to close on.
+
+A lurching jerk of Lad's strong frame tore loose the savagely
+inefficient hold. The mongrel sprang at him for a fresh grip. Lad
+reared to meet him, opposing his mighty chest to the charge and
+snapping powerlessly with his close-locked mouth.
+
+The force of Lad's rearing leap sent the mongrel spinning back by
+sheer weight, but at once he drove in again to the assault. This time
+he did not give his muzzled antagonist a chance to rear, but sprang at
+Lad's flank. Lad wheeled to meet the rush and, opposing his shoulder
+to it, broke its force.
+
+Seeing himself so helpless, this was of course the time for Lad
+to take to his heels and try to outrun the enemy he could not
+outfight. To stand his ground was to be torn, eventually, to death.
+Being anything but a fool Lad knew that; yet he ignored the chance of
+safety and continued to fight the worse-than-hopeless battle.
+
+Twice and thrice his wit and his uncanny swiftness enabled him to
+block the big mongrel's rushes. The fourth time, as he sought to
+rear, his hind foot slipped on a skim of puddle-ice.
+
+Down went Lad in a heap, and the mongrel struck.
+
+Before the collie could regain his feet the mongrel's teeth had found
+a hold on the side of Lad's throat. Pinning down the muzzled dog, the
+mongrel proceeded to improve his hold by grinding his way toward the
+jugular. Now his teeth encountered something more solid than mere
+hair. They met upon a thin leather strap.
+
+Fiercely the mongrel gnawed at this solid obstacle, his rage-hot brain
+possibly mistaking it for flesh. Lad writhed to free himself and to
+regain his feet, but seventy-five pounds of fighting weight were
+holding his neck to the ground.
+
+Of a sudden, the mongrel growled in savage triumph. The strap was
+bitten through!
+
+Clinging to the broken end of the leather the victor gave one final
+tug. The pull drove the steel bars excruciatingly deep into Lad's
+bruised nose for a moment. Then, by magic, the torture-implement was
+no longer on his head but was dangling by one strap between the
+muzzled mongrel's jaws.
+
+With a motion so swift that the eye could not follow it, Lad was on
+his feet and plunging deliriously into the fray. Through a miracle,
+his jaws were free; his torment was over. The joy of deliverance sent
+a glow of Berserk vigor sweeping through him.
+
+The mongrel dropped the muzzle and came eagerly to the battle. To his
+dismay he found himself fighting not a helpless dog, but a maniac
+wolf. Lad sought no permanent hold. With dizzying quickness his head
+and body moved--and kept moving, and every motion meant a deep slash
+or a ragged tear in his enemy's short-coated hide.
+
+With ridiculous ease the collie eluded the mongrel's awkward
+counter-attacks, and ever kept boring in. To the quivering bone his
+short front teeth sank. Deep and bloodily his curved tusks slashed--as
+the wolf and the collie alone can slash.
+
+The mongrel, swept off his feet, rolled howling into the road; and Lad
+tore grimly at the exposed under-body.
+
+Up went a window in the hovel. A man's voice shouted. A woman in a
+house across the way screamed. Lad glanced up to note this new
+diversion. The stricken mongrel yelping in terror and agony seized
+the second respite to scamper back to the doorstep, howling at every
+jump.
+
+Lad did not pursue him, but jogged along on his journey without one
+backward look.
+
+At a rivulet, a mile beyond, he stopped to drink. And he drank for
+ten minutes. Then he went on. Unmuzzled and with his thirst slaked,
+he forgot his pain, his fatigue, his muddy and blood-caked and abraded
+coat, and the memory of his nightmare day.
+
+He was going home!
+
+At gray dawn the Mistress and the Master turned in at the gateway of
+The Place. All night they had sought Lad; from one end of Manhattan
+Island to the other--from Police Headquarters to dog pound--they had
+driven. And now the Master was bringing his tired and heartsore wife
+home to rest, while he himself should return to town and to the
+search.
+
+The car chugged dispiritedly down the driveway to the house, but
+before it had traversed half the distance the dawn-hush was shattered
+by a thundrous bark of challenge to the invaders.
+
+Lad, from his post of guard on the veranda, ran stiffly forward to bar
+the way. Then as he ran his eyes and nose suddenly told him these
+mysterious newcomers were his gods.
+
+The Mistress, with a gasp of rapturous unbelief, was jumping down from
+the car before it came to a halt. On her knees, she caught Lad's muddy
+and bloody head tight in her arms.
+
+"Oh, Lad;" she sobbed incoherently. "Laddie! _Laddie!_"
+
+Whereat, by another miracle, Lad's stiffness and hurts and weariness
+were gone. He strove to lick the dear face bending so tearfully above
+him. Then, with an abandon of puppylike joy, he rolled on the ground
+waving all four soiled little feet in the air and playfully pretending
+to snap at the loving hands that caressed him.
+
+Which was ridiculous conduct for a stately and full-grown collie. But
+Lad didn't care, because it made the Mistress stop crying and
+laugh. And that was what Lad most wanted her to do.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE THROWBACK
+
+
+The Place was nine miles north of the county-seat city of Paterson.
+And yearly, near Paterson, was held the great North Jersey Livestock
+Fair--a fair whose awards established for the next twelve-month
+the local rank of purebred cattle and sheep and pigs for thirty
+miles in either direction.
+
+From the Ramapo hill pastures, south of Suffern, two days before the
+fair, descended a flock of twenty prize sheep--the playthings of a man
+to whom the title of Wall Street Farmer had a lure of its own--a lure
+that cost him something like $30,000 a year; and which made him a
+scourge to all his few friends.
+
+Among these luckless friends chanced to be the Mistress and the Master
+of The Place. And the Gentleman Farmer had decided to break his
+sheep's fair-ward journey by a twenty-four-hour stop at The Place.
+
+The Master, duly apprised of the sorry honor planned for his home, set
+aside a disused horse-paddock for the woolly visitors' use. Into this
+their shepherd drove his dusty and bleating charges on their arrival.
+
+The shepherd was a somber Scot. Nature had begun the work of
+somberness in his Highland heart. The duty of working for the Wall
+Street Farmer had added tenfold to the natural tendency. His name was
+McGillicuddy, and he looked it.
+
+Now, in northern New Jersey a live sheep is well nigh as rare as a
+pterodactyl. This flock of twenty had cost their owner their weight in
+merino wool. A dog--especially a collie--that does not know sheep, is
+prone to consider them his lawful prey, in other words, the sight of a
+sheep has turned many an otherwise law-abiding dog into a killer.
+
+To avoid so black a smirch on The Place's hospitality, the Master had
+loaded all his collies, except Lad, into the car, and had shipped them
+off, that morning, for a three-day sojourn at the boarding kennels,
+ten miles away.
+
+"Does the Old Dog go, too, sir?" asked The Place's foreman, with a
+questioning nod at Lad, after he had lifted the others into the
+tonneau.
+
+Lad was viewing the proceedings from the top of the veranda steps. The
+Master looked at him, then at the car, and answered:
+
+"No. Lad has more right here than any measly imported sheep. He won't
+bother them if I tell him not to. Let him stay."
+
+The sheep, convoyed by the misanthropic McGillicuddy, filed down the
+drive, from the highroad, an hour later, and were marshaled into the
+corral.
+
+As the jostling procession, followed by its dour shepherd, turned in
+at the gate of The Place, Lad rose from his rug on the veranda. His
+nostrils itching with the unfamiliar odor, his soft eyes outraged by
+the bizarre sight, he set forth to drive the intruders out into the
+main road.
+
+Head lowered, he ran, uttering no sound. This seemed to him an
+emergency which called for drastic measures rather than for monitory
+barking. For all he knew, these twenty fat, woolly, white things
+might be fighters who would attack him in a body, and who might even
+menace the safety of his gods; and the glum McGillicuddy did not
+impress him at all favorably. Hence the silent charge at the foe--a
+charge launched with the speed and terrible menace of a thunderbolt.
+
+McGillicuddy sprang swiftly to the front of his flock, staff
+upwhirled; but before the staff could descend on the furry defender of
+The Place, a sweet voice called imperiously to the dog.
+
+The Mistress had come out upon the veranda and had seen Lad dash to
+the attack.
+
+"Lad!" she cried. "_Lad!_"
+
+The great dog halted midway in his rush.
+
+"Down!" called the Mistress. "Leave them alone! Do you hear, Lad?
+_Leave them alone!_ Come back here!"
+
+Lad heard, and Lad obeyed. Lad always obeyed. If these twenty
+malodorous strangers and their staff-brandishing guide were friends of
+the Mistress he must not drive them away. The order "Leave them
+alone!" was one that could not be disregarded.
+
+Trembling with anger, yet with no thought of rebelling, Lad turned and
+trotted back to the veranda. He thrust his cold nose into the
+Mistress' warm little hand and looked up eagerly into her face,
+seeking a repeal of the command to keep away from the sheep and their
+driver.
+
+But the Mistress only patted his silken head and whispered:
+
+"We don't like it any more than you do, Laddie; but we mustn't let
+anyone know we don't. Leave them alone!"
+
+Past the veranda filed the twenty priceless sheep, and on to the
+paddock.
+
+"I suppose they'll carry off all the prizes at the fair, won't they?"
+asked the Mistress civilly, as McGillicuddy plodded past her at the
+tail of the procession.
+
+"Aiblins, aye," grunted McGillicuddy, with the exquisite courtesy of a
+member of his race and class who feels he is being patronized.
+"Aiblins, aye. Aiblins, na'. Aiblins--ugh-uh."
+
+Having thus safeguarded his statement against assault from any side at
+all, the Scot moved on. Lad strolled down toward the paddock to
+superintend the task of locking up the sheep. The Mistress did not
+detain him. She felt calmly certain her order of "Leave them alone!"
+had rendered the twenty visitors inviolate from him.
+
+Lad walked slowly around the paddock, his gaze on the sheep. These
+were the first sheep he had ever seen. Yet his ancestors, for a
+thousand years or more, had herded and guarded flocks on the moors.
+
+Atavism is mysteriously powerful in dogs, and it takes strange
+forms. A collie, too, has a queer strain of wolf in him--not only in
+body but in brain, and the wolf was the sheep's official murderer, as
+far back as the days when a humpbacked Greek slave, named AEsop, used
+to beguile his sleepless nights with writing fables.
+
+Round and round the paddock prowled Lad; his eyes alight with a myriad
+half-memories; his sensitive nostrils quivering at the scents that
+enveloped them.
+
+McGillicuddy, from time to time, eyed the dog obliquely, and with a
+scowl. These sheep were not the pride of his heart. His conscientious
+heart possessed no pride--pride being one of the seven deadly sins,
+and the sheep not being his own; but the flock represented his
+livelihood--his comfortably overpaid job with the Wall Street Farmer.
+He was responsible for their welfare.
+
+And McGillicuddy did not at all like the way this beautiful collie
+eyed the prize merinos, nor was the Scot satisfied with the strength
+of the corral. Its wire fencing was rusty and sagging from long
+disuse, its gate hung crookedly and had a crazy hasp.
+
+A sheep is one of the least intelligent creatures on earth. Should the
+flock's leader decide at any time during the night to press his heavy
+bulk against the gate or against some of the rustier wire strands,
+there would presently be a gap through which the entire twenty could
+amble forth. Once outside----
+
+Again McGillicuddy glowered dourly at Lad. The collie returned the
+look with interest; a well-bred dog being as skilled in reading human
+faces as is any professional dead beat. Lad saw the dislike in
+McGillicuddy's heavy-thatched eyes; cordially he yearned to prove his
+own distaste for the shepherd, but the Mistress' command had immuned
+this sour stranger.
+
+So Lad merely turned his back on the man, sat down, flattened his
+furry ears close against his head, thrust his pointed nose skyward,
+and sniffed. McGillicuddy was too much an animal man not to read the
+insult in the dog's posture and action, and the shepherd's fist
+tightened longingly round his staff.
+
+Half an hour later the Wall Street Farmer himself arrived at The
+Place. He came in a runabout. On the seat beside him sat his
+pasty-faced, four-year-old son. At his feet was something which, at
+first glance, might have been either a quadruped or a rag bag.
+
+The Mistress and the Master, with dutiful hypocrisy, came smilingly
+out on the veranda to welcome the guests. Lad, who had returned from
+the impromptu sheep-fold, stood beside them. At sight and scent
+of this new batch of visitors the collie doubtless felt what
+old-fashioned novelists used to describe as "mingled emotions."
+
+There was a child in the car. And though there had been few children
+in Lad's life, yet he loved them, loved them as a big-hearted and
+big-bodied dog always loves the helpless. Wherefore, at sight of the
+child, Lad rejoiced.
+
+But the animal crouching at the Wall Street Farmer's feet was quite a
+different form of guest. Lad recognized the thing as a dog--yet no
+such dog as ever he had seen. An unwholesome-looking dog. Even as the
+little boy was an unwholesome-looking child.
+
+"Well!" sonorously proclaimed the Wall Street Farmer as he scrambled
+out of the runabout and bore down upon his hosts, "here I am! The
+sheep got here all safe? Good! I knew they would. McGillicuddy's a
+genius; nothing he can't do with sheep. You remember Mortimer?"
+lifting the lanky youngster from the seat. "He teased so to come
+along, his mother said I'd better bring him. I knew you'd be
+glad. Shake hands with them, Morty, darling."
+
+"I wun't!" snarled Morty darling, hanging back.
+
+Then he caught sight of Lad. The collie came straight up to the child,
+grinning from ear to ear, and wrinkling his nose so delightedly that
+every white front tooth showed. Morty flung himself forward to greet
+the huge dog, but the Wall Street Farmer, with a shout of warning,
+caught the boy in his arms and bravely interposed his own fat body
+between Mortimer and Lad.
+
+"What does the beast mean by snarling at my son?" fiercely demanded
+the Wall Street Farmer. "You people have no right to leave such a
+savage dog at large."
+
+"He's not snarling," the Mistress indignantly declared, "he's
+smiling. That's Lad's way. Why, he'd let himself be cut up into
+squares sooner than hurt a child."
+
+Still doubtful, the Wall Street Farmer cautiously set down his son on
+the veranda. Morty flung himself bodily upon Lad; hauling and mauling
+the stately collie this way and that.
+
+Had any grown person, save only the Mistress or the Master, attempted
+such treatment, the curving white eyeteeth would have buried
+themselves very promptly in the offender.
+
+Indeed, the Master now gazed, with some nervousness, at the performance;
+but the Mistress was not worried as to her adored pet's behavior;
+and the Mistress, as ever, was right.
+
+For Lad endured the mauling--not patiently, but blissfully. He fairly
+writhed with delight at the painful tugging of hair and ears; and
+moistly he strove to kiss the wizened little face that was on a level
+with his own. Morty repaid this attention by slapping Lad across the
+mouth. Lad only wagged his plumy tail the more ecstatically and
+snuggled closer to the preposterous baby.
+
+Meantime, the Wall Street Farmer, in clarion tones, was calling
+attention to the second of the two treasures he had brought along.
+
+"Melisande!" he cried.
+
+At the summons, the fuzzy monstrosity in the car ceased peering
+snappishly over the doortop at Lad, and condescended to turn toward
+its owner. It looked like something between an Old English sheep-dog
+and a dachshund; straw-colored fur enveloped the scrawny body; a
+miserable apology for a bushy tail hung limply between crooked hind
+legs; evil little eyes peered forth from beneath a scarecrow stubble
+of head fringe; it was not a pretty dog, this canine the Wall Street
+Farmer had just addressed by the poetic title of "Melisande."
+
+"What in blazes is he?" asked the Master.
+
+"She is a Prussian sheep-dog," proudly replied the Wall Street
+Farmer. "She is the first of her breed ever imported to America. Cost
+me a clean $1100 to buy her from a Chicago man who brought her
+over. I'm going to exhibit her at the Garden Show next winter. What do
+you think of her, old man?"
+
+"I'd hate to tell you," said the Master, "but I'll gladly tell you
+what I think of that Chicago man. He's the original genius who sold
+all the land between New York and Jersey City for a thousand dollars
+an acre and issued the series of ten-dollar season admission tickets
+to Central Park."
+
+Being the Wall Street Farmer's host the Master said this in the
+recesses of his own heart. Aloud, he blithered some complimentary lie
+and watched the visitor lift the scraggy nondescript out of the car.
+
+The moment she was on the ground, Melisande made a wild dash at
+Lad. Snarling, she snapped ferociously at his throat. Lad merely
+turned his shaggy shoulder to meet the onslaught. And Melisande found
+herself gripping nothing but a mouthful of his soft hair. He made no
+move to resent the attack. And the Wall Street Farmer, shouting
+unobeyed mandates to his pet, dragged away the pugnacious Melisande by
+the scruff of the neck.
+
+The $1100 Prussian sheep-dog next caught a glimpse of one of the
+half-grown peacock chicks--the joy of the Mistress' summer--strutting
+across the lawn. Melisande, with a yap of glee, rushed off in pursuit.
+
+The chick had no fear. The dogs of The Place had always been trained
+to give the fowls a wide berth; so the pretty little peacock fell a
+pitifully easy prey to the first snap of Melisande's jaws.
+
+Lad growled, deep down in his throat, at this gross lawlessness. The
+Mistress bit her lip to keep her self-control at the slaughter of her
+pet. The Master hastily said something that was lost in the louder
+volume of the Wall Street Farmer's bellow as he sought to call back
+his $1100 treasure from further slaying.
+
+"Well, well, well!" the guest exclaimed as at last he returned to the
+veranda, dragging Melisande along in his wake. "I'm sorry this
+happened, but you must overlook it. You see, Melisande is so high
+spirited she is hard to control. That's the way with thoroughbred
+dogs. Don't you find it so?"
+
+The Master, thus appealed to, glanced at his wife. She was momentarily
+out of ear-shot, having gone to pick up the killed peacock and
+stroke its rumpled plumage. So the Master allowed himself the
+luxury of plainer speech than if she had been there to be grieved over
+the breach of hospitality.
+
+"A thoroughbred dog," he said oracularly, "is either the best dog on
+earth, or else he is the worst. If he is the best he learns to mind,
+and to behave himself in every way like a thoroughbred. He learns it
+without being beaten or sworn at. If he is the worst--then it's wisest
+for his owner to hunt up some Easy Mark and sell the cur to him for
+$1100. You'll notice I said his 'owner'--not his 'master.' There's
+all the difference in the world between those two terms. Anybody,
+with price to buy a dog, can be an 'owner,' but all the cash coined
+won't make a man a dog's 'master'--unless he's that sort of man. Think
+it over."
+
+The Wall Street Farmer glared apoplectically at his host, who was
+already sorry that the sneer at Lad and the killing of his wife's pet
+had made him speak so to a guest--even to a self-invited and undesired
+guest. Then the Wall Street Man, with a grunt, put a leash on
+Melisande and gruffly asked that she be fastened to one of the vacant
+kennels.
+
+The Mistress came back to the group as the $1100 beast was led away,
+kennelward, by the gardener. Recovering her self-possession, the
+Mistress said to her guest:
+
+"I never heard of a Prussian sheep-dog before. Is she trained to herd
+your sheep?"
+
+"No," replied the Wall Street Farmer, his rancor forgotten in the
+prospect of exploiting his wondrous dog, "not yet. In fact, she
+hates the sheep. She's young, so we haven't tried to train her
+for shepherding. Two or three times we have taken her into the
+pasture--always on leash--but she flies at the sheep and goes almost
+crazy with anger. McGillicuddy says it's bad for the sheep to be
+scared by her. So we keep her away from them. But by next season----"
+
+He got no further. A sound of lamentation--prolonged and leather-lunged
+lamentation--smote upon the air.
+
+"Morty!" ejaculated the visitor in panic. "It's Morty! Quick!"
+
+Following the easily traceable direction of the squalling, he ran up
+the veranda steps and into the house--closely followed by the Mistress
+and the Master.
+
+The engaging Mortimer was of the stuff whereof explorers are made. No
+pent-up Utica--nor veranda--contracted his powers. Bored by the stupid
+talk of grown folk, wearying of Lad's friendly advances, he had
+slipped through the open house door into the living-room.
+
+There, for the day was cool, a jolly wood fire blazed on the
+hearth. In front of the fireplace was an enormous and cavernous
+couch. In the precise center of the couch was curled something that
+looked like a ball of the grayish fluff a maid sweeps under the bed.
+
+As Mortimer came into the room the infatuated Lad at his heels, the
+fluffy ball lazily uncurled and stretched--thereby revealing itself as
+no ball, but a superfurry gray kitten--the Mistress' temperamental new
+Persian kitten rejoicing in the dreamily Oriental name of Tipperary.
+
+With a squeal of glad discovery, Mortimer grabbed Tipperary with both
+hands, essaying to pull her fox-brush tail. Now, no sane person needs
+to be told the basic difference between the heart of a cat and the
+heart of a dog. Nor will any student of Persian kittens be surprised
+to hear that Tipperary's reception of the ruffianly baby's advances
+was totally different from Lad's.
+
+A lightning stroke of one of her shapeless fore-paws, and Tipperary
+was free. Morty stood blinking in amaze at four geometrically regular
+red marks on the back of his own pudgy hand. Tipperary had not done
+her persecutor the honor to run away. She merely moved to the far end
+of the couch and lay down there to renew her nap.
+
+A mad fury fired the brain of Mortimer; a fury goaded by the pain of
+his scratches. Screaming in rage he seized the cat by the nape of the
+neck--to be safe from teeth and whizzing claws--and stamped across
+toward the high-burning fire with her. His arm was drawn back to fling
+the squirming and offending kitten into the scarlet heart of the
+flames. And then Lad intervened.
+
+Now Lad was not in the very least interested in Tipperary; treating
+the temperamental Persian always with marked coldness. It is even
+doubtful if he realized Morty's intent.
+
+But one thing he did realize--that a silly baby was toddling straight
+toward the fire. As many another wise dog has gone, before and since,
+Lad quietly stepped between Morty and the hearth. He stood, broadside
+to the fire and to the child--a shaggy wall between the peril and the
+baby.
+
+But so quickly had anger carried Mortimer toward the hearth that the
+dog had not been able to block his progress until only a bare eighteen
+inches separated the youngster from the blaze.
+
+Thus Lad found the heat from the burning logs all but intolerable. It
+bit through his thick coat and into the tender flesh beneath. Like a
+rock he stood there.
+
+Mortimer, his gentle plan of kitten killing foiled, redoubled his
+screeches. Lad's back was higher than the child's eyes. Yet Morty
+sought to hurl the kitten over this stolid barrier into the fire.
+
+Tipperary fell short; landing on the dog's shoulders, digging her
+needle claws viciously therein, and thence leaping to the floor, from
+which she sprang to the top of the bookshelves, spitting back
+blasphemously at her tormentor.
+
+Morty's interest in the fire had been purely as a piece of immolation
+for the cat, but finding his path to it barred, he straightway
+resolved to go thither himself.
+
+He started to move round to it, in front of Lad. The dog took a
+forward step that again barred the way. Morty went insane with wrath
+at this new interference with his sweet plans. His howls swelled to a
+sustained roar, that reached the ears of the grown-ups on the lawn.
+
+He flew at Lad, beating the dog with all the puny force of his fists,
+sinking his milk teeth into the collie's back, wrenching and tearing
+at the thick fur, stamping with his booted heels upon the absurdly
+tiny white forepaws, kicking the short ribs and the tender stomach.
+
+Never for an instant did the child slacken his howls as he punished
+the dog that was saving him from death. Rather, he increased their
+volume from moment to moment. Lad did not stir. The kicking and
+beating and gouging and hair-pulling were not pleasant, but they were
+wholly bearable. The heat was not. The smell of singed hair began to
+fill the room, but Lad stood firm.
+
+And then in rushed the relief expedition, the Wall Street Farmer at
+its head.
+
+At once concluding that Lad had bitten his son's bleeding hand, the
+irate father swung aloft a chair and strode to the rescue.
+
+Lad saw him coming.
+
+With the lightning swiftness of his kind he whirled to one side as the
+mass of wood descended. The chair missed him by a fraction of an inch
+and splintered into pieces. It was a Chippendale, and had belonged to
+the Mistress' great grandparents.
+
+For the first time in all his blameless life Lad broke the sacred
+Guest Law by growling at a vouched-for visitor. But surely this fat
+bellower was no guest! Lad looked at his gods for information.
+
+"Down, Lad!" said the Master very gently, his voice not quite steady.
+
+Lad, perplexed but obedient, dropped to the floor.
+
+"The brute tried to kill my boy!" stormed the Wall Street Farmer right
+dramatically as he caught the howling Morty up in his arms to study
+the extent of the wound.
+
+"He's my guest! _He's my guest!_ HE'S MY GUEST!" the Master was saying
+over and over to himself. "Lord, help me to keep on remembering he's
+my GUEST!"
+
+The Mistress came forward.
+
+"Lad would sooner die than hurt a child," she declared, trying not to
+think of the wrecked heirloom chair. "He loves children. Here, let me
+see Morty's hand. Why, those are claw-marks! Cat scratches!"
+
+"Ve nassy cat scwatched me!" bawled Morty. "Kill her, daddy! I twied
+to. I twied to frow her in ve fire. But ve mizz'ble dog wouldn't let
+me! Kill her, daddy! Kill ve dog too!"
+
+The Master's mouth flew wide open.
+
+"Won't you go down to the paddock, dear," hastily interposed the
+Mistress, "and see if the sheep are all right? Take Lad along with
+you."
+
+Lad, alone of all The Place's dogs, had the run of the house, night
+and day, of the sacred dining-room. During the rest of that day he
+did not avail himself of his high privilege. He kept out of the
+way--perplexed, woe-begone, his burns still paining him despite the
+Master's ministrations.
+
+After talking long and loudly all evening of his sheep's peerless
+quality and of their certain victory over all comers in the fair the
+Wall Street Farmer consented at last to go to bed. And silence settled
+over The Place.
+
+In the black hour before dawn, that same silence was split in a score
+of places--split into a most horrible cacophony of sound that sent
+sleep scampering to the winds.
+
+It was the mingling of yells and bleats and barks and the scurry of
+many feet. It burst out all at once in full force, lasting for some
+seconds with increasing clangor; then died to stillness.
+
+By that time every human on The Place was out of bed. In more or less
+rudimentary attire the house's inhabitants trooped down into the lower
+hall. There the Wall Street Farmer was raving noisily and was yanking
+at a door bolt whose secret he could not fathom.
+
+"It's my sheep!" he shouted. "That accursed dog of yours has gotten at
+them. He's slaughtering them. I heard the poor things bleating and I
+heard him snarling among them. They cost me----"
+
+"If you're speaking of Lad," blazed the Master, "he's----"
+
+"Here are the flashlights," interposed the Mistress. "Let me open
+that door for you. I understand the bolt."
+
+Out into the dark they went, all but colliding with McGillicuddy. The
+Scot, awakened like the rest, had gone to the paddock. He had now come
+back to report the paddock empty and all the sheep gone.
+
+"It's the collie tike!" sputtered McGillicuddy. "I'll tak' oath to
+it. I ken it's him. I suspeecioned him a' long, from how he garred at
+oor sheep the day. He----"
+
+"I said so!" roared the Wall Street Farmer. "The murderous brute!
+First, he tries to kill Morty. And now he slaughters my sheep. You----"
+
+The Master started to speak. But a white little hand, in the darkness,
+was laid gently across his mouth.
+
+"You told me he always slept under the piano in your music room!"
+accused the guest as the four made their way paddock-ward, lighting a
+path with the electric flashlights. "Well, I looked there just now. He
+isn't under the piano. He---- He----"
+
+"Lad!" called the Master; then at the top of his lungs. "_Lad!_"
+
+A distant growl, a snarl, a yelp, a scramble--and presently Lad
+appeared in the farthest radius of the flashlight flare.
+
+For only a moment he stood there. Then he wheeled about and vanished
+in the dark. Nor had the Master the voice to call him back. The
+momentary glimpse of the great collie, in the merciless gleam of the
+lights, had stricken the whole party into an instant's speechlessness.
+
+Vividly distinct against the darkness they had seen Lad. His
+well-groomed coat was rumpled. His eyes were fire-balls. And--his
+jaws were red with blood. Then he had vanished.
+
+A groan from the Master--a groan of heartbreak--was the first sound
+from the four. The dog he loved was a killer.
+
+"It isn't true! It isn't true!" stoutly declared the Mistress.
+
+The Wall Street Farmer and McGullicuddy had already broken into a
+run. The shepherd had found the tracks of many little hoofs on the
+dewy ground. And he was following the trail. The guest, swearing and
+panting, was behind him. The Mistress and the Master brought up the
+rear.
+
+At every step they peered fearfully around them for what they dreaded
+to see--the mangled body of some slain sheep. But they saw none. And
+they followed the trail.
+
+In a quarter mile they came to its end.
+
+All four flashlights played simultaneously upon a tiny hillock that
+rose from the meadow at the forest edge. The hillock was usually
+green. Now it was white.
+
+Around its short slopes was huddled a flock of sheep, as close-ringed
+as though by a fence. At the hillock's summit sat Lad. He was sitting
+there in a queer attitude, one of his snowy forepaws pinning something
+to the ground--something that could not be clearly distinguished
+through the huddle but which, evidently, was no sheep.
+
+The Wall Street Farmer broke the tense silence with a gobbled
+exclamation.
+
+"Whisht!" half reverently interrupted the shepherd, who had been
+circling the hillock on census duty. "There's na a sheep gone, nor--so
+far's I can see--a sheep hurted. The fu' twenty is there."
+
+The Master's flashlight found a gap through which its rays could reach
+the hillock crest. The light revealed, under Lad's gently pinioning
+forepaw, the crouching and badly scared Melisande--the $1100 Prussian
+sheep dog.
+
+McGullicuddy, with a grunt, was off on another and longer tour of
+inspection. Presently he came back. He was breathing hard.
+
+Even before McGillicuddy made his report the Master had guessed at the
+main points of the mystery's solution.
+
+Melisande, weary of captivity, had gnawed through her leash. Seeking
+sport, she had gone to the paddock. There she had easily worried loose
+the crazy gate latch. Just as she was wriggling through, Lad appeared
+from the veranda.
+
+He had tried to drive back the would-be killer from her prey. Lad was
+a veteran of several battles. But, apart from her sex, Melisande was
+no opponent for him. And he had treated her accordingly. Melisande
+had snapped at him, cutting him deeply in the underjaw. During the
+scrimmage the panic-urged sheep had bolted out of the paddock and had
+scattered.
+
+Remember, please, that Lad, ten hours earlier, had never in his life
+seen a sheep. But remember, too, that a million of his ancestors had
+won their right to a livelihood by their almost supernatural skill at
+herding flocks. Let this explain what actually happened--the throwback
+of a great collie's instinct.
+
+Driving the scared and subdued Melisande before him--and ever hampered
+by her unwelcome presence--Lad proceeded to round up the scattered
+sheep. He was in the midst of the process when the Master called
+him. Merely galloping back for an instant, and finding the summons was
+not repeated, he returned to his atavistic task.
+
+In less than five minutes the twenty scampering runaways were "ringed"
+on the hillock. And, still keeping the Prussian sheep dog out of
+mischief, Lad established himself in the ring's center.
+
+Further than that, and the keeping of the ring intact, his primal
+instincts did not serve him. Having rounded up his flock Lad had not
+the remotest idea what to do with them. So he merely held them there
+until the noisily gabbling humans should decide to take the matter out
+of his care.
+
+McGillicuddy examined every sheep separately and found not a scratch
+or a stain on any of them. Then he told in effect what has here been
+set down as to Lad's exploit.
+
+As he finished his recital McGillicuddy looked shamefacedly around him
+as though gathering courage for an irksome task. A sickly yellow dawn
+was crawling over the eastern mountains, throwing a ghostly glow on
+the shepherd's dour and craggy visage. Drawing a long breath of
+resolve he advanced upon Lad. Dropping on one knee, his eyes on a
+level with the unconcernedly observant collie's, McGillicuddy intoned:
+
+"Laddie, ye're a braw, braw dog. Ou, a canny dog! A sonsie dog,
+Laddie! I hae na met yer match this side o' Kirkcaldy Brae. Gin ye'll
+tak' an auld fule's apology for wrangin' ye, an' an auld fule's hand
+in gude fellowship, 'twill pleasure me, Laddie. Winna ye let bygones
+be bygones, an' shake?"
+
+Yes, the speech was ridiculous, but no one felt like laughing, not
+even the Wall Street Farmer. The shepherd was gravely sincere and he
+knew that Lad would understand his burring words.
+
+And Lad did understand. Solemnly he sat up. Solemnly he laid one
+white forepaw in the gnarled palm the kneeling shepherd outstretched
+to him. His eyes glinted in wise friendliness as they met the
+admiring gaze of the old man. Two born shepherds were face to
+face. Deep was calling unto deep.
+
+Presently McGillicuddy broke the spell by rising abruptly to his
+feet. Gruffly he turned to the Master.
+
+"There's na wit, sir," he growled, "in speirin' will ye sell
+him. But--but I compliment ye on him, nanetheless."
+
+"That's right; McGillicuddy's right!" boomed the Wall Street Farmer,
+catching but part of his shepherd's mumbled words. "Good idea! He is a
+fine dog. I see that now. I was prejudiced. I freely admit it. A
+remarkable dog. What'll you take for him? Or--better yet, how would
+you like to swap, even, for Melisande?"
+
+The Master's mouth again flew ajar, and many sizzling words jostled
+each other in his throat. Before any of these could shame his
+hospitality by escaping, the Mistress hurriedly interposed:
+
+"Dear, we left all the house doors wide open. Would you mind hurrying
+back ahead of us and seeing that everything is safe? And--will you
+take Lad with you?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE GOLD HAT
+
+
+The Place was in the North Jersey hinterland, backed by miles of hill
+and forest, facing the lake that divided it from the village and the
+railroad and the other new-made smears which had been daubed upon
+Mother Nature's smiling face in the holy name of Civilization. The
+lonely situation of The Place made Lad's self-appointed guardianship
+of its acres no sinecure at all. The dread of his name spread
+far--carried by hobo and by less harmless intruder.
+
+Ten miles to northward of The Place, among the mountains of this same
+North Jersey hinterland, a man named Glure had bought a rambling old
+wilderness farm. By dint of much money, more zeal and most dearth of
+taste, he had caused the wilderness to blossom like the Fifth
+Proposition of Euclid. He had turned bosky wildwood into chaste
+picnic-grove plaisaunces, lush meadows into sunken gardens, a roomy
+colonial farmstead into something between a feudal castle and a
+roadhouse. And, looking on his work, he had seen that it was good.
+
+This Beautifier of the Wilderness was a financial giantlet, who had
+lately chosen to amuse himself, after work-hours, by what he called
+"farming." Hence the purchase and renovation of the five hundred-acre
+tract, the building of model farms, the acquisition of priceless
+livestock, and the hiring of a battalion of skilled employees. Hence,
+too, his dearly loved and self-given title of "Wall Street Farmer."
+His name, I repeat, was Glure.
+
+Having established himself in the region, the Wall Street Farmer
+undertook most earnestly to reproduce the story-book glories of the
+life supposedly led by mid-Victorian country gentlemen. Not only in
+respect to keeping open-house and in alternately patronizing and
+bullying the peasantry, but in filling his gun-room shelves with cups
+and other trophies won by his livestock.
+
+To his "open house" few of the neighboring families came. The local
+peasantry--Jersey mountaineers of Revolutionary stock, who had not the
+faintest idea they were "peasantry" and who, indeed, had never heard
+of the word--alternately grinned and swore at the Wall Street Farmer's
+treatment of them, and mulcted him of huge sums for small services.
+But Glure's keenest disappointment--a disappointment that crept
+gradually up toward the monomania point--was the annoyingly continual
+emptiness of his trophy-shelves.
+
+When, for instance, he sent to the Paterson Livestock Show a score of
+his pricelessly imported merino sheep, under his more pricelessly
+imported Scotch shepherd, Mr. McGillicuddy--the sheep came ambling
+back to Glure Towers Farm bearing no worthier guerdon than a single
+third-prize yellow silk rosette and a "Commended" ribbon. First and
+second prizes, as well as the challenge cup had gone to flocks owned
+by vastly inferior folk--small farmers who had no money wherewith to
+import the pick of the Scottish moors--farmers who had bred and
+developed their own sheep, with no better aid than personal care and
+personal judgment.
+
+At the Hohokus Fair, too, the Country Gentleman's imported Holstein
+bull, Tenebris, had had to content himself with a measly red rosette
+in token of second prize, while the silver cup went to a bull owned by
+an elderly North Jerseyman of low manners, who had bred his own entry
+and had bred the latter's ancestors for forty years back.
+
+It was discouraging, it was mystifying. There actually seemed to be a
+vulgar conspiracy among the down-at-heel rural judges--a conspiracy to
+boost second-rate stock and to turn a blind eye to the virtues of
+overpriced transatlantic importations.
+
+It was the same in the poultry shows and in hog exhibits. It was the
+same at the County Fair horse-trots. At one of these trots the Wall
+Street Farmer, in person, drove his $9000 English colt. And a rangy
+Hackensack gelding won all three heats. In none of the three did
+Glure's colt get within hailing distance of the wire before at least
+two other trotters had clattered under it.
+
+(Glure's English head-groom was called on the carpet to explain why a
+colt that could do a neat 2.13 in training was beaten out in a 2.17
+trot. The groom lost his temper and his place. For he grunted, in
+reply, "The colt was all there. It was the driving did it.")
+
+The gun-room's glassed shelves in time were gay with ribbon. But only
+two of the three primary colors were represented there--blue being
+conspicuously absent. As for cups--the burglar who should break into
+Glure Towers in search of such booty would find himself the worse off
+by a wageless night's work.
+
+Then it was that the Wall Street Farmer had his Inspiration. Which
+brings us by easy degrees to the Hampton Dog Show.
+
+Even as the Fiery Cross among the Highland crags once flashed signal
+of War, so, when the World War swirl sucked nation after nation into
+its eddy, the Red Cross flamed from one end of America to the other,
+as the common rallying point for those who, for a time, must do their
+fighting on the hither side of the gray seas. The country bristled
+with a thousand money-getting functions of a thousand different kinds;
+with one objective--the Red Cross.
+
+So it happened at last that North Jersey was posted, on state road and
+byway, with flaring placards announcing a Mammoth Outdoor Specialty
+Dog show, to be held under the auspices of the Hampton Branch of the
+American National Red Cross, on Labor Day.
+
+Mr. Hamilcar Q. Glure, the announcement continued, had kindly donated
+the use of his beautiful grounds for the Event, and had subscribed
+three hundred dollars towards its running expenses and prizes.
+
+Not only were the usual dog classes to be judged, but an added
+interest was to be supplied by the awarding of no less than fifteen
+Specialty Trophies.
+
+Mr. Glure, having offered his grounds and the initial three hundred
+dollars, graciously turned over the details of the Show to a
+committee, whose duty it was to suggest popular Specialties and to
+solicit money for the cups.
+
+Thus, one morning, an official letter was received at The Place,
+asking the Master to enter all his available dogs for the Show--at one
+dollar apiece for each class--and to contribute, if he should so
+desire, the sum of fifteen dollars, besides, for the purchase of a
+Specialty Cup.
+
+The Mistress was far more excited over the coming event than was the
+Master. And it was she who suggested the nature of the Specialty for
+which the fifteen-dollar cup should be offered.
+
+The next outgoing mail bore the Master's check for a cup. "To be
+awarded to the oldest and best-cared-for dog, of any breed, in the
+Show."
+
+It was like the Mistress to think of that, and to reward the dog-owner
+whose pet's old age had been made happiest. Hers was destined to be
+the most popular Specialty of the entire Show.
+
+The Master, at first, was disposed to refuse the invitation to take
+any of his collies to Hampton. The dogs were, for the most part, out
+of coat. The weather was warm. At these amateur shows--as at too many
+professional exhibits--there was always danger of some sick dog
+spreading epidemic. Moreover, the living-room trophy-shelf at The
+Place was already comfortably filled with cups; won at similar
+contests. Then, too, the Master had somehow acquired a most causeless
+and cordial dislike for the Wall Street Farmer.
+
+"I believe I'll send an extra ten dollars," he told the Mistress, "and
+save the dogs a day of torment. What do you think?"
+
+By way of answer, the Mistress sat down on the floor where Lad was
+sprawled, asleep. She ran her fingers through his forest of ruff. The
+great dog's brush pounded drowsily against the floor at the loved
+touch; and he raised his head for further caress.
+
+"Laddie's winter coat is coming in beautifully," she said at last. "I
+don't suppose there'll be another dog there with such a coat. Besides,
+it's to be outdoors, you see. So he won't catch any sickness. If it
+were a four-day show--if it were anything longer than a one-day
+show--he shouldn't go a step. But, you see, I'd be right there with
+him all the time. And I'd take him into the ring myself, as I did at
+Madison Square Garden. And he won't be unhappy or lonely or--or
+anything. And I always love to have people see how splendid he is. And
+those Specialty Trophies are pretty, sometimes. So--so we'll do just
+whatever you say about it."
+
+Which, naturally, settled the matter, once and for all.
+
+When a printed copy of the Specialty Lists arrived, a week later, the
+Mistress and the Master scanned eagerly its pages.
+
+There were cups offered for the best tri-color collie, for the best
+mother-and-litter, for the collie with the finest under-and-outer
+coat, for the best collie exhibited by a woman, for the collie whose
+get had won most prizes in other shows. At the very bottom of the
+section, and in type six points larger than any other announcement on
+the whole schedule, were the words:
+
+"_Presented, by the Hon. Hugh Lester Maury of New York City--18-KARAT
+GOLD SPECIALTY CUP, FOR COLLIES (conditions announced later)._"
+
+"A gold cup!" sighed the Mistress, yielding to Delusions of Grandeur,
+"A _gold_ cup! I never heard of such a thing, at a dog show. And--and
+won't it look perfectly gorgeous in the very center of our Trophy
+Shelf, there--with the other cups radiating from it on each side?
+And----"
+
+"Hold on!" laughed the Master, trying to mask his own thrill,
+man-fashion, by wetblanketing his wife's enthusiasm. "Hold on! We
+haven't got it, yet. I'll enter Lad for it, of course. But so will
+every other collie-owner who reads that. Besides, even if Lad should
+win it, we'd have to buy a microscope to see the thing. It will
+probably be about half the size of a thimble. Gold cups cost gold
+money, you know. And I don't suppose this 'Hon. Hugh Lester Maury of
+New York City' is squandering more than ten or fifteen dollars at most
+on a country dog show. Even for the Red Cross. I suppose he's some
+Wall Street chum that Glure has wheedled into giving a Specialty. He's
+a novelty to me. I never heard of him before. Did you?"
+
+"No," admitted the Mistress. "But I feel I'm beginning to love
+him. Oh, Laddie," she confided to the dog, "I'm going to give you a
+bath in naphtha soap every day till then; and brush you, two hours
+every morning; and feed you on liver and----"
+
+"'Conditions announced later,'" quoted the Master, studying the
+big-type offer once more. "I wonder what that means. Of course, in a
+Specialty Show, anything goes. But----"
+
+"I don't care what the conditions are," interrupted the Mistress,
+refusing to be disheartened. "Lad can come up to them. Why, there
+isn't a greater dog in America than Lad. And you know it."
+
+"I know it," assented the pessimistic Master. "But will the Judge?
+You might tell him so."
+
+"Lad will tell him," promised the Mistress. "Don't worry."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On Labor Day morning a thousand cars, from a radius of fifty miles,
+were converging upon the much-advertised village of Hampton; whence,
+by climbing a tortuous first-speed hill, they presently chugged into
+the still-more-advertised estate of Hamilcar Q. Glure, Wall Street
+Farmer.
+
+There, the sylvan stillness was shattered by barks in every key, from
+Pekingese falsetto to St. Bernard bass-thunder. An open stretch of
+shaded sward--backed by a stable that looked more like a dissolute
+cathedral--had been given over to ten double rows of "benches," for
+the anchorage of the Show's three hundred exhibits. Above the central
+show-ring a banner was strung between two tree tops. It bore a blazing
+red cross at either end. In its center was the legend:
+
+  "_WELCOME TO GLURE TOWERS!_"
+
+The Wall Street Farmer, as I have hinted, was a man of much taste--of
+a sort.
+
+Lad had enjoyed the ten-mile spin through the cool morning air, in the
+tonneau of The Place's only car--albeit the course of baths and
+combings of the past week had long since made him morbidly aware that
+a detested dog show was somewhere at hand. Now, even before the car
+entered the fearsome feudal gateway of Glure Towers, the collie's ears
+and nose told him the hour of ordeal was at hand.
+
+His zest in the ride vanished. He looked reproachfully at the Mistress
+and tried to bury his head under her circling arm. Lad loathed
+dog shows; as does every dog of high-strung nerves and higher
+intelligence. The Mistress, after one experience, had refrained
+from breaking his heart by taking him to those horrors known as
+"two-or-more-day Shows." But, as she herself took such childish
+delight in the local one-day contests, she had schooled herself to
+believe Lad must enjoy them, too.
+
+Lad, as a matter of fact, preferred these milder ordeals, merely as a
+man might prefer one day of jail or toothache to two or more days of
+the same misery. But--even as he knew many lesser things--he knew the
+adored Mistress and Master reveled in such atrocities as dog shows;
+and that he, for some reason, was part of his two gods' pleasure in
+them. Therefore, he made the best of the nuisance. Which led his
+owners to a certainty that he had grown to like it.
+
+Parking the car, the Mistress and Master led the unhappy dog to the
+clerk's desk; received his number tag and card, and were shown where
+to bench him. They made Lad as nearly comfortable as possible, on a
+straw-littered raised stall; between a supercilious Merle and a
+fluffily disconsolate sable-and-white six-month puppy that howled
+ceaselessly in an agony of fright.
+
+The Master paused for a moment in his quest of water for Lad, and
+stared open-mouthed at the Merle.
+
+"Good Lord!" he mumbled, touching the Mistress' arm and pointing to
+the gray dog. "That's the most magnificent collie I ever set eyes
+on. It's farewell to poor old Laddie's hopes, if he is in any of the
+same classes with that marvel. Say goodby, right now, to your hopes of
+the Gold Cup; and to 'Winners' in the regular collie division."
+
+"I won't say goodby to it," refused the Mistress. "I won't do
+anything of the sort. Lad's every bit as beautiful as that dog. Every
+single bit."
+
+"But not from the show-judge's view," said the Master. "This Merle's a
+gem. Where in blazes did he drop from, I wonder? These 'no-point'
+out-of-town Specialty Shows don't attract the stars of the Kennel Club
+circuits. Yet, this is as perfect a dog as ever Grey Mist was. It's a
+pleasure to see such an animal. Or," he corrected himself, "it would
+be, if he wasn't pitted against dear old Lad. I'd rather be kicked
+than take Lad to a show to be beaten. Not for my sake or even for
+yours. But for his. Lad will be sure to know. He knows everything.
+Laddie, old friend, I'm sorry. Dead-_sorry_."
+
+He stooped down and patted Lad's satin head. Both Master and Mistress
+had always carried their fondness for Lad to an extent that perhaps
+was absurd. Certainly absurd to the man or woman who has never owned
+such a super-dog as Lad. As not one man or woman in a thousand has.
+
+Together, the Mistress and the Master made their way along the collie
+section, trying to be interested in the line of barking or yelling
+entries.
+
+"Twenty-one collies in all," summed up the Master, as they reached the
+end. "Some quality dogs among them, too. But not one of the lot,
+except the Merle, that I'd be afraid to have Lad judged against. The
+Merle's our Waterloo. Lad is due for his first defeat. Well, it'll be
+a fair one. That's one comfort."
+
+"It doesn't comfort _me_, in the very least," returned the Mistress,
+adding:
+
+"Look! There is the trophy table. Let's go over. Perhaps the Gold Cup
+is there. If it isn't too precious to leave out in the open."
+
+The Gold Cup was there. It was plainly--or, rather, flamingly--visible.
+Indeed, it smote the eye from afar. It made the surrounding array
+of pretty silver cups and engraved medals look tawdrily insignificant.
+Its presence had, already, drawn a goodly number of admirers--folk
+at whom the guardian village constable, behind the table, stared
+with sour distrust.
+
+The Gold Cup was a huge bowl of unchased metal, its softly glowing
+surface marred only by the script words:
+
+"_Maury Specialty Gold Cup. Awarded to----_"
+
+There could be no shadow of doubt as to the genuineness of the claim
+that the trophy was of eighteen-karat gold. Its value spoke for
+itself. The vessel was like a half melon in contour and was supported
+by four severely plain claws. Its rim flared outward in a wide curve.
+
+"It's--it's all the world like an inverted derby hat!" exclaimed the
+Mistress, after one long dumb look at it. "And it's every bit as big
+as a derby hat. Did you ever see anything so ugly--and so Croesusful?
+Why, it must have cost--it must have cost----"
+
+"Just sixteen hundred dollars, Ma'am," supplemented the constable,
+beginning to take pride in his office of guardian to such a treasure.
+"Sixteen hundred dollars, flat. I heard Mr. Glure sayin' so myself.
+Don't go handlin' it, please."
+
+"Handling it?" repeated The Mistress. "I'd as soon think of handling
+the National Debt!"
+
+The Superintendent of the Show strolled up and greeted the Mistress
+and the Master. The latter scarce heard the neighborly greeting. He
+was scowling at the precious trophy as at a personal foe.
+
+"I see you've entered Lad for the Gold Cup," said the Superintendent.
+"Sixteen collies, in all, are entered for it. The conditions for
+the Gold Cup contest weren't printed till too late to mail them.
+So I'm handing out the slips this morning. Mr. Glure took charge
+of their printing. They didn't get here from the job shop till
+half an hour ago. And I don't mind telling you they're causing a lot
+of kicks. Here's one of the copies. Look it over, and see what Lad's
+up against."
+
+"Who's the Hon. Hugh Lester Maury, of New York?" suddenly demanded the
+Master, rousing himself from his glum inspection of the Cup. "I mean
+the man who donated that--that Gold Hat?"
+
+"Gold Hat!" echoed the Superintendent, with a chuckle of joy. "Gold
+Hat! Now you say so, I can't make it look like anything else. A derby,
+upside down, with four----"
+
+"Who's Maury?" insisted the Master.
+
+"He's the original Man of Mystery," returned the Superintendent,
+dropping his voice to exclude the constable. "I wanted to get in touch
+with him about the delayed set of conditions. I looked him up. That
+is, I tried to. He is advertised in the premium list, as a New
+Yorker. You'll remember that, but his name isn't in the New York City
+Directory or in the New York City telephone book or in the suburban
+telephone book. He can afford to give a sixteen hundred dollar-cup for
+charity, but it seems he isn't important enough to get his name in any
+directory. Funny, isn't it? I asked Glure about him. That's all the
+good it did me."
+
+"You don't mean----?" began the Mistress, excitedly.
+
+"I don't mean anything," the Superintendent hurried to forestall
+her. "I'm paid to take charge of this Show. It's no affair of mine
+if----"
+
+"If Mr. Glure chooses to invent Hugh Lester Maury and make him give a
+Gold Hat for a collie prize?" suggested the Mistress. "But----"
+
+"I didn't say so," denied the superintendent. "And it's none of my
+business, anyhow. Here's----"
+
+"But why should Mr. Glure do such a thing?" asked the Mistress, in
+wonder. "I never heard of his shrinking coyly behind another name when
+he wanted to spend money. I don't understand why he----"
+
+"Here is the conditions-list for the Maury Specialty Cup," interposed
+the superintendent with extreme irrelevance, as he handed her a pink
+slip of paper. "Glance over it."
+
+The Mistress took the slip and read aloud for the benefit of the
+Master who was still glowering at the Gold Hat:
+
+"_Conditions of Contest for Hugh Lester Maury Gold Cup:_
+
+"'_First.--No collie shall be eligible that has not already taken at
+least one blue ribbon at a licensed American or British Kennel Club
+Show._'"
+
+"That single clause has barred out eleven of the sixteen entrants,"
+commented the Superintendent. "You see, most of the dogs at these
+local Shows are pets, and hardly any of them have been to Madison
+Square Garden or to any of the other A. K. C. shows. The few that have
+been to them seldom got a Blue."
+
+"Lad did!" exclaimed the Mistress joyfully. "He took two Blues at the
+Garden last year; and then, you remember, it was so horrible for him
+there we broke the rules and brought him home without waiting for----"
+
+"I know," said the Superintendent, "but read the rest."
+
+"'_Second_,'" read the Mistress. "'_Each contestant must have a
+certified five-generation pedigree, containing the names of at least
+ten champions._' Lad had twelve in his pedigree," she added, "and it's
+certified."
+
+"Two more entrants were killed out by _that_ clause," remarked the
+Superintendent, "leaving only three out of the original sixteen. Now
+go ahead with the clause that puts poor old Lad and one other out of
+the running. I'm sorry."
+
+"'_Third_,'" the Mistress read, her brows crinkling and her voice
+trailing as she proceeded. "'_Each contestant must go successfully
+through the preliminary maneuvers prescribed by the Kirkaldie
+Association, Inc., of Great Britain, for its Working Sheepdog
+Trials._'--But," she protested, "Lad isn't a 'working' sheepdog! Why,
+this is some kind of a joke! I never heard of such a thing--even in a
+Specialty Show."
+
+"No," agreed the Superintendent, "nor anybody else. Naturally, Lad
+isn't a 'working' sheepdog. There probably haven't been three
+'working' sheepdogs born within a hundred miles of here, and it's a
+mighty safe bet that no 'working' sheepdog has ever taken a 'Blue' at
+an A. K. C. Show. A 'working' dog is almost never a show dog. I know
+of only one either here or in England; and he's a freak--a miracle. So
+much so, that he's famous all over the dog-world."
+
+"Do you mean Champion Lochinvar III?" asked the Mistress. "The dog the
+Duke of Hereford used to own?"
+
+"That's the dog. The only----"
+
+"We read about him in the _Collie Folio_," said the Mistress. "His
+picture was there, too. He was sent to Scotland when he was a puppy,
+the _Folio_ said, and trained to herd sheep before ever he was
+shown. His owner was trying to induce other collie-fanciers to make
+their dogs useful and not just Show-exhibits. Lochinvar is an
+international champion, too, isn't he?"
+
+The Superintendent nodded.
+
+"If the Duke of Hereford lived in New Jersey," pursued the Mistress,
+trying to talk down her keen chagrin over Lad's mishap, "Lochinvar
+might have a chance to win a nice Gold Hat."
+
+"He has," replied the superintendent. "He has every chance, and the
+only chance."
+
+"_Who_ has?" queried the puzzled Mistress.
+
+"Champion Lochinvar III," was the answer. "Glure bought him by
+cable. Paid $7000 for him. That eclipses Untermeyer's record price of
+$6500 for old Squire of Tytton. The dog arrived last week. He's
+here. A big Blue Merle. You ought to look him over. He's a wonder.
+He----"
+
+"_Oh!_" exploded the Mistress. "You can't mean it. You _can't!_ Why,
+it's the most--the most hideously unsportsmanlike thing I ever heard
+of in my life! Do you mean to tell me Mr. Glure put up this sixteen
+hundred-dollar cup and then sent for the only dog that could fulfill
+the Trophy's conditions? It's unbelievable!"
+
+"It's Glure," tersely replied the Superintendent. "Which perhaps
+comes to the same thing."
+
+"Yes!" spoke up the Master harshly, entering the talk for the first
+time, and tearing his disgusted attention from the Gold Hat. "Yes,
+it's Glure, and it's unbelievable! And it's worse than either of
+those, if anything can be. Don't you see the full rottenness of it
+all? Half the world is starving or sick or wounded. The other half is
+working its fingers off to help the Red Cross make Europe a little
+less like hell; and, when every cent counts in the work, this--this
+Wall Street Farmer spends sixteen hundred precious dollars to buy
+himself a Gold Hat; and he does it under the auspices of the Red
+Cross, in the holy name of charity. The unsportsmanlikeness of it is
+nothing to that. It's--it's an Unpardonable Sin, and I don't want to
+endorse it by staying here. Let's get Lad and go home."
+
+"I wish to heaven we could!" flamed the Mistress, as angry as he. "I'd
+do it in a minute if we were able to. I feel we're insulting loyal old
+Lad by making him a party to it all. But we can't go. Don't you see?
+Mr. Glure is unsportsmanlike, but that's no reason we should
+be. You've told me, again and again, that no true sportsman will back
+out of a contest just because he finds he has no chance of winning
+it."
+
+"She's right," chimed in the Superintendent. "You've entered the dog
+for the contest, and by all the rules he'll have to stay in it. Lad
+doesn't know the first thing about 'working.' Neither does the
+only other local entrant that the first two rules have left in
+the competition. And Lochinvar is perfect at every detail of
+sheep-work. Lad and the other can't do anything but swell his
+victory. It's rank bad luck, but----"
+
+"All right! All right!" growled the Master. "We'll go through with
+it. Does anyone know the terms of a 'Kirkaldie Association's
+Preliminaries,' for 'Working Sheepdog Trials?' My own early education
+was neglected."
+
+"Glure's education wasn't," said the Superintendent. "He has the full
+set of rules in his brand new Sportsman Library. That's, no doubt,
+where he got the idea. I went to him for them this morning, and he let
+me copy the laws governing the preliminaries. They're absurdly simple
+for a 'working' dog and absurdly impossible for a non-worker. Here,
+I'll read them over to you."
+
+He fished out a folded sheet of paper and read aloud a few lines of
+pencil-scribblings:
+
+"Four posts shall be set up, at ninety yards apart, at the corners of
+a square enclosure. A fifth post shall be set in the center. At this
+fifth post the owner or handler of the contestant shall stand with his
+dog. Nor shall such owner or handler move more than three feet from
+the post until his dog shall have completed the trial.
+
+"Guided only by voice and by signs, the dog shall go alone from the
+center-post to the post numbered '1.' He shall go thence, in the order
+named, to Posts 2, 3 and 4, without returning to within fifteen feet
+of the central post until he shall have reached Post 4.
+
+"Speed and form shall count as seventy points in these evolutions.
+Thirty points shall be added to the score of the dog or dogs
+which shall make the prescribed tour of the posts directed wholly
+by signs and without the guidance of voice."
+
+"There," finished the superintendent, "you see it is as simple as a
+kindergarten game. But a child who had never been taught could not
+play Puss-in-the-Corner.' I was talking to the English trainer that
+Glure bought along with the dog. The trainer tells me Lochinvar can go
+through those maneuvers and a hundred harder ones without a word being
+spoken. He works entirely by gestures. He watches the trainer's
+hand. Where the hand points he goes. A snap of the fingers halts him.
+Then he looks back for the next gesture. The trainer says it's a
+delight to watch him."
+
+"The delight is all his," grumbled the Master. "Poor, poor Lad! He'll
+get bewildered and unhappy. He'll want to do whatever we tell him to,
+but he can't understand. It was different the time he rounded up
+Glure's flock of sheep--when he'd never seen a sheep before. That was
+ancestral instinct. A throwback. But ancestral instinct won't teach
+him to go to Post 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. He----"
+
+"Hello, people!" boomed a jarringly cordial voice. "Welcome to the
+Towers!"
+
+Bearing down upon the trio was a large person, round and yellow of
+face and clad elaborately in a morning costume that suggested a
+stud-groom with ministerial tendencies. He was dressed for the
+Occasion. Mr. Glure was always dressed for the Occasion.
+
+"Hello, people!" repeated the Wall Street Farmer, alternately
+pump-handling the totally unresponsive Mistress and Master. "I see
+you've been admiring the Maury Trophy. Magnificent, eh? Oh, Maury's a
+prince, I tell you! A prince! A bit eccentric, perhaps--as you'll have
+guessed by the conditions he's put up for the cup. But a prince. A
+prince! We think everything of him on the Street. Have you seen my new
+dog? Oh, you must go and take a look at Lochinvar! I'm entering him
+for the Maury Trophy, you know."
+
+"Yes," assented the Master dully, as Mr. Glure paused to breathe. "I
+know."
+
+He left his exultant host with some abruptness, and piloted the
+Mistress back to the Collie Section. There they came upon a scene of
+dire wrath. Disgruntled owners were loudly denouncing the Maury
+conditions-list, and they redoubled their plaint at sight of the two
+new victims of the trick.
+
+Folk who had bathed and brushed and burnished their pets for days, in
+eager anticipation of a neighborhood contest, gargled in positive
+hatred at the glorious Merle. They read the pink slips over and over
+with more rage at each perusal.
+
+One pretty girl had sat down on the edge of a bench, gathering her
+beloved gold-and-white collie's head in her lap, and was crying
+unashamed. The Master glanced at her. Then he swore softly, and set to
+work helping the Mistress in the task of fluffing Lad's glossy coat to
+a final soft shagginess.
+
+Neither of them spoke. There was nothing to say; but Lad realized more
+keenly than could a human that both his gods were wretchedly unhappy,
+and his great heart yearned pathetically to comfort them.
+
+"There's one consolation," said a woman at work on a dog in the
+opposite bench, "Lochinvar's not entered for anything except the Maury
+Cup. The clerk told me so."
+
+"Little good that will do any of us!" retorted her bench-neighbor. "In
+an all-specialty show, the winner of the Maury Trophy will go up for
+the 'Winners Class,' and that means Lochinvar will get the cup for
+the 'Best Collie,' as well as the Maury Cup and probably the cup for
+'Best Dog of any Breed,' too. And----"
+
+"The Maury Cup is the first collie event on the programme," lamented
+the other. "It's slated to be called before even the Puppy and the
+Novice classes. Mr. Glure has----"
+
+"Contestants for the Maury Trophy--all out!" bawled an attendant at
+the end of the section.
+
+The Master unclasped the chain from Lad's collar, snapped the light
+show-ring leash in its place and handed the leash to the Mistress.
+
+"Unless you'd rather have me take him in?" he whispered. "I hate to
+think of your handling a loser."
+
+"I'd rather take Lad to defeat than any other dog to--a Gold Hat," she
+answered, sturdily. "Come along, Laddie!"
+
+The Maury contest, naturally, could not be decided in the regular
+show-ring. Mr. Glure had thoughtfully set aside a quadrangle of
+greensward for the Event--a quadrangle bounded by four white and
+numbered posts, and bearing a larger white post in its center.
+
+A throng of people was already banked deep on all four sides of the
+enclosure when the Mistress arrived. The collie judge standing by the
+central post declaimed loudly the conditions of the contest. Then he
+asked for the first entrant.
+
+This courtier of failure chanced to be the only other local dog
+besides Lad that had survived the first two clauses of the conditions.
+He chanced also to be the dog over which the pretty girl had been
+crying.
+
+The girl's eyes were still red through a haze of powder as she led her
+slender little gold-and-snow collie into the ring. She had put on a
+filmy white muslin dress with gold ribbons that morning with the idea
+of matching her dog's coloring. She looked very sweet and dainty--and
+heartsore.
+
+At the central post she glanced up hopelessly at the judge who stood
+beside her. The judge indicated Post No. 1 with a nod. The girl
+blinked at the distant post, then at her collie, after which she
+pointed to the post.
+
+"Run on over there, Mac!" she pleaded. "That's a good boy!"
+
+The little collie wagged his tail, peered expectantly at her, and
+barked. But he did not stir. He had not the faintest idea what she
+wanted him to do, although he would have been glad to do it.
+Wherefore, the bark.
+
+Presently (after several more fruitless entreaties which reduced the
+dog to a paroxysm of barking) she led her collie out of the enclosure,
+strangling her sobs as she went. And again the Master swore softly,
+but with much venomous ardor.
+
+And now, at the judge's command, the Mistress led Lad into the
+quadrangle and up to the central post. She was very pale, but her
+thoroughbred nerves were rocklike in their steadiness. She, like Lad,
+was of the breed that goes down fighting. Lad walked majestically
+beside her, his eyes dark with sorrow over his goddess' unhappiness,
+which he could not at all understand and which he so longed to
+lighten. Hitherto, at dog shows, Lad had been the only representative
+of The Place to grieve.
+
+He thrust his nose lovingly into the Mistress' hand, as he moved along
+with her to the post; and he whined, under his breath.
+
+Ranging up beside the judge, the Mistress took off Lad's leash and
+collar. Stroking the dog's upraised head, she pointed to the No. 1
+Post.
+
+"Over there," she bade him.
+
+Lad looked in momentary doubt at her, and then at the post. He did not
+see the connection, nor know what he was expected to do. So, again he
+looked at the sorrowing face bent over him.
+
+"Lad!" said the Mistress gently, pointing once more to the Post. "Go!"
+
+Now, there was not one dog at The Place that had not known from
+puppy-hood the meaning of the word "Go!" coupled with the pointing of
+a finger. Fingers had pointed, hundreds of times, to kennels or to the
+open doorways or to canoe-bottoms or to car tonneaus or to whatsoever
+spot the dog in question was desired to betake himself. And the word
+"Go!" had always accompanied the motion.
+
+Lad still did not see why he was to go where the steady finger
+indicated. There was nothing of interest over there; no one to attack
+at command. But he went.
+
+He walked for perhaps fifty feet; then he turned and looked back.
+
+"Go on!" called the voice that was his loved Law.
+
+And he went on. Unquestionably, as uncomprehendingly, he went, because
+the Mistress told him to! Since she had brought him out before this
+annoying concourse of humans to show off his obedience all he could do
+was to obey. The knowledge of her mysterious sadness made him the more
+anxious to please her.
+
+So on he went. Presently, as his progress brought him alongside a
+white post, he heard the Mistress call again. He wheeled and started
+toward her at a run. Then he halted again, almost in mid-air.
+
+For her hand was up in front of her, palm forward, in a gesture that
+had meant "Stop!" from the time he had been wont to run into the house
+with muddy feet, as a puppy.
+
+Lad stood, uncertain. And now the Mistress was pointing another way
+and calling:
+
+"Go on! Lad! Go on!"
+
+Confused, the dog started in the new direction. He went slowly. Once
+or twice he stopped and looked back in perplexity at her; but, as
+often, came the steady-voiced order:
+
+"Go on! Lad! Go _on!_"
+
+On plodded Lad. Vaguely, he was beginning to hate this new game played
+without known rules and in the presence of a crowd. Lad abominated a
+crowd.
+
+But it was the Mistress' bidding, and in her dear voice his quick
+hearing could read what no human could read--a hard-fought longing to
+cry. It thrilled the big dog, this subtle note of grief. And all he
+could do to ease her sorrow, apparently, was to obey this queer new
+whim of hers as best he might.
+
+He had continued his unwilling march as far as another post when the
+welcome word of recall came--the recall that would bring him close
+again to his sorrowing deity. With a bound he started back to her.
+
+But, for the second time, came that palm-forward gesture and the cry
+of "Stop! Go _back!_"
+
+Lad paused reluctantly and stood panting. This thing was getting on
+his fine-strung nerves. And nervousness ever made him pant.
+
+The Mistress pointed in still another direction, and she was calling
+almost beseechingly:
+
+"Go on, Lad! Go _on!_"
+
+Her pointing hand waved him ahead and, as before, he followed its
+guidance. Walking heavily, his brain more and more befogged, Lad
+obeyed. This time he did not stop to look to her for instructions.
+From the new vehemence of the Mistress' gesture she had apparently
+been ordering him off the field in disgrace, as he had seen puppies
+ordered from the house. Head and tail down, he went.
+
+But, as he passed by the third of those silly posts, she recalled
+him. Gleeful to know he was no longer in disgrace he galloped toward
+the Mistress; only to be halted again by that sharp gesture and
+sharper command before he had covered a fifth of the distance from the
+post to herself.
+
+The Mistress was actually pointing again--more urgently than ever--and
+in still another direction. Now her voice had in it a quiver that
+even the humans could detect; a quiver that made its sweetness all but
+sharp.
+
+"Go on, Lad! Go _on!_"
+
+Utterly bewildered at his usually moodless Mistress' crazy mood and
+spurred by the sharp reprimand in her voice Lad moved away at a
+crestfallen walk. Four times he stopped and looked back at her, in
+piteous appeal, asking forgiveness of the unknown fault for which she
+was ordering him away; but always he was met by the same fierce "Go
+_on!_"
+
+And he went.
+
+Of a sudden, from along the tight-crowded edges of the quadrangle,
+went up a prodigious handclapping punctuated by such foolish and
+ear-grating yells as "Good _boy!_" "_Good_ old Laddie!" "He _did_ it!"
+
+And through the looser volume of sound came the Mistress' call of:
+
+"Laddie! Here, _Lad!_"
+
+In doubt, Lad turned to face her. Hesitatingly he went toward her
+expecting at every step that hateful command of "Go _back!_"
+
+But she did not send him back. Instead, she was running forward to
+meet him. And out of her face the sorrow--but not the desire to
+cry--had been swept away by a tremulous smile.
+
+Down on her knees beside Lad the Mistress flung herself, and gathered
+his head in her arms and told him what a splendid, dear dog he was and
+how proud she was of him.
+
+All Lad had done was to obey orders, as any dog of his brain and heart
+and home training might have obeyed them. Yet, for some unexplained
+reason, he had made the Mistress wildly happy. And that was enough for
+Lad.
+
+Forgetful of the crowd, he licked at her caressing hands in puppylike
+ecstasy; then he rolled in front of her; growling ferociously and
+catching one of her little feet in his mighty jaws, as though to
+crush it. This foot-seizing game was Lad's favorite romp with the
+Mistress. With no one else would he condescend to play it, and the
+terrible white teeth never exerted the pressure of a tenth of an ounce
+on the slipper they gripped.
+
+"Laddie!" the Mistress was whispering to him, "_Laddie!_ You did it,
+old friend. You did it terribly badly I suppose, and of course we'll
+lose. But we'll 'lose right.' We've made the contest. You _did_ it!"
+
+And now a lot of noisy and bothersome humans had invaded the
+quadrangle and wanted to paw him and pat him and praise him. Wherefore
+Lad at once got to his feet and stood aloofly disdainful of everything
+and everybody. He detested pawing; and, indeed, any outsider's
+handling.
+
+Through the congratulating knot of folk the Wall Street Farmer elbowed
+his way to the Mistress.
+
+"Well, well!" he boomed. "I must compliment you on Lad! A really
+intelligent dog. I was surprised. I didn't think any dog could make
+the round unless he'd been trained to it. Quite a dog! But, of
+course, you had to call to him a good many times. And you were
+signaling pretty steadily every second. Those things count heavily
+against you, you know. In fact, they goose-egg your chances if another
+entrant can go the round without so much coaching. Now my dog
+Lochinvar never needs the voice at all and he needs only one slight
+gesture for each manoeuver. Still, Lad did very nicely. He--why does
+the sulky brute pull away when I try to pat him?"
+
+"Perhaps," ventured the Mistress, "perhaps he didn't catch your name."
+
+Then she and the Master led Lad back to his bench where the local
+contingent made much of him, and where--after the manner of a
+high-bred dog at a Show--he drank much water and would eat nothing.
+
+When the Mistress went again to the quadrangle, the crowd was banked
+thicker than ever, for Lochinvar III was about to compete for the
+Maury Trophy.
+
+The Wall Street Farmer and the English trainer had delayed the Event
+for several minutes while they went through a strenuous dispute. As
+the Mistress came up she heard Glure end the argument by booming:
+
+"I tell you that's all rot. Why shouldn't he 'work' for me just as
+well as he'd 'work' for you? I'm his Master, ain't I?"
+
+"No, sir," replied the trainer, glumly. "Only his _owner_."
+
+"I've had him a whole week," declared the Wall Street Farmer, "and
+I've put him through those rounds a dozen times. He knows me and he
+goes through it all like clockwork for me. Here! Give me his leash!"
+
+He snatched the leather cord from the protesting trainer and, with a
+yank at it, started with Lochinvar toward the central post. The
+aristocratic Merle resented the uncalled-for tug by a flash of
+teeth. Then he thought better of the matter, swallowed his resentment
+and paced along beside his visibly proud owner.
+
+A murmur of admiration went through the crowd at sight of Lochinvar as
+he moved forward. The dog was a joy to look on. Such a dog as one
+sees perhaps thrice in a lifetime. Such a dog for perfect beauty, as
+were Southport Sample, Grey Mist, Howgill Rival, Sunnybank Goldsmith
+or Squire of Tytton. A dog, for looks, that was the despair of all
+competing dogdom.
+
+Proudly perfect in carriage, in mist-gray coat, in a hundred
+points--from the noble pale-eyed head to the long massy
+brush--Lochinvar III made people catch their breath and stare. Even
+the Mistress' heart went out--though with a tinge of shame for
+disloyalty to Lad--at his beauty.
+
+Arrived at the central post, the Wall Street Farmer unsnapped the
+leash. Then, one hand on the Merle's head and the other holding a
+half-smoked cigar between two pudgy fingers, he smiled upon the tense
+onlookers.
+
+This was his Moment. This was the supreme moment which had cost him
+nearly ten thousand dollars in all. He was due, at last, to win a
+trophy that would be the talk of all the sporting universe. These
+country-folk who had won lesser prizes from under his very nose--how
+they would stare, after this, at his gun-room treasures!
+
+"Ready, Mr. Glure?" asked the Judge.
+
+"All ready!" graciously returned the Wall Street Farmer.
+
+Taking a pull at his thick cigar, and replacing it between the first
+two fingers of his right hand, he pointed majestically with the same
+hand to the first post.
+
+No word of command was given; yet Lochinvar moved off at a sweeping
+run directly in the line laid out by his owner's gesture.
+
+As the Merle came alongside the post the Wall Street Farmer snapped
+his fingers. Instantly Lochinvar dropped to a halt and stood moveless,
+looking back for the next gesture.
+
+This "next gesture" was wholly impromptu. In snapping his fingers the
+Wall Street Farmer had not taken sufficient account of the cigar stub
+he held. The snapping motion had brought the fire-end of the stub
+directly between his first and second fingers, close to the palm. The
+red coal bit deep into those two tenderest spots of all the hand.
+
+With a reverberating snort the Wall Street Farmer dropped the
+cigar-butt and shook his anguished hand rapidly up and down, in the
+first sting of pain. The loose fingers slapped together like the
+strands of an obese cat-of-nine-tails.
+
+And this was the gesture which Lochinvar beheld, as he turned to catch
+the signal for his next move.
+
+Now, the frantic St. Vitus shaking of the hand and arm, accompanied by
+a clumsy step-dance and a mouthful of rich oaths, forms no signal
+known to the very cleverest of "working" collies. Neither does the
+inserting of two burned fingers into the signaler's mouth--which was
+the second motion the Merle noted.
+
+Ignorant as to the meaning of either of these unique signals the dog
+stood, puzzled. The Wall Street Farmer recovered at once from his fit
+of babyish emotion, and motioned his dog to go on to the next post.
+
+The Merle did not move. Here, at last, was a signal he understood
+perfectly well. Yet, after the manner of the best-taught "working"
+dogs, he had been most rigidly trained from earliest days to finish
+the carrying out of one order before giving heed to another.
+
+He had received the signal to go in one direction. He had obeyed.
+He had then received the familiar signal to halt and to await
+instructions. Again he had obeyed. Next, he had received a wildly
+emphatic series of signals whose meaning he could not read. A long
+course of training told him he must wait to have these gestures
+explained to him before undertaking to obey the simple signal that had
+followed.
+
+This, in his training kennel, had been the rule. When a pupil did not
+understand an order he must stay where he was until he could be made
+to understand. He must not dash away to carry out a later order that
+might perhaps be intended for some other pupil.
+
+Wherefore, the Merle stood stock still. The Wall Street Farmer
+repeated the gesture of pointing toward the next post. Inquiringly,
+Lochinvar watched him. The Wall Street Farmer made the gesture a
+third time--to no purpose other than to deepen the dog's look of
+inquiry. Lochinvar was abiding, steadfastly, by his hard-learned
+lessons of the Scottish moorland days.
+
+Someone in the crowd tittered. Someone else sang out delightedly:
+
+"Lad wins!"
+
+The Wall Street Farmer heard. And he proceeded to mislay his
+easily-losable self control. Again, these inferior country folk
+seemed about to wrest from him a prize he had deemed all his own, and
+to rejoice in the prospect.
+
+"You mongrel cur!" he bellowed. "Get along there!"
+
+This diction meant nothing to Lochinvar, except that his owner's
+temper was gone--and with it his scanty authority.
+
+Glure saw red--or he came as near to seeing it as can anyone outside a
+novel. He made a plunge across the quadrangle, seized the beautiful
+Merle by the scruff of the neck and kicked him.
+
+Now, here was something the dog could understand with entire
+ease. This loud-mouthed vulgarian giant, whom he had disliked from the
+first, was daring to lay violent hands on him--on Champion Lochinvar
+III, the dog-aristocrat that had always been handled with deference
+and whose ugly temper had never been trained out of him.
+
+As a growl of hot resentment went up from the onlookers, a far more
+murderously resentful growl went up from the depths of Lochinvar's
+furry throat.
+
+In a flash, the Merle had wrenched free from his owner's neck-grip.
+And, in practically the same moment, his curved eye-teeth were
+burying themselves deep in the calf of the Wall Street Farmer's
+leg.
+
+Then the trainer and the judge seized on the snarlingly floundering
+pair. What the outraged trainer said, as he ran up, would have brought
+a blush to the cheek of a waterside bartender. What the judge said (in
+a tone of no regret, whatever) was:
+
+"Mr. Glure, you have forfeited the match by moving more than three
+feet from the central post. But your dog had already lost it by
+refusing to 'work' at your command. Lad wins the Maury Trophy."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So it was that the Gold Hat, as well as the modest little silver "Best
+Collie" cup, went to The Place that night. Setting the golden
+monstrosity on the trophy shelf, the Master surveyed it for a moment;
+then said:
+
+"That Gold Hat is even bigger than it looks. It is big enough to hold
+a thousand yards of surgical dressings; and gallons of medicine and
+broth, besides. And that's what it is going to hold. To-morrow I'll
+send it to Vanderslice, at the Red Cross Headquarters."
+
+"Good!" applauded the Mistress. "Oh, _good!_ send it in Lad's name."
+
+"I shall. I'll tell Vanderslice how it was won; and I'll ask him to
+have it melted down to buy hospital supplies. If that doesn't take off
+its curse of unsportsmanliness, nothing will. I'll get you something
+to take its place, as a trophy."
+
+But there was no need to redeem that promise. A week later, from
+Headquarters, came a tiny scarlet enamel cross, whose silver back bore
+the inscription:
+
+"_To SUNNYBANK LAD; in memory of a generous gift to Humanity._"
+
+"Its face-value is probably fifty cents, Lad, dear," commented the
+Mistress, as she strung the bit of scarlet on the dog's shaggy
+throat. "But its heart value is at least a billion dollars. Besides--you
+can wear it. And nobody, outside a nightmare, could possibly
+have worn kind, good Mr. Hugh Lester Maury's Gold Hat. I must
+write to Mr. Glure and tell him all about it. How tickled he'll be!
+Won't he, Laddie?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+SPEAKING OF UTILITY
+
+
+The man huddled frowzily in the tree crotch, like a rumpled and sick
+raccoon. At times he would crane his thin neck and peer about him, but
+more as if he feared rescue than as though he hoped for it.
+
+Then, before slumping back to his sick-raccoon pose, he would look
+murderously earthward and swear with lurid fervor.
+
+At the tree foot the big dog wasted neither time nor energy in frantic
+barking or in capering excitedly about. Instead, he lay at majestic
+ease, gazing up toward the treed man with grave attentiveness.
+
+Thus, for a full half-hour, the two had remained--the treer and the
+treed. Thus, from present signs, they would continue to remain until
+Christmas.
+
+There is, by tradition, something intensely comic in the picture of a
+man treed by a dog. The man, in the present case, supplied the only
+element of comedy in the scene. The dog was anything but comic, either
+in looks or in posture.
+
+He was a collie, huge of bulk, massive of shoulder, deep and shaggy of
+chest. His forepaws were snowy and absurdly small. His eyes were
+seal-dark and sorrowful--eyes that proclaimed not only an uncannily
+wise brain, but a soul as well. In brief, he was Lad; official guard
+of The Place's safety.
+
+It was in this role of guard that he was now serving as jailer to the
+man he had seen slouching through the undergrowth of the forest which
+grew close up to The Place's outbuildings.
+
+From his two worshipped deities--the Mistress and the Master--Lad had
+learned in puppyhood the simple provisions of the Guest Law. He knew,
+for example, that no one openly approaching the house along the
+driveway from the furlong-distant highroad was to be molested. Such a
+visitor's advent--especially at night--might lawfully be greeted by a
+salvo of barks. But the barks were a mere announcement, not a threat.
+
+On the other hand, the Law demanded the instant halting of all
+prowlers, or of anyone seeking to get to the house from road or lake
+by circuitous and stealthy means. Such roundabout methods spell
+Trespass. Every good watchdog knows that. But wholly good watchdogs
+are far fewer than most people--even their owners--realize. Lad was
+one of the few.
+
+To-day's trespasser had struck into The Place's grounds from an
+adjoining bit of woodland. He had moved softly and obliquely and had
+made little furtive dashes from one bit of cover to another, as he
+advanced toward the outbuildings a hundred yards north of the house.
+
+He had moved cleverly and quietly. No human had seen or heard
+him. Even Lad, sprawling half-asleep on the veranda, had not seen
+him. For, in spite of theory, a dog's eye by daylight is not so keen
+or so far-seeing as is a human's. But the wind had brought news of a
+foreign presence on The Place--a presence which Lad's hasty glance at
+driveway and lake edge did not verify.
+
+So the dog had risen to his feet, stretched himself, collie-fashion,
+fore and aft, and trotted quickly away to investigate. Scent, and then
+sound, taught him which way to go.
+
+Two minutes later he changed his wolf trot to a slow and unwontedly
+stiff-legged walk, advancing with head lowered, and growling softly
+far down in his throat. He was making straight for a patch of sumac,
+ten feet in front of him and a hundred feet behind the stables.
+
+Now, when a dog bounds toward a man, barking and with head up, there
+is nothing at all to be feared from his approach. But when the pace
+slackens to a stiff walk and his head sinks low, that is a very good
+time, indeed, for the object of his attentions to think seriously of
+escape or of defense.
+
+Instinct or experience must have imparted this useful truth to the
+lurker in the sumac patch, for as the great dog drew near the man
+incontinently wheeled and broke cover. At the same instant Lad
+charged.
+
+The man had a ten-foot start. This vantage he utilized by flinging
+himself bodily at a low-forked hickory tree directly in his path.
+
+Up the rough trunk to the crotch he shinned with the speed of a chased
+cat. Lad arrived at the tree bole barely in time to collect a mouthful
+of cloth from the climber's left trouser ankle.
+
+After which, since he was not of the sort to clamor noisily for what
+lurked beyond his reach, the dog yawned and lay down to keep guard on
+his arboreal prisoner. For half an hour he lay thus, varying his vigil
+once or twice by sniffing thoughtfully at a ragged scrap of trouser
+cloth between his little white forepaws. He sniffed the thing as
+though trying to commit its scent to memory.
+
+The man did not seek help by shouting. Instead, he seemed oddly
+willing that no other human should intrude on his sorry plight. A
+single loud yell would have brought aid from the stables or from the
+house or even from the lodge up by the gate. Yet, though the man must
+have guessed this, he did not yell. Instead, he cursed whisperingly at
+intervals and snarled at his captor.
+
+At last, his nerve going, the prisoner drew out a jackknife, opened a
+blade at each end of it and hurled the ugly missile with all his force
+at the dog. As the man had shifted his position to get at the knife,
+Lad had risen expectantly to his feet with some hope that his captive
+might be going to descend.
+
+It was lucky for Lad that he was standing when the knife was thrown
+for the aim was not bad, and a dog lying down cannot easily dodge. A
+dog standing on all fours is different, especially if he is a collie.
+
+Lad sprang to one side instinctively as the thrower's arm went
+back. The knife whizzed, harmless, into the sumac patch. Lad's teeth
+bared themselves in something that looked like a smile and was
+not. Then he lay down again on guard.
+
+A minute later he was up with a jump. From the direction of the house
+came a shrill whistle followed by a shout of "Lad! _La-ad!_" It was
+the Master calling him. The summons could not be ignored. Usually it
+was obeyed with eager gladness, but now--Lad looked worriedly up into
+the tree. Then, coming to a decision, he galloped away at top speed.
+
+In ten seconds he was at the veranda where the Master stood talking
+with a newly arrived guest. Before the Master could speak to the dog,
+Lad rushed up to him, whimpering in stark appeal, then ran a few steps
+toward the stables, paused, looked back and whimpered again.
+
+"What's the matter with him?" loudly demanded the guest--an obese and
+elderly man, right sportily attired. "What ails the silly dog?"
+
+"He's found something," said the Master. "Something he wants me to
+come and see--and he wants me to come in a hurry."
+
+"How do you know?" asked the guest.
+
+"Because I know his language as well as he knows mine," retorted the
+Master.
+
+He set off in the wake of the excited dog. The guest followed in more
+leisurely fashion complaining:
+
+"Of all the idiocy! To let a measly dog drag you out of the shade on a
+red-hot day like this just to look at some dead chipmunk he's found!"
+
+"Perhaps," stiffly agreed the Master, not slackening his pace. "But if
+Lad behaves like that, unless it's pretty well worth while, he's
+changed a lot in the past hour. A man can do worse sometimes than
+follow a tip his dog gives him."
+
+"Have it your own way," grinned the guest. "Perhaps he may lead us to
+a treasure cave or to a damsel in distress. I'm with you."
+
+"Guy me if it amuses you," said the Master.
+
+"It does," his guest informed him. "It amuses me to see any grown man
+think so much of a dog as you people think of Lad. It's maudlin."
+
+"My house is the only one within a mile on this side of the lake that
+has never been robbed," was the Master's reply. "My stable is the only
+one in the same radius that hasn't been rifled by harness-and-tire
+thieves. Thieves who seem to do their work in broad daylight, too,
+when the stables won't be locked. I have Lad to thank for all that.
+He----"
+
+The dog had darted far ahead. Now he was standing beneath a low-forked
+hickory tree staring up into it.
+
+"He's treed a cat!" guffawed the guest, his laugh as irritating as a
+kick. "Extra! Come out and get a nice sunstroke, folks! Come and see
+the cat Lad has treed!"
+
+The Master did not answer. There was no cat in the tree. There was
+nothing visible in the tree. Lad's aspect shrank from hope to
+depression. He looked apologetically at the Master. Then he began to
+sniff once more at a scrap of cloth on the ground.
+
+The Master picked up the cloth and presently walked over to the
+tree. From a jut of bark dangled a shred of the same cloth. The
+Master's hand went to Lad's head in approving caress.
+
+"It was not a cat," he said. "It was a man. See the rags of----"
+
+"Oh, piffle!" snorted the guest. "Next you'll be reconstructing the
+man's middle name and favorite perfume from the color of the bark on
+the tree. You people are always telling about wonderful stunts of
+Lad's. And that's all the evidence there generally is to it."
+
+"No, Mr. Glure," denied the Master, taking a strangle hold on his
+temper. "No. That's not quite all the evidence that we have for our
+brag about Lad. For instance, we had the evidence of your own eyes
+when he herded that flock of stampeded prize sheep for you last
+spring, and of your own eyes again when he won the 'Gold Hat' cup at
+the Labor Day Dog Show. No, there's plenty of evidence that Lad is
+worth his salt. Let it go at that. Shall we get back to the house?
+It's fairly cool on the veranda. By the way, what was it you wanted me
+to call Lad for? You asked to see him. And----"
+
+"Why, here's the idea," explained Glure, as they made their way
+through the heat back to the shade of the porch. "It's what I drove
+over here to talk with you about. I'm making the rounds of all this
+region. And, say, I didn't ask to see Lad. I asked if you still had
+him. I asked because----"
+
+"Oh," apologized the Master. "I thought you wanted to see him. Most
+people ask to if he doesn't happen to be round when they call.
+We----"
+
+"I asked you if you still had him," expounded Mr. Glure, "because I
+hoped you hadn't. I hoped you were more of a patriot."
+
+"Patriot?" echoed the Master, puzzled.
+
+"Yes. That's why I'm making this tour of the country: to rouse dog
+owners to a sense of their duty. I've just formed a local branch of
+the Food Conservation League and----"
+
+"It's a splendid organization," warmly approved the Master, "but what
+have dog owners to----"
+
+"To do with it?" supplemented Glure. "They have nothing to do with it,
+more's the pity. But they ought to. That's why I volunteered to make
+this canvass. It was my own idea. Some of the others were foolish
+enough to object, but as I had founded and financed this Hampton
+branch of the League----"
+
+"What 'canvass' are you talking about?" asked the Master, who was far
+too familiar with Glure's ways to let the man become fairly launched
+on a paean of self-adulation. "You say it's 'to rouse dog owners to a
+sense of their duty.' Along what line? We dog men have raised a good
+many thousand dollars this past year by our Red Cross shows and by our
+subscriptions to all sorts of war funds. The Blue Cross, too, and the
+Collie Ambulance Fund have----"
+
+"This is something better than the mere giving of surplus coin," broke
+in Glure. "It is something that involves sacrifice. A needful
+sacrifice for our country. A sacrifice that may win the war."
+
+"Count me in on it, then!" cordially approved the Master. "Count in
+all real dog men. What is the 'sacrifice'?"
+
+"It's my own idea," modestly boasted Glure, adding: "That is, of
+course, it's been agitated by other people in letters to newspapers
+and all that, but I'm the first to go out and put it into actual
+effect."
+
+"Shoot!" suggested the weary Master.
+
+"That's the very word!" exclaimed Glure. "That's the very thing I
+want dog owners to combine in doing. To shoot!"
+
+"To--what?"
+
+"To shoot--or poison--or asphyxiate," expounded Glure, warming to his
+theme. "In short, to get rid of every dog."
+
+The Master's jaw swung ajar and his eyes bulged. His face began to
+assume an unbecoming bricky hue. Glure went on:
+
+"You see, neighbor, our nation is up against it. When war was
+declared last month it found us unprepared. We've got to pitch in and
+economize. Every mouthful of food wasted here is a new lease of life
+to the Kaiser. We're cutting down on sugar and meat and fat, but for
+every cent we save that way we're throwing away a dollar in feeding
+our dogs. Our dogs that are a useless, senseless, costly luxury! They
+serve no utilitarian end. They eat food that belongs to soldiers. I'm
+trying to brighten the corner where I am by persuading my neighbors to
+get rid of their dogs. When I've proved what a blessing it is I'm
+going to inaugurate a nation-wide campaign from California to New
+York, from----"
+
+"Hold on!" snapped the Master, finding some of his voice and, in the
+same effort, mislaying much of his temper. "What wall-eyed idiocy do
+you think you're trying to talk? How many dog men do you expect to
+convert to such a crazy doctrine? Have you tried any others? Or am I
+the first mark?"
+
+"I'm sorry you take it this way," reproved Glure. "I had hoped you
+were more broad-minded, but you are as pig-headed as the rest."
+
+"The 'rest,' hey?" the Master caught him up. "The 'rest?' Then I'm
+not the first? I'm glad they had sense enough to send you packing."
+
+"They were blind animal worshipers, both of them," said Glure
+aggrievedly, "just as you are. One of them yelled something after me
+that I sincerely hope I didn't hear aright. If I did, I have a strong
+action for slander against him. The other chucklehead so far forgot
+himself as to threaten to take a shotgun to me if I didn't get off his
+land."
+
+"I'm sorry!" sighed the Master. "For both of them seem to have covered
+the ground so completely that there isn't anything unique for me to
+say--or do. Now listen to me for two minutes. I've read a few of
+those anti-dog letters in the newspapers, but you're the first person
+I've met in real life who backs such rot. And I'm going----"
+
+"It is not a matter for argument," loftily began Glure.
+
+"Yes it is," asserted the Master. "Everything is, except religion and
+love and toothache. You say dogs ought to be destroyed as a patriotic
+duty because they aren't utilitarian. There's where you're wrong at
+the very beginning. Dead wrong. I'm not talking about the big kennels
+where one man keeps a hundred dogs as he'd herd so many prize
+hogs. Though look what the owners of such kennels did for the country
+at the last New York show at Madison Square Garden! Every penny of the
+thousands and thousands of dollars in profits from the show went to
+the Red Cross. I'm speaking of the man who keeps one dog or two or
+even three dogs, and keeps them as pets. I'm speaking of myself, if
+you like. Do you know what it costs me per week to feed my dogs?"
+
+"I'm not looking for statistics in----"
+
+"No, I suppose not. Few fanatics are. Well, I figured it out a few
+weeks ago, after I read one of those anti-dog letters. The total
+upkeep of all my dogs averages just under a dollar a week. A bare
+fifty dollars a year. That's true. And----"
+
+"And that fifty dollars," interposed Glure eagerly, "would pay for a
+soldier's----"
+
+"It would not!" contradicted the Master, trying to keep some slight
+grip on his sliding temper. "But I can tell you what it _would_ do:
+Part of it would go for burglar insurance, which I don't need now,
+because no stranger dares to sneak up to my house at night. Part of it
+would go to make up for things stolen around The Place. For instance,
+in the harness room of my stable there are five sets of good harness
+and two or three extra automobile tires. Unless I'm very much
+mistaken, the best of those would be gone now if Lad hadn't just treed
+the man who was after them."
+
+"Pshaw!" exploded Glure in fine scorn. "We saw no man there. There was
+no proof of----"
+
+"There was proof enough for me," continued the Master. "And if Lad
+hadn't scented the fellow one of the other dogs would. As I told you,
+mine is the only house--and mine is the only stable--on this side of
+the lake that has never been looted. Mine is the only orchard--and
+mine is the only garden--that is never robbed. And this is the only
+place, on our side of the lake, where dogs are kept at large for
+twelve months of the year. My dogs' entry fees at Red Cross shows have
+more than paid for their keep, and those fees went straight to
+charity."
+
+"But----"
+
+"The women of my family are as safe here, day and night, as if I had a
+machine-gun company on guard. That assurance counts for more
+than a little, in peace of mind, back here in the North Jersey
+hinterland. I'm not taking into account the several other ways the
+dogs bring in cash income to us. Not even the cash Lad turned over to
+the Red Cross when we sent that $1600 'Gold Hat' cup he won, to be
+melted down. And I'm not speaking of our dogs' comradeship, and
+what that means to us. Our dogs are an asset in every way--not a
+liability. They aren't deadheads either. For I pay the state tax on
+them every year. They're true, loyal, companionable chums, and
+they're an ornament to The Place as well as its best safeguard. All in
+return for table scraps and skim milk and less than a weekly dollar's
+worth of stale bread and cast-off butcher-shop bones. Where do you
+figure out the 'saving' for the war chest if I got rid of them?"
+
+"As I said," repeated Glure with cold austerity, "it's not a matter
+for argument. I came here hoping to----"
+
+"I'm not given to mawkish sentiment," went on the Master shamefacedly,
+"but on the day your fool law for dog exterminating goes into effect
+there'll be a piteous crying of little children all over the whole
+world--of little children mourning for the gentle protecting playmates
+they loved. And there'll be a million men and women whose lives have
+all at once become lonely and empty and miserable. Isn't this war
+causing enough crying and loneliness and misery without your adding to
+it by killing our dogs? For the matter of that, haven't the army dogs
+over in Europe been doing enough for mankind to warrant a square deal
+for their stay-at-home brothers? Haven't they?"
+
+"That's a mass of sentimental bosh," declared Glure. "All of it."
+
+"It is," willingly confessed the Master. "So are most of the
+worth-while things in life, if you reduce them to their lowest terms."
+
+"You know what a fine group of dogs I had," said Glure, starting off
+on a new tack. "I had a group that cost me, dog for dog, more than any
+other kennel in the state. Grand dogs too. You remember my wonderful
+Merle, for instance, and----"
+
+"And your rare 'Prussian sheep dog'--or was it a prune-hound?--that a
+Chicago man sold to you for $1100," supplemented the Master,
+swallowing a grin. "I remember. I remember them all. What then?"
+
+"Well," resumed Glure, "no one can accuse me of not practicing what I
+preach. I began this splendid campaign by getting rid of every dog I
+owned. So I----"
+
+"Yes," agreed the Master. "I read all about that last month in your
+local paper. Distemper had run through your kennel, and you tried
+doctoring the dogs on a theory of your own instead of sending for a
+vet. So they all died. Tough luck! Or perhaps you got rid of them that
+way on purpose? For the good of the Cause? I'm sorry about the
+Merle. He was----"
+
+"I see there's no use talking to you," sighed Glure in disgust,
+ponderously rising and waddling toward his car. "I'm disappointed;
+because I hoped you were less bone-brained and more patriotic than
+these yokels round here."
+
+"I'm not," cheerily conceded the Master. "I'm not, I'm glad to
+say. Not a bit."
+
+"Then," pursued Glure, climbing into the car, "since you feel that way
+about it, I suppose there's no use asking you to come to the little
+cattle show I'm organizing for week after next, because that's for the
+Food Conservation League too. And since you're so out of sympathy
+with----"
+
+"I'm not out of sympathy with the League," asserted the Master. "Its
+card is in our kitchen window. We've signed its pledge and we're
+boosting it in every way we know how, except by killing our dogs; and
+that's no part of the League's programme, as you know very well. Tell
+me more about the cattle show."
+
+"It's a neighborhood affair," said Glure sulkily, yet eager to secure
+any possible entrants. "Just a bunch of home-raised cattle. Cup and
+rosette for best of each recognized breed, and the usual ribbons for
+second and third. Three dollars an entry. Only one class for each
+breed. Every entrant must have been raised by the exhibitor. Gate
+admission fifty cents. Red Cross to get the gross proceeds. I've
+offered the use of my south meadow at Glure Towers--just as I did for
+the specialty dog show. I've put up a hundred dollars toward the
+running expenses too. Micklesen's to judge."
+
+"I don't go in for stock raising," said the Master. "My little
+Alderney heifer is the only head of quality stock I ever bred. I doubt
+if she is worth taking up there, but I'll be glad to take her if only
+to swell the competition list. Send me a blank, please."
+
+Lad trotted dejectedly back to the house as Glure's car chugged away
+up the drive. Lad was glumly unhappy. He had had no trouble at all in
+catching the scent of the man he had treed. He had followed the
+crashingly made trail through undergrowth and woodland until it had
+emerged into the highroad.
+
+And there, perforce, Lad had paused. For, taught from puppyhood, he
+knew the boundaries of The Place as well as did the Mistress or the
+Master, and he knew equally well that his own jurisdiction ended at
+those boundaries. Beyond them he might not chase even the most loathed
+intruder. The highroad was sanctuary.
+
+Wherefore at the road edge he stopped and turned slowly back. His
+pursuit was ended, but not his anger, nor his memory of the marauder's
+scent. The man had trespassed slyly on The Place. He had gotten away
+unpunished. These things rankled in the big dog's mind....
+
+It was a pretty little cattle show and staged in a pretty setting
+withal--at Glure Towers, two weeks later. The big sunken meadow on the
+verge of the Ramapo River was lined on two sides with impromptu
+sheds. The third side was blocked by something between a grand stand
+and a marquee. The tree-hung river bordered the fourth side. In the
+field's center was the roped-off judging inclosure into which the
+cattle, class by class, were to be led.
+
+Above the pastoral scene brooded the architectural crime, known as The
+Towers--homestead and stronghold of Hamilcar Q. Glure, Esquire.
+
+Glure had made much money in Wall Street--a crooked little street that
+begins with a graveyard and ends in a river. Having waxed indecently
+rich, he had erected for himself a hideously expensive estate among
+the Ramapo Mountains and had settled down to the task of patronizing
+his rural neighbors. There he elected to be known as the "Wall Street
+Farmer," a title that delighted not only himself but everyone else in
+the region.
+
+There was, in this hinterland stretch, a friendly and constant rivalry
+among the natives and other old residents in the matter of stock
+raising. Horses, cattle, pigs, chickens, even a very few sheep were
+bred for generations along lines which their divers owners had laid
+out--lines which those owners fervently believed must some day produce
+perfection.
+
+Each owner or group of owners had his own special ideas as to the best
+way to produce this super-stock result. The local stock shows formed
+the only means of proving or disproving the excellence of the varied
+theories. Hence these shows were looked upon as barnyard supreme
+courts.
+
+Mr. Glure had begun his career in the neighborhood with a laudable aim
+of excelling everybody else in everything. He had gone, heart and
+soul, into stock producing and as he had no breeding theories of his
+own he proceeded to acquire a set. As it would necessarily take years
+to work out these beliefs, he bridged the gap neatly by purchasing and
+importing prize livestock and by entering it against the home-raised
+products of his neighbors.
+
+Strangely enough, this did not add to the popularity which he did not
+possess. Still more strangely, it did not add materially to his
+prestige as an exhibitor, for the judges had an exasperating way of
+handing him a second or third prize ribbon and then of awarding the
+coveted blue rosette to the owner and breeder of some local exhibit.
+
+After a long time it began to dawn upon Glure that narrow neighborhood
+prejudice deemed it unsportsmanlike to buy prize stock and exhibit it
+as one's own. At approximately the same time three calves were born to
+newly imported prize cows in the two-acre model barns of Glure Towers,
+and with them was born Glure's newest idea.
+
+No one could deny he had bred these calves himself. They were born on
+his own place and of his own high-pedigreed cattle. Three breeds were
+represented among the trio of specimens. By points and by lineage
+they were well-nigh peerless. Wherefore the plan for a show of
+neighborhood "home-raised" cattle. At length Glure felt he was coming
+into his own.
+
+The hinterland folk had fought shy of Glure since the dog show wherein
+he had sought to win the capital prize by formulating a set of
+conditions that could be filled by no entrant except a newly imported
+champion Merle of his own.
+
+But the phrase "home-raised" now proved a bait that few of the
+region's stock lovers could resist; and on the morning of the show no
+fewer than fifty-two cattle of standard breeds were shuffling or
+lowing in the big impromptu sheds.
+
+A farm hand, the day before, had led to the show ground The Place's
+sole entrant--the pretty little Alderney heifer of which the Master
+had spoken to Glure and which, by the way, was destined to win nothing
+higher than a third-prize ribbon.
+
+For that matter, to end the suspense, the best of the three Glure
+calves won only a second prize, all the first for their three breeds
+going to two nonplutocratic North Jerseymen who had bred the ancestors
+of their entrants for six generations.
+
+The Mistress and the Master motored over to Glure Towers on the
+morning of the show in their one car. Lad went with them. He always
+went with them.
+
+Not that any dog could hope to find interest in a cattle show, but a
+dog would rather go anywhere with his Master than to stay at home
+without him. Witness the glad alacrity wherewith the weariest dog
+deserts a snug fireside in the vilest weather for the joy of a
+master-accompanying walk.
+
+A tire puncture delayed the trip. The show was about to begin when the
+car was at last parked behind the sunken meadow. The Mistress and the
+Master, with Lad at their heels, started across the meadow afoot
+toward the well-filled grand-stand.
+
+Several acquaintances in the stand waved to them as they advanced.
+Also, before they had traversed more than half the meadow's area
+their host bore down upon them.
+
+Mr. Glure (dressed, as usual, for the Occasion) looked like a blend of
+Landseer's "_Edinburgh Drover_" and a theater-program picture of
+"_What the Man Will Wear_."
+
+He had been walking beside a garishly liveried groom who was leading
+an enormous Holstein bull toward the judging enclosure. The bull was
+steered by a five-foot bar, the end snapped to a ring in his nose.
+
+"Hello, good people!" Mr. Glure boomed, pump-handling the unenthusiastic
+Mistress' right hand and bestowing a jarringly annoying slap
+upon the Master's shoulder. "Glad to see you! You're late. Almost
+too late for the best part of the show. Before judging begins,
+I'm having some of my choicest European stock paraded in the
+ring. Just for exhibition, you know. Not for a contest. I like to give
+a treat to some of these farmers who think they know how to breed
+cattle."
+
+"Yes?" queried the Master, who could think of nothing cleverer to say.
+
+"Take that bull, Tenebris, of mine, for instance," proclaimed Glure,
+with a wave toward the approaching Holstein and his guide. "Best ton
+of livestock that ever stood on four legs. Look how he----"
+
+Glure paused in his lecture for he saw that both the Mistress and the
+Master were staring, not at the bull, but at the beast's leader. The
+spectacle of a groom in gaudy livery, on duty at a cattle show, was
+all but too much for their gravity.
+
+"You're looking at that boy of mine, hey? Fine, well-set-up chap,
+isn't he? A faithful boy. Devoted to me. Slavishly devoted. Not like
+most of these grumpy, independent Jersey rustics. Not much. He's a
+treasure, Winston is. Used to be chief handler for some of the biggest
+cattle breeders in the East he tells me. I got hold of him by chance,
+and just by the sheerest good luck, a week or so ago. Met him on the
+road and he asked for a lift. He----"
+
+It was then that Lad disgraced himself and his deities, and proved
+himself all unworthy to appear in so refined an assembly. The man in
+livery had convoyed the bull to within a few feet of the proudly
+exhorting Glure. Now, without growl or other sign of warning, the
+hitherto peaceable dog changed into a murder machine.
+
+In a single mighty bound he cleared the narrowing distance between
+himself and the advancing groom.
+
+The leap sent him hurtling through the air, an eighty-pound furry
+catapult, straight for the man's throat.
+
+Over and beyond the myriad cattle odors, Lad had suddenly recognized a
+scent that spelt deathless hatred. The scent had been verified by a
+single glance at the brilliantly clad man in livery. Wherefore the mad
+charge.
+
+The slashing jaws missed their mark in the man's throat by a bare half
+inch. That they missed it at all was because the man also recognized
+Lad, and shrank back in mortal terror.
+
+Even before the eighty-pound weight, smashing against his chest, sent
+the groom sprawling backward to the ground, Lad's slashing jaws had
+found a hold in place of the one they had missed.
+
+This grip was on the liveried shoulder, into which the fangs sank to
+their depth. Down went the man, screaming, the dog atop of him.
+
+"Lad!" cried the Mistress, aghast. "_Lad!_" Through the avenging rage
+that misted his brain the great dog heard. With a choking sound that
+was almost a sob he relinquished his hold and turned slowly from his
+prey.
+
+The Master and Glure instinctively took a step toward the approaching
+dog and the writhingly prostrate man. Then, still more instinctively,
+and without even coming to a standstill before going into reverse,
+they both sprang back. They would have sprung further had not the
+roped walls of the show ring checked them.
+
+For Tenebris had taken a sudden and active part in the scene.
+
+The gigantic Holstein during his career in Europe had trebly won his
+title to champion. And during the three years before his exportation
+to America he had gored to death no fewer than three over-confident
+stable attendants. The bull's homicidal temper, no less than the
+dazzling price offered by Glure, had caused his owner to sell him to
+the transatlantic bidder.
+
+A bull's nose is the tenderest spot of his anatomy. Next to his eyes,
+he guards its safety most zealously. Thus, with a stout leading-bar
+between him and his conductor, Tenebris was harmless enough.
+
+But the conductor just now had let go of that bar, as Lad's weight had
+smitten him. Freed, Tenebris had stood for an instant in perplexity.
+
+Fiercely he flung his gnarled head to one side to see the cause of the
+commotion. The gesture swung the heavy leading-bar, digging the
+nose ring cruelly into his sensitive nostrils. The pain maddened
+Tenebris. A final plunging twist of the head--and the bar's weight
+tore the nose ring free from the nostrils.
+
+Tenebris bellowed thunderously at the climax of pain. Then he realized
+he had shaken off the only thing that gave humans a control over
+him. A second bellow--a furious pawing of the earth--and the bull
+lowered his head. His evil eyes glared about him in search of
+something to kill.
+
+It was the sight of this motion which sent the Master and Glure
+recoiling against the show-ring ropes.
+
+In almost the same move the Master caught up his wife and swung her
+over the top rope, into the ring. He followed her into that refuge's
+fragile safety with a speed that held no dignity whatever. Glure,
+seeing the action, wasted no time in wriggling through the ropes after
+him.
+
+Tenebris did not follow them.
+
+One thing and only one his red eyes saw: On the ground, not six
+feet away, rolled and moaned a man. The man was down. He was
+helpless. Tenebris charged.
+
+A bull plunging at a near-by object shuts both eyes. A cow does
+not. Which may--or may not--explain the Spanish theory that bullfights
+are safer than cow-fights. To this eye-closing trait many a hard-pressed
+matador has owed his life.
+
+Tenebris, both eyes screwed shut, hurled his 2000-pound bulk at the
+prostrate groom. Head down, nose in, short horns on a level with the
+earth and barely clearing it, he made his rush.
+
+But at the very first step he became aware that something was
+amiss with his pleasantly anticipated charge. It did not follow
+specifications or precedent.
+
+All because a heavy something had flung its weight against the side of
+his lowered head, and a new and unbearable pain was torturing his
+blood-filled nostrils.
+
+Tenebris swerved. He veered to one side, throwing up his head to clear
+it of this unseen torment.
+
+As a result, the half-lifted horns grazed the fallen man. The pointed
+hoofs missed him altogether. At the same moment the weight was gone
+from against the bull's head, and the throbbing stab from his
+nostrils.
+
+Pausing uncertainly, Tenebris opened his eyes and glared about him. A
+yard or two away a shaggy dog was rising from the tumble caused by the
+jerky uptossing of the bull's head.
+
+Now, were this a fiction yarn, it would be interesting to devise
+reasons why Lad should have flown to the rescue of a human whom he
+loathed, and arrayed himself against a fellow-beast toward which he
+felt no hatred at all.
+
+To dogs all men are gods. And perhaps Lad felt the urge of saving even
+a detested god from the onslaught of a beast. Or perhaps not. One can
+go only by the facts. And the facts were that the collie had checked
+himself in the reluctant journey toward the Mistress and had gone to
+his foe's defense.
+
+With a flash of speed astonishing in so large and sedate a dog, he had
+flown at the bull in time--in the barest time--to grip the torn
+nostrils and turn the whirlwind charge.
+
+And now Tenebris shifted his baleful glare from the advancing dog to
+the howling man. The dog could wait. The bull's immediate pleasure and
+purpose were to kill the man.
+
+He lowered his head again. But before he could launch his enormous
+bulk into full motion--before he could shut his eyes--the dog was
+between him and his quarry.
+
+In one spring Lad was at the bull's nose. And again his white eye
+teeth slashed the ragged nostrils. Tenebris halted his own incipient
+rush and strove to pin the collie to the ground. It would have been as
+easy to pin a whizzing hornet.
+
+Tenebris thrust at the clinging dog, once more seeking to smash Lad
+against the sod with his battering-ram forehead and his short
+horns. But Lad was not there. Instead, he was to the left, his body
+clean out of danger, his teeth in the bull's left ear.
+
+A lunge of the tortured head sent Lad rolling over and over. But by
+the time he stopped rolling he was on his feet again. Not only on his
+feet, but back to the assault. Back, before his unwieldy foe could
+gauge the distance for another rush at the man. And a keen nip in the
+bleeding nostrils balked still one more charge.
+
+The bull, snorting with rage, suddenly changed his plan of campaign.
+Apparently his first ideas had been wrong. It was the man who
+could wait, and the dog that must be gotten out of the way.
+
+Tenebris wheeled and made an express-train rush at Lad. The collie
+turned and fled. He did not flee with tail down, as befits a beaten
+dog. Brush wavingly aloft, he gamboled along at top speed, just a
+stride or two ahead of the pursuing bull. He even looked back
+encouragingly over his shoulder as he went.
+
+Lad was having a beautiful time. Seldom had he been so riotously
+happy. All the pent-up mischief in his soul was having a glorious
+airing.
+
+The bull's blind charge was short, as a bull's charge always is. When
+Tenebris opened his eyes he saw the dog, not ten feet in front of him,
+scampering for dear life toward the river. And again Tenebris charged.
+
+Three such charges, one after another, brought pursuer and pursued to
+within a hundred feet of the water.
+
+Tenebris was not used to running. He was getting winded. He came to a
+wavering standstill, snorting loudly and pawing up great lumps of sod.
+
+But he had not stood thus longer than a second before Lad was at
+him. Burnished shaggy coat a-bristle, tail delightedly wagging, the
+dog bounded forward. He set up an ear-splitting fanfare of barking.
+
+Round and round the bull he whirled, never letting up on that
+deafening volley of barks; nipping now at ears, now at nose, now at
+heels; dodging in and out under the giant's clumsy body; easily
+avoiding the bewilderingly awkward kicks and lunges of his enemy.
+Then, forefeet crouching and muzzle close to the ground, like a
+playful puppy, he waved his plumed tail violently and, in a new
+succession of barks, wooed his adversary to the attack.
+
+It was a pretty sight. And it set Tenebris into active motion at once.
+
+The bull doubtless thought he himself was doing the driving, by means
+of his panting rushes, and by his lurches to one side or another to
+keep away from the dog's sharp bites. But he was not. It was Lad who
+chose the direction in which they went. And he chose it deliberately.
+
+Presently the two were but fifteen feet away from the river, at a
+point where the bank shelved, cliff-like, for two or three yards, down
+to a wide pool.
+
+Feinting for the nose, Lad induced Tenebris to lower his tired
+head. Then he sprang lightly over the threatening horns, and landed,
+a-scramble, with all four feet, on the bull's broad shoulders.
+
+Scurrying along the heaving back, the dog nipped Tenebris on the hip,
+and dropped to earth again.
+
+The insult, the fresh pain, the astonishment combined to make Tenebris
+forget his weariness. Beside himself with maniac wrath, he shut both
+eyes and launched himself forward. Lad slipped, eel-like, to one
+side. Carried by his own blind momentum, Tenebris shot over the bank
+edge.
+
+Too late the bull looked. Half sliding, half scrambling, he crashed
+down the steep sides of the bank and into the river.
+
+Lad, tongue out, jogged over to the top of the bank, where, with head
+to one side and ears cocked, he gazed interestedly down into the
+wildly churned pool.
+
+Tenebris had gotten to his feet after the ducking; and he was
+floundering pastern-deep in stickily soft mud. So tightly bogged down
+that it later took the efforts of six farm-hands to extricate him, the
+bull continued to flounder and to bellow.
+
+A stream of people were running down the meadow toward the river. Lad
+hated crowds. He made a loping detour of the nearest runners and
+sought to regain the spot where last he had seen the Mistress and
+Master. Also, if his luck held good, he might have still another bout
+with the man he had once treed. Which would be an ideal climax to a
+perfect day.
+
+He found all the objects of his quest together. The groom, hysterical,
+was swaying on his feet, supported by Glure.
+
+At sight of the advancing collie the bitten man cried aloud in fear
+and clutched his employer for protection.
+
+"Take him away, sir!" he babbled in mortal terror. "He'll kill me! He
+hates me, the ugly hairy devil! He _hates_ me. He tried to kill me
+once before! He----"
+
+"H'm!" mused the Master. "So he tried to kill you once before, eh?
+Aren't you mistaken?"
+
+"No, I ain't!" wept the man. "I'd know him in a million! That's why he
+went for me again to-day. He remembered me. I seen he did. That's no
+dog. It's a _devil!_"
+
+"Mr. Glure," asked the Master, a light dawning, "when this chap
+applied to you for work, did he wear grayish tweed trousers? And were
+they in bad shape?"
+
+"His trousers were in rags," said Glure. "I remember that. He said a
+savage dog had jumped into the road from a farmhouse somewhere and
+gone for him. Why?"
+
+"Those trousers," answered the Master, "weren't entire strangers to
+you. You'd seen the missing parts of them--on a tree and on the ground
+near it, at The Place. Your 'treasure' is the harness thief Lad treed
+the day you came to see me. So----"
+
+"Nonsense!" fumed Glure. "Why, how absurd! He----"
+
+"I hadn't stolen nothing!" blubbered the man. "I was coming cross-lots
+to a stable to ask for work. And the brute went for me. I had to run
+up a tree and----"
+
+"And it didn't occur to you to shout for help?" sweetly urged the
+Master. "I was within call. So was Mr. Glure. So was at least one of
+my men. An honest seeker for work needn't have been afraid to
+halloo. A thief would have been afraid to. In fact, a thief _was!_"
+
+"Get out of here, you!" roared Glure, convinced at last. "You measly
+sneak thief! Get out or I'll have you jailed! You're an imposter! A
+pan-handler! A----"
+
+The thief waited to hear no more. With an apprehensive glance to see
+that Lad was firmly held, he bolted for the road.
+
+"Thanks for telling me," said Glure. "He might have stolen everything
+at Glure Towers if I hadn't found out. He----"
+
+"Yes. He might even have stolen more than the cost of our non-utilitarian
+Lad's keep," unkindly suggested the Master. "For that matter,
+if it hadn't been for a non-utilitarian dog, that mad bull's
+horns, instead of his nostrils, would be red by this time. At least
+one man would have been killed. Perhaps more. So, after all----"
+
+He stopped. The Mistress was tugging surreptitiously at his sleeve.
+The Master, in obedience to his wife's signal, stepped aside,
+to light a cigar.
+
+"I wouldn't say any more, dear, if I were you," the Mistress was
+whispering. "You see, if it hadn't been for Lad, the bull would never
+have broken loose in the first place. By another half-hour that fact
+may dawn on Mr. Glure, if you keep rubbing it in. Let's go over to the
+grand stand. Come, Lad!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE KILLER
+
+
+One of the jolliest minutes in Lad's daily cross-country tramp with
+the Mistress and the Master was his dash up Mount Pisgah. This
+"mount" was little more than a foothill. It was treeless, and covered
+with short grass and mullein; a slope where no crop but buckwheat
+could be expected to thrive. It rose out of the adjoining mountain
+forests in a long and sweeping ascent.
+
+Here, with no trees or undergrowth to impede him, Lad, from puppyhood,
+had ordained a racecourse of his own. As he neared the hill he would
+always dash forward at top speed; flying up the rise like a tawny
+whirlwind, at unabated pace, until he stopped, panting and gloriously
+excited, on the summit; to await his slower-moving human escorts.
+
+One morning in early summer, Lad, as usual, bounded ahead of the
+Mistress and the Master, as they drew near to the treeless "mount."
+And, as ever, he rushed gleefully forward for his daily breather, up
+the long slope. But, before he had gone fifty yards, he came to a
+scurrying halt, and stood at gaze. His back was bristling and his lips
+curled back from his white teeth in sudden annoyance.
+
+His keen nostrils, even before his eyes, told him something was amiss
+with his cherished race-track. The eddying shift of the breeze, from
+west to north, had brought to his nose the odor which had checked his
+onrush; an odor that wakened all sorts of vaguely formless memories
+far back in Lad's brain; and which he did not at all care for.
+
+Scent is ten times stronger, to a dog, than is sight. The best dog is
+near sighted. And the worst dog has a magic sense of smell. Wherefore,
+a dog almost always uses his nose first and his eyes last. Which Lad
+now proceeded to do.
+
+Above him was the pale green hillside, up which he loved to gallop.
+But its surface was no longer smoothly unencumbered. Instead, it was
+dotted and starred--singly or in groups--with fluffy grayish-white
+creatures.
+
+Lad was almost abreast of the lowest group of sheep when he paused.
+Several of the feeding animals lifted their heads, snortingly,
+from the short herbage, at sight of him; and fled up the hill. The
+rest of the flock joined them in the silly stampede.
+
+The dog made no move to follow. Instead, his forehead creased and his
+eyes troubled, he stared after the gray-white surge that swept upward
+toward the summit of his favored coursing ground. The Mistress and
+the Master, too, at sight of the woolly avalanche, stopped and stared.
+
+From over the brow of Mount Pisgah appeared the non-picturesque figure
+of a man in blue denim overalls--one Titus Romaine, owner of the
+sparse-grassed hill. Drawn by the noisy multiple patter of his flock's
+hoofs, he emerged from under a hilltop boulder's shade; to learn the
+cause of their flight.
+
+Now, in all his life, Lad had seen sheep just once before. That one
+exception had been when Hamilcar Q. Glure, "the Wall Street Farmer,"
+had corralled a little herd of his prize Merinos, overnight, at The
+Place, on the way to the Paterson Livestock Show. On that occasion,
+the sheep had broken from the corral, and Lad, acting on ancestral
+instinct, had rounded them up, without injuring or scaring one of
+them.
+
+The memory was not pleasing to Lad, and he wanted nothing more to do
+with such stupid creatures. Indeed, as he looked now upon the sheep
+that were obstructing his run, he felt a distinct aversion to
+them. Whining a little, he trotted back to where stood the Mistress
+and the Master. And, as they waited, Titus Romaine bore wrathfully
+down upon them.
+
+"I've been expectin' something like that!" announced the land-owner.
+"Ever since I turned these critters out here, this mornin'. I ain't
+surprised a bit. I----"
+
+"What is it you've been expecting, Romaine?" asked the Master. "And
+how long have you been a sheep-raiser? A sheep, here in the North
+Jersey hinterland, is as rare as----"
+
+"I been expectin' some savage dog would be runnin' 'em," retorted the
+farmer. "Just like I've read they do. An' now I've caught him at it!"
+
+"Caught _whom?_--at _what?_" queried the perplexed Mistress; failing
+to note the man's baleful glower at the contemptuous Lad.
+
+"That big ugly brute of your'n, of course," declared Romaine. "I
+caught him, red-handed, runnin' my sheep. He----"
+
+"Lad did nothing of the kind," denied the Mistress. "The instant he
+caught sight of them he stopped running. Lad wouldn't hurt anything
+that is weak and helpless. Your sheep saw him and they ran away. He
+didn't follow them an inch."
+
+"I seen what I seen," cryptically answered the man. "An' I give you
+fair warnin', if any of my sheep is killed, I'll know right where to
+come to look for the killer."
+
+"If you mean Lad----" began the Master, hotly.
+
+But the Mistress intervened.
+
+"I am glad you have decided to raise sheep, Mr. Romaine," she
+said. "Everyone ought to, who can. I read, only the other day, that
+America is using up more sheep than it can breed; and that the price
+of fodder and the scarcity of pasture were doing terrible things to
+the mutton-and-wool supply. I hope you'll have all sorts of good
+luck. And you are wise to watch your sheep so closely. But don't be
+afraid of Lad harming any of them. He wouldn't, for worlds, I
+know. Because I know Lad. Come along, Laddie!" she finished, as she
+turned to go away.
+
+But Titus Romaine stopped her.
+
+"I've put a sight of money into this flock of sheep," he declared.
+"More'n I could reely afford. An' I've been readin' up on sheep,
+too. I've been readin' that the worst en'my to sheep is 'pred'tory
+dogs.' An' if that big dog of your'n ain't 'pred'tory,' then
+I never seen one that was. So I'm warnin' you, fair----"
+
+"If your sheep come to any harm, Mr. Romaine," returned the Mistress,
+again forestalling an untactful outbreak from her husband, "I'll
+guarantee Lad will have nothing to do with it."
+
+"An' I'll guarantee to have him shot an' have you folks up in court,
+if he does," chivalrously retorted Mr. Titus Romaine.
+
+With which exchange of goodfellowship, the two groups parted, Romaine
+returning to his scattered sheep, while the Mistress, Lad at her
+heels, lured the Master away from the field of encounter. The Master
+was fuming.
+
+"Here's where good old Mr. Trouble drops in on us for a nice long
+visit!" he grumbled, as they moved homeward. "I can see how it is
+going to turn out. Because a few stray curs have chased or killed
+sheep, now and then, every decent dog is under suspicion as a
+sheep-killer. If one of Romaine's wethers gets a scratch on its leg,
+from a bramble, Lad will be blamed. If one of the mongrels from over
+in the village should chase his sheep, Lad will be accused. And we'll
+be in the first 'neighborhood squabble' of our lives."
+
+The Master spoke with a pessimism his wife did not share, and which
+he, himself, did not really believe. The folk at The Place had always
+lived in goodfellowship and peace with their few rural neighbors, as
+well as with the several hundred inhabitants of the mile-distant
+village, across the lake. And, though livestock is the foundation of
+ninety rustic feuds out of ninety-one, the dogs of The Place had never
+involved their owners in any such row.
+
+Yet, barely three days later, Titus Romaine bore down upon The Place,
+before breakfast, breathing threatenings and complaining of slaughter.
+
+He was waiting on the veranda in blasphemous converse with The Place's
+foreman, when the Master came out. At Titus's heels stood his "hired
+man"--a huge and sullen person named Schwartz, who possessed a
+scarce-conquered accent that fitted the name.
+
+"Well!" orated Romaine, in glum greeting, as he sighted the Master.
+"Well, I guessed right! He done it, after all! He done it. We
+all but caught him, red-handed. Got away with four of my best sheep!
+Four of 'em. The cur!"
+
+"What are you talking about?" demanded the Master, as the Mistress,
+drawn by the visitor's plangent tones, joined the veranda-group.
+"'Bout that ugly big dog of your'n!" answered Romaine. "I knew
+what he'd do, if he got the chance. I knew it, when I saw him
+runnin' my poor sheep, last week. I warned you then. The two
+of you. An' now he's done it!"
+
+"Done what?" insisted the Master, impatient of the man's noise and
+fury.
+
+"What dog?" asked the Mistress, at the same time.
+
+"Are you talking about Lad? If you are----"
+
+"I'm talkin' about your big brown collie cur!" snorted Titus. "He's
+gone an' killed four of my best sheep. Did it in the night an' early
+this mornin'. My man here caught him at the last of 'em, an' drove
+him off, just as he was finishin' the poor critter. He got away with
+the rest of 'em."
+
+"Nonsense!" denied the Master. "You're talking rot. Lad wouldn't touch
+a sheep. And----"
+
+"That's what all folks say when their dogs or their children is
+charged with doin' wrong!" scoffed Romaine. "But this time it won't do
+no good to----"
+
+"You say this happened last night?" interposed the Mistress.
+
+"Yes, it did. Last night an' early in the mornin', too. Schwartz,
+here----"
+
+"But Lad sleeps in the house, every night," objected the Mistress. "He
+sleeps under the piano, in the music room. He has slept there every
+night since he was a puppy. The maid who dusts the downstairs rooms
+before breakfast lets him out, when she begins work. So he----"
+
+"Bolster it up any way you like!" broke in Romaine. "He was out last
+night, all right. An' early this morning, too."
+
+"How early?" questioned the Master.
+
+"Five o'clock," volunteered Schwartz, speaking up, from behind his
+employer. "I know, because that's the time I get up. I went out,
+first thing, to open the barnyard gate and drive the sheep to the
+pasture. First thing I saw was that big dog growling over a sheep he'd
+just killed. He saw me, and he wiggled out through the barnyard
+bars--same way he had got in. Then I counted the sheep. One was
+dead,--the one he had just killed--and three were gone. We've been
+looking for their bodies ever since, and we can't find them."
+
+"I suppose Lad swallowed them," ironically put in The Place's
+foreman. "That makes about as much sense as the rest of the yarn. The
+Old Dog would no sooner----"
+
+"Do you really mean to say you saw Lad--saw and _recognized_ him--in
+Mr. Titus's barnyard, growling over a sheep he had just killed?"
+demanded the Mistress.
+
+"I sure do," affirmed Schwartz. "And I----"
+
+"An' he's ready to go on th' stand an' take oath to it!" supplemented
+Titus. "Unless you'll pay me the damages out of court. Them sheep cost
+me exac'ly $12.10 a head, in the Pat'son market, one week ago. An'
+sheep on the hoof has gone up a full forty cents more since then. You
+owe me for them four sheep exac'ly----"
+
+"I owe you not one red cent!" denied the Master. "I hate law worse
+than I hate measles. But I'll fight that idiotic claim all the way up
+to the Appellate Division before I'll----"
+
+The Mistress lifted a little silver whistle that hung at her belt and
+blew it. An instant later Lad came galloping gaily up the lawn from
+the lake, adrip with water from his morning swim. Straight, at the
+Mistress' summons, he came, and stood, expectant, in front of her,
+oblivious of others.
+
+The great dog's mahogany-and-snow coat shone wetly in the sunshine.
+Every line of his splendid body was tense. His eyes looked up
+into the face of the loved Mistress in eager anticipation. For a
+whistle-call usually involved some matter of more than common
+interest.
+
+"That's the dog!" cried Schwartz, his thick voice betraying a shade
+more of its half-lost German accent, in the excitement of the
+minute. "That's the one. He has washed off the blood. But that is the
+one. I could know him anywhere at all. And I knew him, already. And
+Mr. Romaine told me to be looking out for him, about the sheep, too.
+So I----"
+
+The Master had bent over Lad, examining the dog's mouth. "Not a trace
+of blood or of wool!" he announced. "And look how he faces us! If he
+had anything to be ashamed of----"
+
+"I got a witness to prove he killed my sheep," cut in Romaine. "Since
+you won't be honest enough to square the case out of court, then the
+law'll take a tuck in your wallet for you. The law will look after a
+poor man's int'rest. I don't wonder there's folks who want all dogs
+done 'way with. Pesky curs! Here, the papers say we are short on
+sheep, an' they beg us to raise 'em, because mutton is worth double
+what it used to be, in open market. Then, when I buy sheep, on that
+sayso, your dog gets four of 'em the very first week. Think what them
+four sheep would 'a meant to----"
+
+"I'm sorry you lost them," the Master interrupted. "Mighty sorry. And
+I'm still sorrier if there is a sheep-killing dog at large anywhere in
+this region. But Lad never----"
+
+"I tell ye, he _did!_" stormed Titus. "I got proof of it. Proof
+good enough for any court. An' the court is goin' to see me righted.
+It's goin' to do more. It's goin' to make you shoot that killer,
+there, too. I know the law. I looked it up. An' the law says if a
+sheep-killin' dog----"
+
+"Lad is not a sheep-killing dog!" flashed the Mistress.
+
+"That's what he is!" snarled Romaine. "An', by law, he'll be shot as
+sech. He----"
+
+"Take your case to law, then!" retorted the Master, whose last shred
+of patience went by the board, at the threat. "And take it and
+yourself off my Place! Lad doesn't 'run' sheep. But, at the word from
+me, he'll ask nothing better than to 'run' you and your German every
+step of the way to your own woodshed. Clear out!"
+
+He and the Mistress watched the two irately mumbling intruders plod
+out of sight up the drive. Lad, at the Master's side, viewed the
+accusers' departure with sharp interest. Schooled in reading the
+human voice, he had listened alertly to the Master's speech of
+dismissal. And, as the dog listened, his teeth had come slowly into
+view from beneath a menacingly upcurled lip. His eyes, half shut, had
+been fixed on Titus with an expression that was not pretty.
+
+"Oh, dear!" sighed the Mistress miserably, as she and her husband
+turned indoors and made their way toward the breakfast room. "You were
+right about 'good old Mr. Trouble dropping in on us.' Isn't it
+horrible? But it makes my blood boil to think of Laddie being accused
+of such a thing. It is crazily absurd, of course. But----"
+
+"Absurd?" the Master caught her up. "It's the most absurd thing I ever
+heard of. If it was about any other dog than Lad, it would be good for
+a laugh. I mean, Romaine's charge of the dog's doing away with no less
+than four sheep and not leaving a trace of more than one of them.
+That, alone, would get his case laughed out of court. I remember, once
+in Scotland, I was stopping with some people whose shepherd complained
+that three of the sheep had fallen victim to a 'killer.' We all went
+up to the moor-pasture to look at them. They weren't a pretty sight,
+but they were all _there_. A dog doesn't devour a sheep he kills. He
+doesn't even lug it away. Instead, he just----"
+
+"Perhaps you'd rather describe it _after_ breakfast," suggested the
+Mistress, hurriedly. "This wretched business has taken away all of my
+appetite that I can comfortably spare."
+
+At about mid-morning of the next day, the Master was summoned to the
+telephone.
+
+"This is Maclay," said the voice at the far end.
+
+"Why, hello, Mac!" responded the Master, mildly wondering why his old
+fishing-crony, the village's local Peace Justice, should be calling
+him up at such an hour. "If you're going to tell me this is a good day
+for small-mouth bass to bite I'm going to tell you it isn't. It isn't
+because I'm up to my neck in work. Besides, it's too late for the
+morning fishing, and too early for the bass to get up their afternoon
+appetites. So don't try to tempt me into----"
+
+"Hold on!" broke in Maclay. "I'm not calling you up for that. I'm
+calling up on business; rotten unpleasant business, too."
+
+"What's wrong?" asked the Master.
+
+"I'm hoping Titus Romaine is," said the Justice. "He's just been
+here--with his North Prussian hired man as witness--to make a
+complaint about your dog, Lad. Yes, and to get a court order to have
+the old fellow shot, too."
+
+"What!" sputtered the Master. "He hasn't actually----"
+
+"That's just what he's done," said Maclay. "He claims Lad killed four
+of his new sheep night before last, and four more of them this morning
+or last night. Schwartz swears he caught Lad at the last of the killed
+sheep both times. It's hard luck, old man, and I feel as bad about it
+as if it were my own dog. You know how strong I am for Lad. He's the
+greatest collie I've known, but the law is clear in such----"
+
+"You speak as if you thought Lad was guilty!" flamed the Master. "You
+ought to know better than that. He----"
+
+"Schwartz tells a straight story," answered Maclay, sadly, "and he
+tells it under oath. He swears he recognized Lad first time. He says
+he volunteered to watch in the barnyard last night. He had had a hard
+day's work and he fell asleep while he was on watch. He says he woke
+up in gray dawn to find the whole flock in a turmoil, and Lad pinning
+one of the sheep to the ground. He had already killed three. Schwartz
+drove him away. Three of the sheep were missing. One Lad had just
+downed was dying. Romaine swears he saw Lad 'running' his sheep last
+week. It----"
+
+"What did you do about the case?" asked the dazed Master.
+
+"I told them to be at the courtroom at three this afternoon with the
+bodies of the two dead sheep that aren't missing, and that I'd notify
+you to be there, too."
+
+"Oh, I'll be there!" snapped the Master. "Don't worry. And it was
+decent of you to make them wait. The whole thing is ridiculous!
+It----"
+
+"Of course," went on Maclay, "either side can easily appeal from any
+decision I make. That is as regards damages. But, by the township's
+new sheep-laws, I'm sorry to say there isn't any appeal from the local
+Justice's decree that a sheep-killing dog must be shot at once. The
+law leaves me no option if I consider a dog guilty of sheep-killing.
+I have to order such a dog put to death at once. That's what's making
+me so blue. I'd rather lose a year's pay than have to order old Lad
+killed."
+
+"You won't have to," declared the Master, stoutly; albeit he was
+beginning to feel a nasty sinking in the vicinity of his stomach.
+
+"We'll manage to prove him innocent. I'll stake anything you like on
+that."
+
+"Talk the case over with Dick Colfax or any other good lawyer before
+three o'clock," suggested Maclay. "There may be a legal loophole out
+of the muddle. I hope to the Lord there is."
+
+"We're not going to crawl out through any 'loopholes,' Lad and I,"
+returned the Master. "We're going to come through, _clean_. See if we
+don't!"
+
+Leaving the telephone, he went in search of the Mistress, and more and
+more disheartened told her the story.
+
+"The worst of it is," he finished, "Romaine and Schwartz seem to have
+made Maclay believe their fool yarn."
+
+"That is because they believe it, themselves," said the Mistress, "and
+because, just as soon as even the most sensible man is made a Judge,
+he seems to lose all his common sense and intuition and become nothing
+but a walking statute-book. But you--you think for a moment, do you,
+that they can persuade Judge Maclay to have Lad shot?"
+
+She spoke with a little quiver in her sweet voice that roused all the
+Master's fighting spirit.
+
+"This Place is going to be in a state of siege against the entire law
+and militia of New Jersey," he announced, "before one bullet goes into
+Lad. You can put your mind to rest on that. But that isn't enough. I
+want to _clear_ him. In these days of 'conservation' and scarcity, it
+is a grave offense to destroy any meat-animal. And the loss of eight
+sheep in two days--in a district where there has been such an effort
+made to revive sheep raising----"
+
+"Didn't you say they claim the second lot of sheep were killed in the
+night and at dawn, just as they said the first were?" interposed the
+Mistress.
+
+"Why, yes. But----"
+
+"Then," said the Mistress, much more comfortably, "we can prove Lad's
+alibi just as I said yesterday we could. Marie always lets him out in
+the morning when she comes downstairs to dust these lower rooms. She's
+never down before six o'clock; and the sun, nowadays, rises long
+before that. Schwartz says he saw Lad both times in the early
+dawn. We can prove, by Marie, that Lad was safe here in the house till
+long after sunrise."
+
+Her worried frown gave way to a smile of positive inspiration. The
+Master's own darkling face cleared.
+
+"Good!" he approved. "I think that cinches it. Marie's been with us
+for years. Her word is certainly as good as a Boche farmhand's. Even
+Maclay's 'judicial temperament' will have to admit that. Send her in
+here, won't you?"
+
+When the maid appeared at the door of the study a minute later, the
+Master opened the examination with the solemn air of a legal veteran.
+
+"You are the first person down here in the mornings, aren't you,
+Marie?" he began.
+
+"Why, yes, sir," replied the wondering maid. "Yes, always, except
+when you get up early to go fishing or when----"
+
+"What time do you get down here in the mornings," pursued the Master.
+
+"Along about six o'clock, sir, mostly," said the maid, bridling a bit
+as if scenting a criticism of her work-hours.
+
+"Not earlier than six?" asked the Master.
+
+"No, sir," said Marie, uncomfortably. "Of course, if that's not early
+enough, I suppose I could----"
+
+"It's quite early enough," vouchsafed the Master. "There is no
+complaint about your hours. You always let Lad out as soon as you come
+into the music room?"
+
+"Yes, sir," she answered, "as soon as I get downstairs. Those were
+the orders, you remember."
+
+The Master breathed a silent sigh of relief. The maid did not get
+downstairs until six. The dog, then, could not get out of the house
+until that hour. If Schwartz had seen any dog in the Romaine barnyard
+at daybreak, it assuredly was not Lad. Yet, racking his brain, the
+Master could not recall any other dog in the vicinity that bore
+even the faintest semblance to his giant collie. And he fell to
+recalling--from his happy memories of "_Bob, Son of Battle_"--that
+"Killers" often travel many miles from home to sate their mania for
+sheep-slaying.
+
+In any event, it was no concern of his if some distant collie, drawn
+to the slaughter by the queer "sixth" collie-sense, was killing
+Romaine's new flock of sheep. Lad was cleared. The maid's very
+evidently true testimony settled that point.
+
+"Yes, sir," rambled on Marie, beginning to take a faint interest in
+the examination now that it turned upon Lad whom she loved. "Yes, sir,
+Laddie always comes out from under his piano the minute he hears my
+step in the hall outside. And he always comes right up to me and wags
+that big plume of a tail of his, and falls into step alongside of me
+and walks over to the front door, right beside me all the way. He
+knows as much as many a human, that dog does, sir."
+
+Encouraged by the Master's approving nod, the maid ventured to enlarge
+still further upon the theme.
+
+"It always seems as if he was welcoming me downstairs, like," she
+resumed, "and glad to see me. I've really missed him quite bad this
+past few mornings." The approving look on the Master's face gave way
+to a glare of utter blankness.
+
+"This past few mornings?" he repeated, blitheringly. "What do you
+mean?"
+
+"Why," she returned, flustered afresh by the quick change in her
+interlocutor's manner. "Ever since those French windows are left open
+for the night--same as they always are when the hot weather starts in,
+you know, sir. Since then, Laddie don't wait for me to let him
+out. When he wakes up he just goes out himself. He used to do that
+last year, too, sir. He----"
+
+"Thanks," muttered the Master, dizzily. "That's all. Thanks."
+
+Left alone, he sat slumped low in his chair, trying to think. He was
+as calmly convinced as ever of his dog's innocence, but he had staked
+everything on Marie's court testimony. And, now, that testimony was
+rendered worse than worthless.
+
+Crankily he cursed his own fresh-air mania which had decreed that the
+long windows on the ground floor be left open on summer nights. With
+Lad on duty, the house was as safe from successful burglary in
+spite of these open windows, as if guarded by a squad of special
+policemen. And the night-air, sweeping through, kept it pleasantly
+cool against the next day's heat. For this same coolness, a heavy
+price was now due.
+
+Presently the daze of disappointment passed leaving the Master pulsing
+with a wholesome fighting-anger. Rapidly he revised his defense and,
+with the Mistress' far cleverer aid, made ready for the afternoon's
+ordeal. He scouted Maclay's suggestion of hiring counsel and vowed to
+handle the defense himself. Carefully he and his wife went over their
+proposed line of action.
+
+Peace Justice Maclay's court was held daily in a rambling room on an
+upper floor of the village's Odd Fellows' Hall. The proceedings there
+were generally marked by shrewd sanity rather than by any effort at
+formalism. Maclay, himself, sat at a battered little desk at the
+room's far end; his clerk using a corner of the same desk for the
+scribbling of his sketchy notes.
+
+In front of the desk was a rather long deal table with kitchen chairs
+around it. Here, plaintiffs and defendants and prisoners and witnesses
+and lawyers were wont to sit, with no order of precedent or of other
+formality. Several other chairs were ranged irregularly along the wall
+to accommodate any overflow of the table's occupants.
+
+Promptly at three o'clock that afternoon, the Mistress and the Master
+entered the courtroom. Close at the Mistress' side--though held by no
+leash--paced Lad. Maclay and Romaine and Schwartz were already on
+hand. So were the clerk and the constable and one or two idle
+spectators. At a corner of the room, wrapped in burlap, were huddled
+the bodies of the two slain sheep.
+
+Lad caught the scent of the victims the instant he set foot in the
+room, and he sniffed vibrantly once or twice. Titus Romaine, his eyes
+fixed scowlingly on the dog, noted this, and he nudged Schwartz in the
+ribs to call the German's attention to it.
+
+Lad turned aside in fastidious disgust from the bumpy burlap
+bundle. Seeing the Judge and recognizing him as an old acquaintance,
+the collie wagged his plumed tail in gravely friendly greeting and
+stepped forward for a pat on the head.
+
+"Lad!" called the Mistress, softly.
+
+At the word the dog paused midway to the embarrassed Maclay's desk and
+obediently turned back. The constable was drawing up a chair at the
+deal table for the Mistress. Lad curled down beside her, resting one
+snowy little forepaw protectingly on her slippered foot. And the
+hearing began.
+
+Romaine repeated his account of the collie's alleged depredations,
+starting with Lad's first view of the sheep. Schwartz methodically
+retold his own story of twice witnessing the killing of sheep by the
+dog.
+
+The Master did not interrupt either narrative, though, on later
+questioning he forced the sulkily truthful Romaine to admit he had not
+actually seen Lad chase the sheep-flock that morning on Mount Pisgah,
+but had merely seen the sheep running, and the dog standing at the
+hill-foot looking upward at their scattering flight. Both the Mistress
+and the Master swore that the dog on that occasion, had made no move
+to pursue or otherwise harass the sheep.
+
+Thus did Lad win one point in the case. But, in view of the after-crimes
+wherewith he was charged, the point was of decidedly trivial
+value. Even if he had not attacked the flock on his first view
+of them he was accused of killing no less than eight of their
+number on two later encounters. And Schwartz was an eye-witness to
+this--Schwartz, whose testimony was as clear and as simple as
+daylight.
+
+With a glance of apology at the Mistress, Judge Maclay ordered the
+sheep-carcasses taken from their burlap cerements and laid on the
+table for court-inspection.
+
+While he and Schwartz arranged the grisly exhibits for the judge's
+view, Titus Romaine expatiated loudly on the value of the murdered
+sheep and on the brutally useless wastage in their slaying. The
+Master said nothing, but he bent over each of the sheep, carefully
+studying the throat-wounds. At last he straightened himself up from
+his task and broke in on Romaine's Antony-like funeral-oration by
+saying quietly:
+
+"Your honor, these sheep's throats were not cut by a dog. Neither by
+Lad nor by any 'killer.' Look for yourself. I've seen dog-killed
+sheep. The wounds were not at all like these."
+
+"Not killed by a dog, hey?" loudly scoffed Romaine. "I s'pose they was
+chewed by lightnin', then? Or, maybe they was bit by a skeeter? Huh!"
+
+"They were not bitten at all," countered the Master. "Still less, were
+they chewed. Look! Those gashes are ragged enough, but they are as
+straight as if they were made by a machine. If ever you have seen a
+dog worry a piece of meat----"
+
+"Rubbish!" grunted Titus. "You talk like a fool! The sheeps' throats
+is torn. Schwartz seen your cur tear 'em. That's all there is to it.
+Whether he tore 'em straight or whether he tore 'em crooked don't
+count in Law. He _tore_ 'em. An' I got a reli'ble witness to prove
+it."
+
+"Your Honor," said the Master, suddenly. "May I interrogate the
+witness?"
+
+Maclay nodded. The Master turned to Schwartz, who faced him in stolid
+composure.
+
+"Schwartz," began the Master, "you say it was light enough for you to
+recognize the sheep-killing dog both mornings in Romaine's barnyard.
+How near to him did you get?"
+
+Schwartz pondered for a second, then made careful answer:
+
+"First time, I ran into the barnyard from the house side and your dog
+cut and run out of it from the far side when he saw me making for him.
+That time, I don't think I got within thirty feet of him. But I was
+near enough to see him plain, and I'd seen him often enough before on
+the road or in your car; so I knew him all right. The next time--this
+morning, Judge--I was within five feet of him, or even nearer. For I
+was near enough to hit him with the stick I'd just picked up and to
+land a kick on his ribs as he started away. I saw him then as plain as
+I see you. And nearer than I am to you. And the light was 'most good
+enough to read by, too."
+
+"Yes?" queried the Master. "If I remember rightly you told Judge
+Maclay that you were on watch last night in the cowshed, just
+alongside the barnyard where the sheep were; and you fell asleep; and
+woke just in time to see a dog----"
+
+"To see your dog----" corrected Schwartz.
+
+"To see a dog growling over a squirming and bleating sheep he had
+pulled down. How far away from you was he when you awoke?"
+
+"Just outside the cowshed door. Not six feet from me. I ups with the
+stick I had with me and ran out at him and----"
+
+"Were he and the sheep making much noise?"
+
+"Between 'em they was making enough racket to wake a dead man,"
+replied Schwartz. "What with your dog's snarling and growling, and the
+poor sheep's bl'ats. And all the other sheep----"
+
+"Yet, you say he had killed three sheep while you slept there--had
+killed them and carried or dragged their bodies away and come back
+again; and, presumably started a noisy panic in the flock every
+time. And none of that racket waked you until the fourth sheep was
+killed?"
+
+"I was dog-tired," declared Schwartz. "I'd been at work in our
+south-mowing for ten hours the day before, and up since five.
+Mr. Romaine can tell you I'm a hard man to wake at best. I sleep
+like the dead."
+
+"That's right!" assented Titus. "Time an' again, I have to bang at his
+door an' holler myself hoarse, before I can get him to open his
+eyes. My wife says he's the sleepin'est sleeper----"
+
+"You ran out of the shed with your stick," resumed the Master, "and
+struck the dog before he could get away? And as he turned to run you
+kicked him?"
+
+"Yes, sir. That's what I did."
+
+"How hard did you hit him?"
+
+"A pretty good lick," answered Schwartz, with reminiscent satisfaction.
+"Then I----"
+
+"And when you hit him he slunk away like a whipped cur? He made no
+move to resent it? I mean, he did not try to attack you?"
+
+"Not him!" asserted Schwartz, "I guess he was glad enough to get out
+of reach. He slunk away so fast, I hardly had a chance to land fair on
+him, when I kicked."
+
+"Here is my riding-crop," said the Master. "Take it, please, and
+strike Lad with it just as you struck him--or the sheep-killing
+dog--with your stick. Just as hard. Lad has never been struck except
+once, unjustly, by me, years ago. He has never needed it. But if he
+would slink away like a whipped mongrel when a stranger hits him, the
+sooner he is beaten to death the better. Hit him exactly as you hit
+him this morning."
+
+Judge Maclay half-opened his lips to protest. He knew the love of the
+people of The Place for Lad, and he wondered at this invitation to a
+farmhand to thrash the dog publicly. He glanced at the Mistress. Her
+face was calm, even a little amused. Evidently the Master's request
+did not horrify or surprise her.
+
+Schwartz's stubby fingers gripped the crop the Master forced into his
+hand.
+
+With true Teutonic relish for pain-inflicting, he swung the weapon
+aloft and took a step toward the lazily recumbent collie, striking
+with all his strength.
+
+Then, with much-increased speed, Schwartz took three steps backward.
+For, at the menace, Lad had leaped to his feet with the speed
+of a fighting wolf, eluding the descending crop as it swished
+past him and launching himself straight for the wielder's throat. He
+did not growl; he did not pause. He merely sprang for his assailant
+with a deadly ferocity that brought a cry from Maclay.
+
+The Master caught the huge dog midway in his throatward flight.
+
+"Down, Lad!" he ordered, gently.
+
+The collie, obedient to the word, stretched himself on the floor at
+the Mistress' feet. But he kept a watchful and right unloving eye on
+the man who had struck at him.
+
+"It's a bit odd, isn't it," suggested the Master, "that he went for
+you, like that, just now; when, this morning, he slunk away from your
+blow, in cringing fear?"
+
+"Why wouldn't he?" growled Schwartz, his stolid nerve shaken by the
+unexpected onslaught. "His folks are here to back him up, and
+everything. Why wouldn't he go for me! He was slinky enough when I
+whaled him, this morning."
+
+"H'm!" mused the Master. "You hit a strong blow, Schwartz. I'll say
+that, for you. You missed Lad, with my crop. But you've split the
+crop. And you scored a visible mark on the wooden floor with it. Did
+you hit as hard as that when you struck the sheep-killer, this
+morning?"
+
+"A sight harder," responded Schwartz. "My mad was up. I----"
+
+"A dog's skin is softer than a pine floor," said the Master. "Your
+Honor, such a blow would have raised a weal on Lad's flesh, an inch
+high. Would your Honor mind passing your hand over his body and
+trying to locate such a weal?"
+
+"This is all outside the p'int!" raged the annoyed Titus Romaine.
+"You're a-dodgin' the issue, I tell ye. I----"
+
+"If your Honor please!" insisted the Master.
+
+The judge left his desk and whistled Lad across to him. The dog looked
+at his Master, doubtfully. The Master nodded. The collie arose and
+walked in leisurely fashion over to the waiting judge. Maclay ran an
+exploring hand through the magnificent tawny coat, from head to
+haunch; then along the dog's furry sides. Lad hated to be handled by
+anyone but the Mistress or the Master. But at a soft word from the
+Mistress, he stood stock still and submitted to the inspection.
+
+"I find no weal or any other mark on him," presently reported the
+Judge.
+
+The Mistress smiled happily. The whole investigation, up to this
+point, and further, was along eccentric lines she herself had thought
+out and had suggested to her husband. Lines suggested by her knowledge
+of Lad.
+
+"Schwartz," went on the Master, interrupting another fuming outbreak
+from Romaine, "I'm afraid you didn't hit quite as hard as you thought
+you did, this morning; or else some other dog is carrying around a big
+welt on his flesh, to-day. Now for the kick you say you gave the
+collie. I----"
+
+"I won't copy _that_, on your bloodthirsty dog!" vociferated
+Schwartz. "Not even if the Judge jails me for contempt, I won't. He'd
+likely kill me!"
+
+"And yet he ran from you, this morning," the Master reminded
+him. "Well, I won't insist on your kicking Lad. But you say it was a
+light kick; because he was running away when it landed. I am curious
+to know just how hard a kick it was. In fact, I'm so curious about it
+that I am going to offer myself as a substitute for Lad. My riding
+boot is a good surface. Will you kindly kick me there, Schwartz; as
+nearly as possible with the same force (no more, no less) than you
+kicked the dog?"
+
+"I protest!" shouted Romaine. "This measly tomfoolishness is----"
+
+"If your Honor please!" appealed the Master sharply; turning from the
+bewildered Schwartz to the no less dismayed Judge.
+
+Maclay was on his feet to overrule so strange a request. But there
+was keen supplication in the Master's eye that made the Judge
+pause. Maclay glanced again at the Mistress. In spite of the prospect
+of seeing her husband kicked, her face wore a most pleased smile. The
+Judge noted, though, that she was stroking Lad's head and that she was
+unobtrusively turning that head so that the dog faced Schwartz.
+
+"Now, then!" adjured the Master. "Whenever you're ready, Schwartz! A
+German doesn't get a chance, like this, every day, to kick an
+American. And I'll promise not to go for your throat, as Laddie tried
+to. Kick away!"
+
+Awkwardly, shamblingly, Schwartz stepped forward. Urged on by his
+racial veneration for the Law--and perhaps not sorry to assail the man
+whose dog had tried to throttle him--he drew back his broganed left
+foot and kicked out in the general direction of the calf of the
+Master's thick riding boot.
+
+The kick did not land. Not that the Master dodged or blocked it. He
+stood moveless, and grinning expectantly.
+
+But the courtroom shook with a wild-beast yell--a yell of insane
+fury. And Schwartz drew back his half-extended left foot in sudden
+terror; as a great furry shape came whizzing through the air at him.
+
+The sight of the half-delivered kick, at his worshipped master, had
+had precisely the effect on Lad that the Mistress had foreseen when
+she planned the manoeuver. Almost any good dog will attack a man who
+seeks to strike its owner. And Lad seemed to comprehend that a kick is
+a more contemptuous affront than is a blow.
+
+Schwartz's kick at the Master had thrown the adoring dog into a maniac
+rage against this defiler of his idol. The memory of Schwartz's blow
+at himself was as nothing to it. It aroused in the collie's heart a
+deathless blood-feud against the man. As the Mistress had known it
+would.
+
+The Mistress' sharp command, and the Master's hastily outflung arm
+barely sufficed to deflect Lad's charge. He writhed in their dual
+grasp, snarling furiously, his eyes red; his every giant muscle
+strained to get at the cowering Schwartz.
+
+"We've had enough of this!" imperatively ordained Maclay, above the
+babel of Titus Romaine's protests. "In spite of the informality of
+hearing, this is a court of law: not a dog-kennel. I----"
+
+"I crave your Honor's pardon," apologized the Master. "I was merely
+trying to show that Lad is not the sort of dog to let a stranger
+strike and kick him as this man claims to have done with impunity. I
+think I have shown, from Lad's own regrettable actions, that it was
+some other dog--if _any_--which cheered Romaine's barnyard, this
+morning, and yesterday morning.
+
+"It was _your_ dog!" cried Schwartz, getting his breath, in a swirl
+of anger. "Next time I'll be on watch with a shotgun and not a
+stick. I'll----"
+
+"There ain't going to be no 'next time,'" asserted the equally angry
+Romaine. "Judge, I call on you to order that sheep-killer shot; an' to
+order his master to indemnify me for th' loss of my eight killed
+sheep!"
+
+"Your Honor!" suavely protested the Master, "may I ask you to listen
+to a counter-proposition? A proposition which I think will be
+agreeable to Mr. Romaine, as well as to myself?"
+
+"The only prop'sition _I'll_ agree to, is the shootin' of that cur and
+the indemnifyin' of me for my sheep!" persisted Romaine.
+
+Maclay waved his hand for order; then, turning to the Master, said:
+
+"State your proposition."
+
+"I propose," began the Master, "that Lad be paroled, in my custody,
+for the space of twenty-four hours. I will deposit with the court,
+here and now, my bond for the sum of one thousand dollars; to be paid,
+on demand, to Titus Romaine; if one or more of his sheep are killed by
+any dog, during that space of time."
+
+The crass oddity of the proposal set Titus's leathery mouth ajar. Even
+the Judge gasped aloud at its bizarre terms. Schwartz looked blank,
+until, little by little, the purport of the words sank into his slow
+mind. Then he permitted himself the rare luxury of a chuckle.
+
+"Do I und'stand you to say," demanded Titus Romaine, of the Master,
+"that if I'll agree to hold up this case for twenty-four hours you'll
+give me one thousan' dollars, cash, for any sheep of mine that gets
+killed by dogs in that time?"
+
+"That is my proposition," returned the Master. "To cinch it, I'll let
+you make out the written arrangement, your self. And I'll give the
+court a bond for the money, at once, with instructions that the sum is
+to be paid to you, if you lose one sheep, through dogs, in the next
+day. I furthermore agree to shoot Lad, myself, if you lose one or more
+sheep in that time, and in that way, I'll forfeit another thousand if
+I fail to keep that part of my contract. How about it?"
+
+"I agree!" exclaimed Titus.
+
+Schwartz's smile, by this time, threatened to split his broad face
+across. Maclay saw the Mistress' cheek whiten a little; but her aspect
+betrayed no worry over the possible loss of a thousand dollars and the
+far more painful loss of the dog she loved.
+
+When Romaine and Schwartz had gone, the Master tarried a moment in the
+courtroom.
+
+"I can't make out what you're driving at," Maclay told him. "But you
+seem to me to have done a mighty foolish thing. To get a thousand
+dollars Romaine is capable of scouring the whole country for a
+sheep-killing dog. So is Schwartz--if only to get Lad shot. Did you
+see the way Schwartz looked at Lad as he went out? He hates him."
+
+"Yes," said the Master. "And I saw the way Lad looked at _him_. Lad
+will never forget that kick at me. He'll attack Schwartz for it, if
+they come together a year from now. That's why we arranged it. Say,
+Mac; I want you to do me a big favor. A favor that comes within the
+square and angle of your work. I want you to go fishing with me,
+to-night. Better come over to dinner and be prepared to spend the
+night. The fishing won't start till about twelve o'clock."
+
+"Twelve o'clock!" echoed Maclay. "Why, man, nothing but catfish will
+bite at that hour. And I----"
+
+"You're mistaken," denied the Master. "Much bigger fish will
+bite. _Much_ bigger. Take my word for that. My wife and I have it all
+figured out. I'm not asking you in your official capacity; but as a
+friend. I'll need you, Mac. It will be a big favor to me. And if I'm
+not wrong, there'll be sport in it for you, too. I'm risking a
+thousand dollars and my dog, on this fishing trip. Won't you risk a
+night's sleep? I ask it as a worthy and distressed----"
+
+"Certainly," assented the wholly perplexed Judge, impressed, "but I
+don't get your idea at all. I----"
+
+"I'll explain it before we start," promised the Master. "All I want,
+now, is for you to commit yourself to the scheme. If it fails, you
+won't lose anything, except your sleep. Thanks for saying you'll
+come."
+
+At a little after ten o'clock that night the last light in Titus
+Romaine's farmhouse went out. A few moments later the Master got up
+from a rock on Mount Pisgah's summit, on which he and Maclay had been
+sitting for the past hour. Lad, at their feet, rose expectantly with
+them.
+
+"Come on, old Man," said the Master. "We'll drop down there, now. It
+probably means a long wait for us. But it's better to be too soon than
+too late; when I've got so much staked. If we're seen, you can cut and
+run. Lad and I will cover your retreat and see you aren't recognized.
+Steady, there, Lad. Keep at heel."
+
+Stealthily the trio made their way down the hill to the farmstead at
+its farther base. Silently they crept along the outer fringe of the
+home-lot, until they came opposite the black-gabled bulk of the
+barn. Presently, their slowly cautious progress brought them to the
+edge of the barnyard, and to the rail fence which surrounds it. There
+they halted.
+
+From within the yard, as the huddle of drowsy sheep caught the scent
+of the dog, came a slight stirring. But, after a moment, the yard was
+quiet again.
+
+"Get that?" whispered the Master, his mouth close to Maclay's
+ear. "Those sheep are supposed to have been raided by a killer-dog,
+for the past two nights. Yet the smell of a dog doesn't even make them
+bleat. If they had been attacked by _any_ dog, last night, the scent
+of Lad would throw them into a panic."
+
+"I get something else, too," replied Maclay, in the same all-but
+soundless whisper. "And I'm ashamed I didn't think of it before.
+Romaine said the dog wriggled into the yard through the bars,
+and out again the same way. Well, if those bars were wide enough apart
+for an eighty-pound collie, like Lad, to get through, what would there
+be to prevent all these sheep from escaping, the same way, any time
+they wanted to? I'll have a look at those bars before I pass judgment
+on the case. I begin to be glad you and your wife coerced me into this
+adventure."
+
+"Of course, the sheep could have gotten through the same bars that the
+dog did," answered the Master. "For, didn't Romaine say the dog not
+only got through, but dragged three dead sheep through, after him,
+each night, and hid them somewhere, where they couldn't be found? No
+man would keep sheep in a pen as open as all that. The entire story is
+full of air-holes."
+
+Lad, at a touch from his Master, had lain softly down at the men's
+feet, beside the fence. And so, for another full hour, the three
+waited there.
+
+The night was heavily overcast; and, except for the low drone of
+distant tree-toads and crickets, it was deathly silent. Heat
+lightning, once in a while, played dimly along the western horizon.
+
+"Lucky for us that Romaine doesn't keep a dog!" whispered Maclay.
+"He'd have raised the alarm before we got within a hundred yards
+of here."
+
+"He told my foreman he gave his mongrel dog away, when he stocked
+himself with sheep. And he's been reading a lot of rot about dogs
+being non-utilitarian, too. His dog would have been anything but
+non-utilitarian, to-night."
+
+A touch on the sleeve from Maclay silenced the rambling whisper.
+Through the stillness, a house door shut very softly, not far
+away. An instant later, Lad growled throatily, and got to his feet,
+tense and fiercely eager.
+
+"He's caught Schwartz's scent!" whispered the Master, exultantly.
+"Now, maybe you understand why I made the man try to kick me?
+Down, Lad! _Quiet!_"
+
+At the stark command in the Master's whisper, Lad dropped to earth
+again; though he still rumbled deeply in his throat, until a touch
+from the Master's fingers and a repeated "_Quiet_" silenced him.
+
+The hush of the night was disturbed, once more--very faintly. This
+time, by the muffled padding of a man's bare feet, drawing closer to
+the barnyard. Lad as he heard it made as if to rise. The Master
+tapped him lightly on the head, and the dog sank to the ground again,
+quivering with hard-held rage.
+
+The clouds had piled thicker. Only by a dim pulsing of far-away heat
+lightning could the watchers discern the shadowy outline of a man,
+moving silently between them and the far side of the yard. By the
+tiny glow of lightning they saw his silhouette.
+
+By Lad's almost uncontrollable trembling they knew who he must be.
+
+There was another drowsy stirring of the sheep; checked by the
+reassuring mumble of a voice the animals seemed to know. And, except
+for the stealthy motion of groping feet, the barnyard seemed as empty
+of human life as before.
+
+Perhaps a minute later another sulphur-gleam of lightning revealed the
+intruder to the two men who crouched behind the outer angle of the
+fence. He had come out of the yard, and was shuffling away. But he
+was fully a third wider of shoulder now, and he seemed to have two
+heads, as his silhouette dimly appeared and then vanished.
+
+"See that?" whispered the Master. "He has a sheep slung over his
+back. Probably with a cloth wrapped around its head to keep it
+quiet. We will give him twenty seconds' start and then----"
+
+"_Good!_" babbled Maclay, in true buck-ague fever of excitement. "It's
+worked out, to a charm! But how in the blazes can we track him through
+this dark? It's as black as the inside of a cow. And if we show the
+flashlights----"
+
+"Trust Lad to track him," rejoined the Master, who had been slipping a
+leash around the dog's low-growling throat. "That's what the old
+fellow's here for. He has a kick to punish. He would follow Schwartz
+through the Sahara desert, if he had to. Come on."
+
+Lad, at a word from the Master, sprang to the end of the leash, his
+mighty head and shoulders straining forward. The Master's reiterated
+"Quiet!" alone kept him from giving tongue. And thus the trio started
+the pursuit.
+
+Lad went in a geometrically straight line, swerving not an inch; with
+much difficulty held back to the slow walk on which the Master
+insisted. There was more than one reason for this insistence. Not only
+did the two men want to keep far enough behind Schwartz to prevent
+him from hearing their careful steps; but Lad's course was so
+uncompromisingly straight that it led them over a hundred obstacles
+and gullies which required all sorts of skill to negotiate.
+
+For at least two miles, the snail-like progress continued; most of the
+way through woods. At last, with a gasp, the Master found himself
+wallowing knee-deep in a bog. Maclay, a step behind him, also plunged
+splashingly into the soggy mire.
+
+"What's the matter with the dog?" grumpily demanded the Judge. "He's
+led us into the Pancake Hollow swamp. Schwartz never in the world
+carried a ninety pound sheep through here."
+
+"Maybe not," puffed the Master. "But he has carried it over one of the
+half-dozen paths that lead through this marsh. Lad is in too big a
+hurry to bother about paths. He----"
+
+Fifty feet above them, on a little mid-swamp knoll, a lantern
+shone. Apparently, it had just been lighted. For it waxed brighter in
+a second or so. The men saw it and strode forward at top speed. The
+third step caused Maclay to stumble over a hummock and land, noisily,
+on all fours, in a mud-pool. As he fell, he swore--with a loud
+distinctness that rang through the swampy stillnesses, like a pistol
+shot.
+
+Instantly, the lantern went out. And there was a crashing in among the
+bushes of the knoll.
+
+"After him!" yelled Maclay, floundering to his feet. "He'll escape!
+And we have no real proof who he is or----"
+
+The Master, still ankle-high in sticky mud, saw the futility of trying
+to catch a man who, unimpeded, was running away, along a dry-ground
+path. There was but one thing left to do. And the Master did it.
+
+Loosening the leash from the dog's collar he shouted:
+
+"Get him, Laddie! _Get_ him!"
+
+There was a sound as of a cavalry regiment galloping through shallow
+water. That and a queerly ecstatic growl. And the collie was gone.
+
+As fast as possible the two men made for the base of the knoll. They
+had drawn forth their electric torches; and these now made the
+progress much swifter and easier.
+
+Nevertheless, before the Master had set foot on the first bit of firm
+ground, all pandemonium burst forth amid the darkness, above and in
+front of him.
+
+The turmoil's multiple sounds were indescribable, blending into one
+wild cacophony the yells and stamping of a fear-demented man, the
+bleats of sheep, the tearing of underbrush--through and above and
+under all--a hideous subnote as of a rabid beast worrying its prey.
+
+It was this undercurrent of sound which put wings on the tired feet of
+Maclay and the Master, as they dashed up the knoll and into the
+path leading east from it. It spoke of unpleasant--not to say
+gruesome--happenings. So did the swift change of the victim's yells
+from wrath to mortal terror.
+
+"Back Lad!" called the Master, pantingly, as he ran. "Back! Let him
+_alone!_"
+
+And as he cried the command he rounded a turn in the wooded path.
+
+Prone on the ground, writhing like a cut snake and frantically
+seeking to guard his throat with his slashed forearm, sprawled
+Schwartz. Crouching above him--right unwillingly obeying the Master's
+belated call--was Lad.
+
+The dog's great coat was a-bristle. His bared teeth glinted white and
+blood-flecked in the electric flare. His soft eyes were blazing.
+
+"Back!" repeated the Master. "Back here!"
+
+Absolute obedience was the first and foremost of The Place's few
+simple dog-rules. Lad had learned it from earliest puppyhood. The
+collie, still shaking all over with the effort of repressing his fury,
+turned slowly and came over to his Master. There he stood stonily
+awaiting further orders.
+
+Maclay was on his knees beside the hysterically moaning German roughly
+telling him that the dog would do him no more damage, and at the same
+time making a quick inspection of the injuries wrought by the slashing
+white fangs in the shielding arm and its shoulder.
+
+"Get up!" he now ordered. "You're not too badly hurt to stand. Another
+minute and he'd have gotten through to your throat, but your clothes
+saved you from anything worse than a few ugly flesh-cuts. Get up! Stop
+that yowling and get up!"
+
+Schwartz gradually lessened his dolorous plaints under the stern
+authority of Maclay's exhortations. Presently he sat up nursing his
+lacerated forearm and staring about him. At sight of Lad he shuddered.
+And recognizing Maclay he broke into violent and fatly-accented
+speech.
+
+"Take witness, Judge!" he exclaimed. "I watched the barnyard to-night
+and I saw that schweinhund steal another sheep. I followed him and
+when he got here he dropped the sheep and went for me. He----"
+
+"Very bad, Schwartz!" disgustedly reproved Maclay. "Very bad,
+indeed. You should have waited a minute longer and thought up a better
+one. But since this is the yarn you choose to tell, we'll look about
+and try to verify it. The sheep, for instance--the one you say Lad
+carried all the way here and then dropped to attack you. I seem to
+have heard a sheep bleating a few moments ago. Several sheep in
+fact. We'll see if we can't find the one Lad stole."
+
+Schwartz jumped nervously to his feet.
+
+"Stay where you are!" Maclay bade him. "We won't bother a tired and
+injured man to help in our search."
+
+Turning to the Master, he added:
+
+"I suppose one of us will have to stand guard over him while the other
+one hunts up the sheep. Shall I----"
+
+"Neither of us need do that," said the Master. "Lad!"
+
+The collie started eagerly forward, and Schwartz started still more
+eagerly backward.
+
+"Watch him!" commanded the Master. "_Watch_ him!"
+
+It was an order Lad had learned to follow in the many times when the
+Mistress and the Master left him to guard the car or to do sentry duty
+over some other article of value. He understood. He would have
+preferred to deal with this enemy according to his own lights. But the
+Master had spoken. So, standing at view, the collie looked longingly
+at Schwartz's throat.
+
+"Keep perfectly still!" the Master warned the prisoner, "and perhaps
+he won't go for you. Move, and he most surely will. _Watch_ him,
+Laddie!"
+
+Maclay and the Master left the captive and his guard, and set forth on
+a flashlight-illumined tour of the knoll. It was a desolate spot, far
+back in the swamp and more than a mile from any road; a place visited
+not three times a year, except in the shooting season.
+
+In less than a half-minute the plaintive ba-a-a of a sheep guided the
+searchers to the left of the knoll where stood a thick birch-and-alder
+copse. Around this they circled until they reached a narrow opening
+where the branch-ends, several feet above ground, were flecked with
+hanks of wool.
+
+Squirming through the aperture in single file, the investigators found
+what they sought.
+
+In the tight-woven copse's center was a small clearing. In this, was a
+rudely wattled pen some nine feet square; and in the pen were bunched
+six sheep.
+
+An occasional scared bleat from deeper in the copse told the
+whereabouts of the sheep Schwartz had taken from the barnyard that
+night and which he had dropped at Lad's onslaught before he could put
+it in the pen. On the ground, just outside the enclosure, lay the
+smashed lantern.
+
+"Sheep on the hoof are worth $12.50 per, at the Paterson Market,"
+mused the Master aloud, as Maclay blinked owlishly at the treasure
+trove. "There are $75 worth of sheep in that pen, and there would
+have been three more of them before morning if we hadn't butted in on
+Herr Schwartz's overtime labors. To get three sheep at night, it was
+well worth his while to switch suspicion to Lad by killing a fourth
+sheep every time, and mangling its throat with a stripping-knife.
+Only, he mangled it too efficiently. There was too much _Kultur_
+about the mangling. It wasn't ragged enough. That's what first
+gave me my idea. That, and the way the missing sheep always vanished
+into more or less thin air. You see, he probably----"
+
+"But," sputtered Maclay, "why four each night? Why----"
+
+"You saw how long it took him to get one of them here," replied the
+Master. "He didn't dare to start in till the Romaines were asleep, and
+he had to be back in time to catch Lad at the slaughter before Titus
+got out of bed. He wouldn't dare hide them any nearer home. Titus has
+spent most of his time both days in hunting for them. Schwartz was
+probably waiting to get the pen nice and full. Then he'd take a day
+off to visit his relatives. And he'd round up this tidy bunch and
+drive them over to the Ridgewood road, through the woods, and so on to
+the Paterson Market. It was a pretty little scheme all around."
+
+"But," urged Maclay, as they turned back to where Lad still kept his
+avid vigil, "I still hold you were taking big chances in gambling
+$1000 and your dog's life that Schwartz would do the same thing again
+within twenty-four hours. He might have waited a day or two, till----"
+
+"No," contradicted the Master, "that's just what he mightn't do. You
+see, I wasn't perfectly sure whether it was Schwartz or Romaine--or
+both--who were mixed up in this. So I set the trap at both ends. If it
+was Romaine, it was worth $1000 to him to have more sheep killed
+within twenty-four hours. If it was Schwartz--well, that's why I made
+him try to hit Lad and why I made him try to kick me. The dog went for
+him both times, and that was enough to make Schwartz want him killed
+for his own safety as well as for revenge. So he was certain to
+arrange another killing within the twenty-four hours if only to force
+me to shoot Lad. He couldn't steal or kill sheep by daylight. I picked
+the only hours he could do it in. If he'd gotten Lad killed, he'd
+probably have invented another sheep-killer dog to help him swipe the
+rest of the flock, or until Romaine decided to do the watching.
+We----"
+
+"It was clever of you," cordially admitted Maclay. "Mighty clever, old
+man! I----"
+
+"It was my wife who worked it out, you know," the Master reminded
+him. "I admit my own cleverness, of course, only (like a lot of men's
+money) it's all in my wife's name. Come on, Lad! You can guard Herr
+Schwartz just as well by walking behind him. We're going to wind up
+the evening's fishing trip by tendering a surprise party to dear
+genial old Mr. Titus Romaine. I hope the flashlights will hold out
+long enough for me to get a clear look at his face when he sees us."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+WOLF
+
+
+There were but three collies on The Place in those days. There was a
+long shelf in the Master's study whereupon shimmered and glinted a
+rank of silver cups of varying sizes and shapes. Two of The Place's
+dogs had won them all.
+
+Above the shelf hung two huge picture-frames. In the center of each
+was the small photograph of a collie. Beneath each likeness was
+a certified pedigree, a-bristle with the red-letter names of
+champions. Surrounding the pictures and pedigrees, the whole remaining
+space in both frames was filled with blue ribbons--the very meanest
+bit of silk in either was a semi-occasional "Reserve Winners"--while,
+strung along the tops of the frames from side to side, ran a line of
+medals.
+
+Cups, medals, and ribbons alike had been won by The Place's two great
+collies, Lad and Bruce. (Those were their "kennel names." Their
+official titles on the A. K. C. registry list were high-sounding and
+needlessly long.)
+
+Lad was growing old. His reign on The Place was drawing toward a
+benignant close. His muzzle was almost snow-white and his once
+graceful lines were beginning to show the oncoming heaviness of
+age. No longer could he hope to hold his own, in form and carriage,
+with younger collies at the local dog-shows where once he had carried
+all before him.
+
+Bruce--"Sunnybank Goldsmith"--was six years Lad's junior. He was tawny
+of coat, kingly of bearing; a dog without a fault of body or of
+disposition; stately as the boar-hounds that the painters of old used
+to love to depict in their portraits of monarchs.
+
+The Place's third collie was Lad's son, Wolf. But neither cup nor
+ribbon did Wolf have to show as an excuse for his presence on earth,
+nor would he have won recognition in the smallest and least exclusive
+collie-show.
+
+For Wolf was a collie only by courtesy. His breeding was as pure as
+was any champion's, but he was one of those luckless types to be found
+in nearly every litter--a throwback to some forgotten ancestor whose
+points were all defective. Not even the glorious pedigree of Lad, his
+father, could make Wolf look like anything more than he was--a dog
+without a single physical trait that followed the best collie
+standards.
+
+In spite of all this he was beautiful. His gold-and-white coat was
+almost as bright and luxuriant as any prize-winner's. He had, in a
+general way, the collie head and brush. But an expert, at the most
+casual glance, would have noted a shortness of nose and breadth of jaw
+and a shape of ear and shoulder that told dead against him.
+
+The collie is supposed to be descended direct from the wolf, and Wolf
+looked far more like his original ancestors than like a thoroughbred
+collie. From puppyhood he had been the living image, except in color,
+of a timber-wolf, and it was from this queer throw-back trait that he
+had won his name.
+
+Lad was the Mistress' dog. Bruce was the Master's. Wolf belonged to
+the Boy, having been born on the latter's birthday.
+
+For the first six months of his life Wolf lived at The Place on
+sufferance. Nobody except the Boy took any special interest in him. He
+was kept only because his better-formed brothers had died in early
+puppyhood and because the Boy, from the outset, had loved him.
+
+At six months it was discovered that he was a natural watch-dog. Also
+that he never barked except to give an alarm. A collie is, perhaps,
+the most excitable of all large dogs. The veriest trifle will set him
+off into a thunderous paroxysm of barking. But Wolf, the Boy noted,
+never barked without strong cause.
+
+He had the rare genius for guarding that so few of his breed
+possess. For not one dog in ten merits the title of watch-dog. The
+duties that should go with that office are far more than the mere
+clamorous announcement of a stranger's approach, or even the attacking
+of such a stranger.
+
+The born watch-dog patrols his beat once in so often during the
+night. At all times he must sleep with one ear and one eye alert. By
+day or by night he must discriminate between the visitor whose
+presence is permitted and the trespasser whose presence is not. He
+must know what class of undesirable to scare off with a growl and what
+class needs stronger measures. He must also know to the inch the
+boundaries of his own master's land.
+
+Few of these things can be taught; all of them must be instinctive.
+Wolf had been born with them. Most dogs are not.
+
+His value as a watch-dog gave Wolf a settled position of his own on
+The Place. Lad was growing old and a little deaf. He slept, at night,
+under the piano in the music-room. Bruce was worth too much money to
+be left at large in the night time for any clever dog-thief to
+steal. So he slept in the study. Rex, a huge mongrel, was tied up at
+night, at the lodge, a furlong away. Thus Wolf alone was left on guard
+at the house. The piazza was his sentry-box. From this shelter he was
+wont to set forth three or four times a night, in all sorts of
+weather, to make his rounds.
+
+The Place covered twenty-five acres. It ran from the high-road, a
+furlong above the house, down to the lake that bordered it on
+two sides. On the third side was the forest. Boating-parties,
+late at night, had a pleasant way of trying to raid the lakeside
+apple-orchard. Tramps now and then strayed down the drive from the
+main road. Prowlers, crossing the woods, sometimes sought to use The
+Place's sloping lawn as a short cut to the turnpike below the falls.
+
+For each and all of these intruders Wolf had an ever-ready welcome. A
+whirl of madly pattering feet through the dark, a snarling growl far
+down in the throat, a furry shape catapulting into the air--and the
+trespasser had his choice between a scurrying retreat or a double set
+of white fangs in the easiest-reached part of his anatomy.
+
+The Boy was inordinately proud of his pet's watchdog prowess. He was
+prouder yet of Wolf's almost incredible sharpness of intelligence, his
+quickness to learn, his knowledge of word meaning, his zest for
+romping, his perfect obedience, the tricks he had taught himself
+without human tutelage--in short, all the things that were a sign of
+the brain he had inherited from Lad.
+
+But none of these talents overcame the sad fact that Wolf was not a
+show dog and that he looked positively underbred and shabby alongside
+of his sire or of Bruce. Which rankled at the Boy's heart; even while
+loyalty to his adored pet would not let him confess to himself or to
+anyone else that Wolf was not the most flawlessly perfect dog on
+earth.
+
+Under-sized (for a collie), slim, graceful, fierce, affectionate, Wolf
+was the Boy's darling, and he was Lad's successor as official guardian
+of The Place. But all his youthful life, thus far, had brought him
+nothing more than this--while Lad and Bruce had been winning prize
+after prize at one local dog show after another within a radius of
+thirty miles.
+
+The Boy was duly enthusiastic over the winning of each trophy; but
+always, for days thereafter, he was more than usually attentive to
+Wolf to make up for his pet's dearth of prizes.
+
+Once or twice the Boy had hinted, in a veiled, tentative way, that
+young Wolf might perhaps win something, too, if he were allowed to go
+to a show. The Master, never suspecting what lay behind the cautious
+words, would always laugh in good-natured derision, or else he would
+point in silence to Wolf's head and then to Lad's.
+
+The Boy knew enough about collies to carry the subject no further. For
+even his eyes of devotion could not fail to mark the difference in
+aspect between his dog and the two prize-winners.
+
+One July morning both Lad and Bruce went through an hour of anguish.
+Both of them, one after the other, were plunged into a bath-tub
+full of warm water and naphtha soap-suds and Lux; and were scrubbed
+right unmercifully, after which they were rubbed and curried
+and brushed for another hour until their coats shone resplendent. All
+day, at intervals, the brushing and combing were kept up.
+
+Lad was indignant at such treatment, and he took no pains to hide his
+indignation. He knew perfectly well, from the undue attention, that a
+dog show was at hand. But not for a year or more had he himself been
+made ready for one. His lake baths and his daily casual brushing at
+the Mistress' hands had been, in that time, his only form of
+grooming. He had thought himself graduated forever from the nuisance
+of going to shows.
+
+"What's the idea of dolling up old Laddie like that?" asked the Boy,
+as he came in for luncheon and found the Mistress busy with comb and
+dandy-brush over the unhappy dog.
+
+"For the Fourth of July Red Cross Dog Show at Ridgewood to-morrow,"
+answered his mother, looking up, a little flushed from her exertions.
+
+"But I thought you and Dad said last year he was too old to show any
+more," ventured the Boy.
+
+"This time is different," said the Mistress. "It's a specialty show,
+you see, and there is a cup offered for 'the best _veteran_ dog of any
+recognized breed.' Isn't that fine? We didn't hear of the Veteran Cup
+till Dr. Hooper telephoned to us about it this morning. So we're
+getting Lad ready. There _can't_ be any other veteran as splendid as
+he is."
+
+"No," agreed the Boy, dully, "I suppose not."
+
+He went into the dining-room, surreptitiously helped himself to a
+handful of lump-sugar and passed on out to the veranda. Wolf was
+sprawled half-asleep on the driveway lawn in the sun.
+
+The dog's wolflike brush began to thump against the shaven grass.
+Then, as the Boy stood on the veranda edge and snapped his fingers,
+Wolf got up from his soft resting-place and started toward him,
+treading mincingly and with a sort of swagger, his slanting eyes
+half shut, his mouth a-grin.
+
+"You know I've got sugar in my pocket as well as if you saw it," said
+the Boy. "Stop where you are."
+
+Though the Boy accompanied his order with no gesture nor change of
+tone, the dog stopped dead short ten feet away.
+
+"Sugar is bad for dogs," went on the Boy. "It does things to their
+teeth and their digestions. Didn't anybody ever tell you that,
+Wolfie?"
+
+The young dog's grin grew wider. His slanting eyes closed to mere
+glittering slits. He fidgeted a little, his tail wagging fast.
+
+"But I guess a dog's got to have _some_ kind of consolation purse when
+he can't go to a show," resumed the Boy. "Catch!"
+
+As he spoke he suddenly drew a lump of sugar from his pocket and, with
+the same motion, tossed it in the direction of Wolf. Swift as was the
+Boy's action, Wolf's eye was still quicker. Springing high in air, the
+dog caught the flung cube of sugar as it flew above him and to one
+side. A second and a third lump were caught as deftly as the first.
+
+Then the Boy took from his pocket the fourth and last lump. Descending
+the steps, he put his left hand across Wolf's eyes. With his right he
+flipped the lump of sugar into a clump of shrubbery.
+
+"Find it!" he commanded, lifting the blindfold from the eyes of his
+pet.
+
+Wolf darted hither and thither, stopped once or twice to sniff, then
+began to circle the nearer stretch of lawn, nose to ground. In less
+than two minutes he merged from the shrubbery placidly crunching the
+sugar-lump between his mighty jaws.
+
+"And yet they say you aren't fit to be shown!" exclaimed the Boy,
+fondling the dog's ears. "Gee, but I'd give two years' growth if you
+could have a cup! You deserve one, all right; if only those judges had
+sense enough to study a collie's brain as well as the outside of his
+head!"
+
+Wolf ran his nose into the cupped palm and whined. From the tone
+underlying the words, he knew the Boy was unhappy, and he wanted to be
+of help.
+
+The Boy went into the house again to find his parents sitting down to
+lunch. Gathering his courage in both hands, he asked:
+
+"Is there going to be a Novice Class for collies at Ridgewood, Dad?"
+
+"Why, yes," said the Master, "I suppose so. There always is."
+
+"Do--do they give cups for the Novice Class?" inquired the Boy, with
+studied carelessness.
+
+"Of course they don't," said the Master, adding reminiscently, "though
+the first time we showed Lad we put him in the Novice Class and he won
+the blue ribbon there, so we had to go into the Winners' Class
+afterward. He got the Winner's Cup, you remember. So, indirectly, the
+Novice Class won him a cup."
+
+"I see," said the Boy, not at all interested in this bit of ancient
+history. Then speaking very fast, he went on:
+
+"Well, a ribbon's better than nothing! Dad, will you do me a favor?
+Will you let me enter Wolfie for the Novice Class to-morrow? I'll pay
+the fee out of my allowance. Will you, Dad?"
+
+The Master looked at his son in blank amazement. Then he threw back
+his head and laughed loudly. The Boy flushed crimson and bit his lips.
+
+"Why, dear!" hurriedly interposed the Mistress, noting her son's
+discomfiture. "You wouldn't want Wolf to go there and be beaten by a
+lot of dogs that haven't half his brains or prettiness! It wouldn't be
+fair or kind to Wolf. He's so clever, he'd know in a moment what was
+happening. He'd know he was beaten. Nearly all dogs do. No, it
+wouldn't be fair to him."
+
+"There's a 'mutt' class among the specials, Dr. Hopper says," put in
+the Master, jocosely. "You might----"
+
+"Wolf's _not_ a mutt!" flashed the Boy, hotly. "He's no more of a
+mutt than Bruce or Lad, or Grey Mist, or Southport Sample, or any of
+the best ones. He has as good blood as all of them. Lad's his father,
+and Squire of Tytton was his grandfather, and Wishaw Clinker was
+his----"
+
+"I'm sorry, son," interposed the Master, catching his wife's eye and
+dropping his tone of banter. "I apologize to you and Wolf. He's not a
+'mutt.' There's no better blood in colliedom than his, on both
+sides. But Mother is right. You'd only be putting him up to be beaten,
+and you wouldn't like that. He hasn't a single point that isn't
+hopelessly bad from a judge's view. We've never taken a loser to a
+show from The Place. You don't want us to begin now, do you?"
+
+"He has more brains that any dog alive, except Lad!" declared the Boy,
+sullenly. "That ought to count."
+
+"It ought to," agreed the Mistress, soothingly, "and I wish it did. If
+it did, I know he'd win."
+
+"It makes me sick to see a bushel of cups go to dogs that don't know
+enough to eat their own dinners," snorted the Boy. "I'm not talking
+about Lad and Bruce, but the thoroughbreds that are brought up in
+kennels and that have all their sense sacrificed for points. Why,
+Wolf's the cleverest--best--and he'll never even have one cup to show
+for it. He----"
+
+He choked, and began to eat at top speed. The Master and the Mistress
+looked at each other and said nothing. They understood their son's
+chagrin, as only a dog-lover could understand it. The Mistress reached
+out and patted the Boy gently on the shoulder.
+
+Next morning, directly after early breakfast, Lad and Bruce were put
+into the tonneau of the car. The Mistress and the Master and the Boy
+climbed in, and the twelve-mile journey to Ridgewood began.
+
+Wolf, left to guard The Place, watched the departing show-goers until
+the car turned out of the gate, a furlong above. Then, with a sigh, he
+curled up on the porch mat, his nose between his snowy little paws,
+and prepared for a day of loneliness.
+
+The Red Cross dog show, that Fourth of July, was a triumph for The
+Place.
+
+Bruce won ribbon after ribbon in the collie division, easily taking
+"Winners" at the last, and thus adding another gorgeous silver cup to
+his collection. Then, the supreme event of the day--"Best dog in the
+show"--was called. And the winners of each breed were led into the
+ring. The judges scanned and handled the group of sixteen for barely
+five minutes before awarding to Bruce the dark-blue rosette and the
+"Best Dog" cup.
+
+The crowd around the ring's railing applauded loudly. But they
+applauded still more loudly a little later, when, after a brief survey
+of nine aged thoroughbreds, the judge pointed to Lad, who was standing
+like a mahogany statue at one end of the ring.
+
+These nine dogs of various breeds had all been famed prize-winners in
+their time. And above all the rest, Lad was adjudged worthy of the
+"veteran cup!" There was a haze of happy tears in the Mistress' eyes
+as she led him from the ring. It seemed a beautiful climax for his
+grand old life. She wiped her eyes, unashamed, whispering praise the
+while to her stately dog.
+
+"Why don't you trundle your car into the ring?" one disgruntled
+exhibitor demanded of the Mistress. "Maybe you'd win a cup with
+_that_, too. You seem to have gotten one for everything else you
+brought along."
+
+It was a celebration evening for the two prize dogs, when they got
+home, but everybody was tired from the day's events, and by ten
+o'clock the house was dark. Wolf, on his veranda mat, alone of all The
+Place's denizens, was awake.
+
+Vaguely Wolf knew the other dogs had done some praiseworthy thing. He
+would have known it, if for no other reason, from the remorseful hug
+the Boy had given him before going to bed.
+
+Well, some must win honors and petting and the right to sleep indoors;
+while others must plod along at the only work they were fit for, and
+must sleep out, in thunderstorm or clear, in heat or freezing
+cold. That was life. Being only a dog, Wolf was too wise to complain
+of life. He took things as he found them, making the very best of his
+share.
+
+He snoozed, now, in the warm darkness. Two hours later he got up,
+stretched himself lazily fore and aft, collie-fashion, and trotted
+forth for the night's first patrol of the grounds.
+
+A few minutes afterward he was skirting the lake edge at the foot of
+the lawn, a hundred yards below the house. The night was pitch
+dark, except for pulses of heat-lightning, now and then, far to
+westward. Half a mile out on the lake two men in an anchored scow were
+cat-fishing.
+
+A small skiff was slipping along very slowly, not fifty feet off
+shore.
+
+Wolf did not give the skiff a second glance. Boats were no novelty to
+him, nor did they interest him in the least--except when they showed
+signs of running ashore somewhere along his beat.
+
+This skiff was not headed for land, but was paralleling the shore. It
+crept along at a snail-pace and in dead silence. A man, its only
+occupant, sat at the oars, scarcely moving them as he kept his boat in
+motion.
+
+A dog is ridiculously near-sighted. More so than almost any other
+beast. Keen hearing and keener scent are its chief guides. At three
+hundred yards' distance it cannot, by eye, recognize its master, nor
+tell him from a stranger. But at close quarters, even in the darkest
+night, a dog's vision is far more piercing and accurate than man's
+under like conditions.
+
+Wolf thus saw the skiff and its occupant, while he himself was still
+invisible. The boat was no concern of his; so he trotted on to the far
+end of The Place, where the forest joined the orchard.
+
+On his return tour of the lake edge he saw the skiff again. It had
+shifted its direction and was now barely ten feet off shore--so near
+to the bank that one of the oars occasionally grated on the pebbly
+bottom. The oarsman was looking intently toward the house.
+
+Wolf paused, uncertain. The average watchdog, his attention thus
+attracted, would have barked. But Wolf knew the lake was public
+property. Boats were often rowed as close to shore as this without
+intent to trespass. It was not the skiff that caught Wolf's attention
+as he paused there on the brink, it was the man's furtive scrutiny of
+the house.
+
+A pale flare of heat-lightning turned the world, momentarily, from jet
+black to a dim sulphur-color. The boatman saw Wolf standing, alert
+and suspicious, among the lakeside grasses, not ten feet away. He
+started slightly, and a soft, throaty growl from the dog answered him.
+
+The man seemed to take the growl as a challenge, and to accept it. He
+reached into his pocket and drew something out. When the next faint
+glow of lightning illumined the shore, the man lifted the thing he had
+taken from his pocket and hurled it at Wolf.
+
+With all the furtive swiftness bred in his wolf-ancestry, the dog
+shrank to one side, readily dodging the missile, which struck the lawn
+just behind him. Teeth bared in a ferocious snarl, Wolf dashed forward
+through the shallow water toward the skiff.
+
+But the man apparently had had enough of the business. He rowed off
+with long strokes into deep water, and, once there, he kept on rowing
+until distance and darkness hid him.
+
+Wolf stood, chest deep in water, listening to the far-off oar-strokes
+until they died away. He was not fool enough to swim in pursuit; well
+knowing that a swimming dog is worse than helpless against a boatman.
+
+Moreover, the intruder had been scared away. That was all which
+concerned Wolf. He turned back to shore. His vigil was ended for
+another few hours. It was time to take up his nap where he had left
+off.
+
+Before he had taken two steps, his sensitive nostrils were full of the
+scent of raw meat. There, on the lawn ahead of him, lay a chunk of
+beef as big as a fist. This, then, was what the boatman had thrown at
+him!
+
+Wolf pricked up his ears in appreciation, and his brush began to
+vibrate. Trespassers had once or twice tried to stone him, but this
+was the first time any of them had pelted him with delicious raw
+beef. Evidently, Lad and Bruce were not the only collies on The Place
+to receive prizes that day.
+
+Wolf stooped over the meat, sniffed at it, then caught it up between
+his jaws.
+
+Now, a dog is the easiest animal alive to poison, just as a cat is the
+hardest, for a dog will usually bolt a mouthful of poisoned meat
+without pausing to chew or otherwise investigate it. A cat, on
+the contrary, smells and tastes everything first and chews it
+scientifically before swallowing it. The slightest unfamiliar scent or
+flavor warns her to sheer off from the feast.
+
+So the average dog would have gulped this toothsome windfall in a
+single swallow; but Wolf was not the average dog. No collie is, and
+Wolf was still more like his eccentric forefathers of the wilderness
+than are most collies.
+
+He lacked the reasoning powers to make him suspicious of this rich
+gift from a stranger, but a queer personal trait now served him just
+as well.
+
+Wolf was an epicure; he always took three times as long to empty his
+dinner dish as did the other dogs, for instead of gobbling his meal,
+as they did, he was wont to nibble affectedly at each morsel, gnawing
+it slowly into nothingness; and all the time showing a fussily dainty
+relish of it that used to delight the Boy and send guests into peals
+of laughter.
+
+This odd little trait that had caused so much ridicule now saved
+Wolf's life.
+
+He carried the lump of beef gingerly up to the veranda, laid it down
+on his mat, and prepared to revel in his chance banquet after his own
+deliberate fashion.
+
+Holding the beef between his forepaws, he proceeded to devour it in
+mincing little squirrel-bites. About a quarter of the meat had
+disappeared when Wolf became aware that his tongue smarted and that
+his throat was sore; also that the interior of the meat-ball had a
+ranky pungent odor, very different from the heavenly fragrance of its
+outside and not at all appetizing.
+
+He looked down at the chunk, rolled it over with his nose, surveyed it
+again, then got up and moved away from it in angry disgust.
+
+Presently he forgot his disappointment in the knowledge that he was
+very, very ill. His tongue and throat no longer burned, but his body
+and brain seemed full of hot lead that weighed a ton. He felt stupid,
+and too weak to stir. A great drowsiness gripped him.
+
+With a grunt of discomfort and utter fatigue, he slumped down on the
+veranda floor to sleep off his sick lassitude. After that, for a time,
+nothing mattered.
+
+For perhaps an hour Wolf lay sprawling there, dead to his duty, and to
+everything else. Then faintly, through the fog of dullness that
+enwrapped his brain, came a sound--a sound he had long ago learned to
+listen for. The harshly scraping noise of a boat's prow drawn up on
+the pebbly shore at the foot of the lawn.
+
+Instinct tore through the poison vapors and roused the sick dog. He
+lifted his head. It was strangely heavy and hard to lift.
+
+The sound was repeated as the prow was pulled farther up on the
+bank. Then came the crunch of a human foot on the waterside grass.
+
+Heredity and training and lifelong fidelity took control of the
+lethargic dog, dragging him to his feet and down the veranda steps
+through no volition of his own.
+
+Every motion tired him. He was dizzy and nauseated. He craved sleep;
+but as he was just a thoroughbred dog and not a wise human, he did not
+stop to think up good reasons why he should shirk his duty because he
+did not feel like performing it.
+
+To the brow of the hill he trotted--slowly, heavily, shakily. His
+sharp powers of hearing told him the trespasser had left his boat and
+had taken one or two stealthy steps up the slope of lawn toward the
+house.
+
+And now a puff of west wind brought Wolf's sense of smell into
+action. A dog remembers odors as humans remember faces. And the breeze
+bore to him the scent of the same man who had flung ashore that bit of
+meat which had caused all his suffering.
+
+He had caught the man's scent an hour earlier, as he had stood
+sniffing at the boat ten feet away from him. The same scent had been
+on the meat the man had handled.
+
+And now, having played such a cruel trick on him, the joker was
+actually daring to intrude on The Place!
+
+A gust of resentful rage pierced the dullness of Wolf's brain and sent
+a thrill of fierce energy through him. For the moment this carried him
+out of his sick self and brought back all his former zest as a
+watch-dog.
+
+Down the hill, like a furry whirlwind, flew Wolf, every tooth bared,
+his back a-bristle from neck to tail. Now he was well within sight of
+the intruder. He saw the man pausing to adjust something to one of
+his hands. Then, before this could be accomplished, Wolf saw him pause
+and stare through the darkness as the wild onrush of the dog's feet
+struck upon his hearing.
+
+Another instant and Wolf was near enough to spring. Out of the
+blackness he launched himself, straight for the trespasser's face. The
+man saw the dim shape hurtling through the air toward him. He dropped
+what he was carrying and flung up both hands to guard his neck.
+
+At that, he was none too soon, for just as the thief's palm reached
+his own throat, Wolf's teeth met in the fleshy part of the hand.
+
+Silent, in agony, the man beat at the dog with his free hand; but an
+attacking collie is hard to locate in the darkness. A bulldog will
+secure a grip and will hang on; a collie is everywhere at once.
+
+Wolf's snapping jaws had already deserted the robber's mangled hand
+and slashed the man's left shoulder to the bone. Then the dog made
+another furious lunge for the face.
+
+Down crashed the man, losing his balance under the heavy impact; Wolf
+atop of him. To guard his throat, the man rolled over on his
+face, kicking madly at the dog, and reaching back for his own
+hip-pocket. Half in the water and half on the bank, the two rolled and
+thrashed and struggled--the man panting and wheezing in mortal terror;
+the dog growling in a hideous, snarling fashion as might a wild
+animal.
+
+The thief's torn left hand found a grip on Wolf's fur-armored
+throat. He shoved the fiercely writhing dog backward, jammed a pistol
+against Wolf's head, and pulled the trigger!
+
+The dog relaxed his grip and tumbled in a huddled heap on the
+brink. The man staggered, gasping, to his feet; bleeding, disheveled,
+his clothes torn and mud-coated.
+
+The echoes of the shot were still reverberating among the lakeside
+hills. Several of the house's dark windows leaped into sudden
+light--then more windows in another room--and in another.
+
+The thief swore roundly. His night's work was ruined. He bent to his
+skiff and shoved it into the water; then he turned to grope for what
+he had dropped on the lawn when Wolf's unexpected attack had
+interfered with his plans.
+
+As he did so, something seized him by the ankle. In panic terror the
+man screamed aloud and jumped into the water, then, peering back, he
+saw what had happened.
+
+Wolf, sprawling and unable to stand, had reached forward from where he
+lay and had driven his teeth for the last time into his foe.
+
+The thief raised his pistol again and fired at the prostrate dog, then
+he clambered into his boat and rowed off with frantic speed, just as a
+salvo of barks told that Lad and Bruce had been released from the
+house; they came charging down the lawn, the Master at their heels.
+
+But already the quick oar-beats were growing distant; and the gloom
+had blotted out any chance of seeing or following the boat.
+
+Wolf lay on his side, half in and half out of the water. He could not
+rise, as was his custom, to meet the Boy, who came running up, close
+behind the Master and valorously grasping a target rifle; but the dog
+wagged his tail in feeble greeting, then he looked out over the black
+lake, and snarled.
+
+The bullet had grazed Wolf's scalp and then had passed along the
+foreleg; scarring and numbing it. No damage had been done that a
+week's good nursing would not set right.
+
+The marks in the grass and the poisoned meat on the porch told their
+own tale; so did the neat kit of burglar tools and a rubber glove
+found near the foot of the lawn; and then the telephone was put to
+work.
+
+At dawn, a man in torn and muddy clothes, called at the office of a
+doctor three miles away to be treated for a half-dozen dog-bites
+received, he said, from a pack of stray curs he had met on the
+turnpike. By the time his wounds were dressed, the sheriff and two
+deputies had arrived to take him in charge. In his pockets were a
+revolver, with two cartridges fired, and the mate of the rubber glove
+he had left on The Place's lawn.
+
+"You--you wouldn't let Wolfie go to any show and win a cup for
+himself," half-sobbed the Boy, as the Master worked over the injured
+dog's wound, "but he's saved you from losing all the cups the other
+dogs ever won!"
+
+Three days later the Master came home from a trip to the city. He went
+directly to the Boy's room. There on a rug lounged the convalescent
+Wolf, the Boy sitting beside him, stroking the dog's bandaged head.
+
+"Wolf," said the Master, solemnly, "I've been talking about you to
+some people I know. And we all agree----"
+
+"Agree _what?_" asked the Boy, looking up in mild curiosity.
+
+The Master cleared his throat and continued:
+
+"We agree that the trophy-shelf in my study hasn't enough cups on
+it. So I've decided to add still another to the collection. Want to
+see it, son?"
+
+From behind his back the Master produced a gleaming silver cup--one of
+the largest and most ornate the Boy had ever seen--larger even than
+Bruce's "Best Dog" cup.
+
+The Boy took it from his father's outstretched hand.
+
+"Who won this?" he asked. "And what for? Didn't we get all the cups
+that were coming to us at the shows. Is it----"
+
+The Boy's voice trailed away into a gurgle of bewildered rapture. He
+had caught sight of the lettering on the big cup. And now, his arm
+around Wolf, he read the inscription aloud, stammering with delight as
+he blurted out the words:
+
+  "HERO CUP. WON BY WOLF, AGAINST ALL COMERS."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+IN THE DAY OF BATTLE
+
+
+Now, this is the true tale of Lad's last great adventure.
+
+For more years than he could remember, Lad had been king. He had ruled
+at The Place, from boundary-fence to boundary-fence, from highway to
+Lake. He had had, as subjects, many a thoroughbred collie; and many a
+lesser animal and bird among the Little Folk of The Place. His rule of
+them all had been lofty and beneficent.
+
+The other dogs at The Place recognized Lad's rulership--recognized it
+without demur. It would no more have occurred to any of them, for
+example, to pass in or out through a doorway ahead of Lad than it
+would occur to a courtier to shoulder his way into the throne-room
+ahead of his sovereign. Nor would one of them intrude on the "cave"
+under the living-room piano which for more than a decade had been
+Lad's favorite resting-place.
+
+Great was Lad. And now he was old--very old.
+
+He was thirteen--which is equivalent to the human age of seventy. His
+long, clean lines had become blurred with flesh. He was undeniably
+stout. When he ran fast, he rolled slightly in his stride. Nor could
+he run as rapidly or as long as of yore. While he was not wheezy or
+asthmatic, yet a brisk five-mile walk would make him strangely anxious
+for an hour's rest.
+
+He would not confess, even to himself, that age was beginning to
+hamper him so cruelly. And he sought to do all the things he had once
+done--if the Mistress or the Master were looking. But when he was
+alone, or with the other dogs, he spared himself every needless
+step. And he slept a great deal.
+
+Withal, Lad's was a hale old age. His spirit and his almost uncanny
+intelligence had not faltered. Save for the silvered muzzle--first
+outward sign of age in a dog--his face and head were as classically
+young as ever. So were the absurdly small fore-paws--his one gross
+vanity--on which he spent hours of care each day, to keep them clean
+and snowy.
+
+He would still dash out of the house as of old--with the wild
+trumpeting bark which he reserved as greeting to his two deities
+alone--when the Mistress or the Master returned home after an absence.
+He would still frisk excitedly around either of them at hint of a
+romp. But the exertion _was_ an exertion. And despite Lad's valiant
+efforts at youthfulness, everyone could see it was.
+
+No longer did he lead the other dogs in their headlong rushes through
+the forest in quest of rabbits. Since he could not now keep the pace,
+he let the others go on these breath-and-strength-taking excursions
+without him; and he contented himself with an occasional lone
+and stately walk through the woods where once he had led the
+run--strolling along in leisurely fashion, with the benign dignity of
+some plump and ruddy old squire inspecting his estate.
+
+There had been many dogs at The Place during the thirteen years of
+Lad's reign--dogs of all sorts and conditions, including Lad's
+worshiped collie mate, the dainty gold-and-white "Lady." But in this
+later day there were but three dogs beside himself.
+
+One of them was Wolf, the only surviving son of Lad and Lady--a
+slender, powerful young collie, with some of his sire's brain and much
+of his mother's appealing grace--an ideal play-dog. Between Lad and
+Wolf there had always been a bond of warmest affection. Lad had
+trained this son of his and had taught him all he knew. He unbent from
+his lofty dignity, with Wolf, as with none of the others.
+
+The second of the remaining dogs was Bruce ("Sunnybank Goldsmith"),
+tawny as Lad himself, descendant of eleven international champions and
+winner of many a ribbon and medal and cup. Bruce was--and is--flawless
+in physical perfection and in obedience and intelligence.
+
+The third was Rex--a giant, a freak, a dog oddly out of place among a
+group of thoroughbreds. On his father's side Rex was pure collie; on
+his mother's, pure bull-terrier. That is an accidental blending of two
+breeds which cannot blend. He looked more like a fawn-colored Great
+Dane than anything else. He was short-haired, full two inches taller
+and ten pounds heavier than Lad, and had the bunch-muscled jaws of a
+killer.
+
+There was not an outlander dog for two miles in either direction
+that Rex had not at one time or another met and vanquished. The
+bull-terrier strain, which blended so ill with collie blood, made its
+possessor a terrific fighter. He was swift as a deer, strong as a
+puma.
+
+In many ways he was a lovable and affectionate pet; slavishly devoted
+to the Master and grievously jealous of the latter's love for Lad. Rex
+was five years old--in his fullest prime--and, like the rest, he had
+ever taken Lad's rulership for granted.
+
+I have written at perhaps prosy length, introducing these characters
+of my war-story. The rest is action.
+
+March, that last year, was a month of drearily recurrent snows. In the
+forests beyond The Place, the snow lay light and fluffy at a depth of
+sixteen inches.
+
+On a snowy, blowy, bitter cold Sunday--one of those days nobody
+wants--Rex and Wolf elected to go rabbit-hunting.
+
+Bruce was not in the hunt, sensibly preferring to lie in front of the
+living-room fire on so vile a day rather than to flounder through
+dust-fine drifts in search of game that was not worth chasing under
+such conditions. Wolf, too, was monstrous comfortable on the old fur
+rug by the fire, at the Mistress' feet.
+
+But Rex, who had waxed oddly restless of late, was bored by the indoor
+afternoon. The Mistress was reading; the Master was asleep. There
+seemed no chance that either would go for a walk or otherwise amuse
+their four-footed friends. The winter forests were calling. The
+powerful crossbred dog would find the snow a scant obstacle to his
+hunting. And the warmly quivering body of a new-caught rabbit was a
+tremendous lure.
+
+Rex got to his feet, slouched across the living-room to Bruce and
+touched his nose. The drowsing collie paid no heed. Next Rex moved
+over to where Wolf lay. The two dogs' noses touched.
+
+Now, this is no _Mowgli_ tale, but a true narrative. I do not pretend
+to say whether or not dogs have a language of their own. (Personally,
+I think they have, and a very comprehensive one, too. But I cannot
+prove it.) No dog-student, however, will deny that two dogs communicate
+their wishes to each other in some way by (or during) the swift
+contact of noses.
+
+By that touch Wolf understood Rex's hint to join in the foray. Wolf
+was not yet four years old--at an age when excitement still outweighs
+lazy comfort. Moreover, he admired and aped Rex, as much as ever the
+school's littlest boy models himself on the class bully. He was up at
+once and ready to start.
+
+A maid was bringing in an armful of wood from the veranda. The two
+dogs slipped out through the half-open door. As they went, Wolf cast a
+sidelong glance at Lad, who was snoozing under the piano. Lad noted
+the careless invitation. He also noted that Wolf did not hesitate when
+his father refused to join the outing but trotted gayly off in Rex's
+wake.
+
+Perhaps this defection hurt Lad's abnormally sensitive feelings. For
+of old he had always led such forest-runnings. Perhaps the two dogs'
+departure merely woke in him the memory of the chase's joys and
+stirred a longing for the snow-clogged woods.
+
+For a minute or two the big living-room was quiet, except for the
+scratch of dry snow against the panes, the slow breathing of Bruce and
+the turning of a page in the book the Mistress was reading. Then Lad
+got up heavily and walked forth from his piano-cave.
+
+He stretched himself and crossed to the Mistress' chair. There he sat
+down on the rug very close beside her and laid one of his ridiculously
+tiny white fore-paws in her lap. Absent-mindedly, still absorbed in
+her book, she put out a hand and patted the soft fur of his ruff and
+ears.
+
+Often, Lad came to her or to the Master for some such caress; and,
+receiving it, would return to his resting-place. But to-day he was
+seeking to attract her notice for something much more important. It
+had occurred to him that it would be jolly to go with her for a tramp
+in the snow. And his mere presence failing to convey the hint, he
+began to "talk."
+
+To the Mistress and the Master alone did Lad condescend to "talk"--and
+then only in moments of stress or appeal. No one, hearing him, at such
+a time, could doubt the dog was trying to frame human speech. His
+vocal efforts ran the gamut of the entire scale. Wordless, but
+decidedly eloquent, this "talking" would continue sometimes for
+several minutes without ceasing; its tones carried whatever emotion
+the old dog sought to convey--whether of joy, of grief, of request or
+of complaint.
+
+To-day there was merely playful entreaty in the speechless "speech."
+The Mistress looked up.
+
+"What is it, Laddie?" she asked. "What do you want?"
+
+For answer Lad glanced at the door, then at the Mistress; then he
+solemnly went out into the hall--whence presently he returned with one
+of her fur gloves in his mouth.
+
+"No, no," she laughed. "Not to-day, Lad. Not in this storm. We'll take
+a good, long walk to-morrow."
+
+The dog sighed and returned sadly to his lair beneath the piano. But
+the vision of the forests was evidently hard to erase from his
+mind. And a little later, when the front door was open again by one of
+the servants, he stalked out.
+
+The snow was driving hard, and there was a sting in it. The thermometer
+was little above zero; but the snow had been a familiar bedfellow,
+for centuries, to Lad's Scottish forefathers; and the cold was
+harmless against the woven thickness of his tawny coat. Picking
+his way in stately fashion along the ill-broken track of the driveway,
+he strolled toward the woods. To humans there was nothing in the
+outdoor day but snow and chill and bluster and bitter loneliness. To
+the trained eye and the miraculous scent-power of a collie it
+contained a million things of dramatic interest.
+
+Here a rabbit had crossed the trail--not with leisurely bounds or
+mincing hops, but stomach to earth, in flight for very life. Here,
+close at the terrified bunny's heels, had darted a red fox. Yonder,
+where the piling snow covered a swirl of tracks, the chase had ended.
+
+The little ridge of snow-heaped furrow, to the right, held a basketful
+of cowering quail--who heard Lad's slow step and did not reckon on his
+flawless gift of smell. On the hemlock tree just ahead a hawk had
+lately torn a blue-jay asunder. A fluff of gray feathers still stuck
+to a bough, and the scent of blood had not been blown out of the
+air. Underneath, a field-mouse was plowing its way into the frozen
+earth, its tiny paw-scrapes wholly audible to the ears of the dog
+above it.
+
+Here, through the stark and drifted undergrowth, Rex and Wolf had
+recently swept along in pursuit of a half-grown rabbit. Even a human
+eye could not have missed their partly-covered tracks; but Lad knew
+whose track was whose and which dog had been in the lead.
+
+Yes, to humans, the forest would have seemed a deserted white
+waste. Lad knew it was thick-populated with the Little People of the
+woodland, and that all day and all night the seemingly empty and
+placid groves were a blend of battlefield, slaughterhouse and
+restaurant. Here, as much as in the cities or in the trenches, abode
+strenuous life, violent death, struggle, greed and terror.
+
+A partridge rocketed upward through a clump of evergreen, while a
+weasel, jaws a-quiver, glared after it, baffled. A shaggy owl crouched
+at a tree-limb hole and blinked sulkily about in search of prey and in
+hope of dusk. A crow, its black feet red with a slain snowbird's
+blood, flapped clumsily overhead. A poet would have vowed that the
+still and white-shrouded wilderness was a shrine sacred to solitude
+and severe peace. Lad could have told him better. Nature (beneath the
+surface) is never solitary and never at peace.
+
+When a dog is very old and very heavy and a little unwieldy, it is
+hard to walk through sixteen-inch snow, even if one moves slowly and
+sedately. Hence Lad was well pleased to come upon a narrow woodland
+track; made by a laborer who had passed and repassed through that same
+strip of forest during the last few hours. To follow in that trampled
+rut made walking much easier; it was a rut barely wide enough for one
+wayfarer.
+
+More and more like an elderly squire patrolling his acres, Lad rambled
+along, and presently his ears and his nose told him that his two
+loving friends Rex and Wolf were coming toward him on their home-bound
+way. His plumy tail wagged expectantly. He was growing a bit lonely on
+this Sunday afternoon walk of his, and a little tired. It would be a
+pleasure to have company--especially Wolf's.
+
+Rex and Wolf had fared ill on their hunt. They had put up two
+rabbits. One had doubled and completely escaped them; and in the chase
+Rex had cut his foot nastily on a strip of unseen barbed wire. The
+sandlike snow had gotten into the jagged cut in a most irritating way.
+
+The second rabbit had dived under a log. Rex had thrust his head
+fiercely through a snowbank in quest of the vanished prey; and a long
+briar-thorn, hidden there, had plunged its needle point deep into the
+inside of his left nostril. The inner nostril is a hundred-fold the
+most agonizingly sensitive part of a dog's body, and the pain wrung a
+yell of rage and hurt from the big dog.
+
+With a nostril and a foot both hurt, there was no more fun in hunting,
+and--angry, cross, savagely in pain--Rex loped homeward, Wolf
+pattering along behind him. Like Lad, they came upon the laborer's
+trampled path and took advantage of the easier going.
+
+Thus it was, at a turn in the track, that they came face to face with
+Lad. Wolf had already smelled him, and his brush began to quiver in
+welcome. Rex, his nose in anguish, could smell nothing; not until
+that turn did he know of Lad's presence. He halted, sulky, and
+ill-tempered. The queer restlessness, the pre-springtime savagery that
+had obsessed him of late had been brought to a head by his hurts. He
+was not himself. His mind was sick.
+
+There was not room for two large dogs to pass each other in that
+narrow trail. One or the other must flounder out into the deep snow to
+the side. Ordinarily, there would be no question about any other dog
+on The Place turning out for Lad. It would have been a matter of
+course, and so, to-day, Lad expected it to be. Onward he moved, at
+that same dignified walk, until he was not a yard away from Rex.
+
+The latter, his brain fevered and his hurts torturing him, suddenly
+flamed into rebellion. Even as a younger buck sooner or later assails
+for mastery the leader of the herd, so the brain-sick Rex went back,
+all at once, to primal instincts, a maniac rage mastered him--the rage
+of the angry underling, the primitive lust for mastery.
+
+With not so much as a growl or warning, he launched himself upon
+Lad. Straight at the tired old dog's throat he flew. Lad, all
+unprepared for such unheard-of mutiny, was caught clean off his
+guard. He had not even time enough to lower his head to protect his
+throat or to rear and meet his erstwhile subject's attack halfway. At
+one moment he had been plodding gravely toward his two supposedly
+loyal friends; the next, Rex's ninety pounds of whale-bone muscle had
+smitten him violently to earth, and Rex's fearsome jaws--capable of
+cracking a beef-bone as a man cracks a filbert--had found a vise-grip
+in the soft fur of his throat.
+
+Down amid a flurry of high-tossed snow, crashed Lad, his snarling
+enemy upon him, pinning him to the ground, the huge jaws tearing and
+rending at his ruff--the silken ruff that the Mistress daily combed
+with such loving care to keep it fluffy and beautiful.
+
+It was a grip and a leverage that would have made the average opponent
+helpless. With a short-haired dog it would have meant the end, but the
+providence that gave collies a mattress of fur--to stave off the cold,
+in their herding work amid the snowy moors--has made that fur thickest
+about the lower neck.
+
+Rex had struck in crazy rage and had not gauged his mark as truly as
+though he had been cooler. He had missed the jugular and found himself
+grinding at an enormous mouthful of matted hair--and at very little
+else; and Lad belonged to the breed that is never to be taken wholly
+by surprise and that acts by the swiftest instinct or reason known to
+dogdom. Even as he fell, he instinctively threw his body sideways to
+avoid the full jar of Rex's impact--and gathered his feet under him.
+
+With a heave that wrenched his every unaccustomed muscle, Lad shook
+off the living weight and scrambled upright. To prevent this, Rex
+threw his entire body forward to reinforce his throat-grip. As a
+result, a double handful of ruff-hair and a patch of skin came away in
+his jaws. And Lad was free.
+
+He was free--to turn tail and run for his life from the unequal
+combat--and that his hero-heart would not let him do. He was free,
+also, to stand his ground and fight there in the snowbound forest
+until he should be slain by his younger and larger and stronger foe,
+and this folly his almost-human intelligence would not permit.
+
+There was one chance and only one--one compromise alone between sanity
+and honor. And this chance Lad took.
+
+He _would_ not run. He _could_ not save his life by fighting where he
+stood. His only hope was to keep his face to his enemy, battling as
+best he could, and all the time keep backing toward home. If he could
+last until he came within sight or sound of the folk at the house, he
+knew he would be saved. Home was a full half-mile away and the snow
+was almost chest-deep. Yet, on the instant, he laid out his plan of
+campaign and put it into action.
+
+Rex cleared his mouth of the impeding hair and flew at Lad once
+more--before the old dog had fairly gotten to his feet, but not before
+the line of defense had been thought out. Lad half wheeled, dodging
+the snapping jaws by an inch and taking the impact of the charge on
+his left shoulder, at the same time burying his teeth in the right
+side of Rex's face.
+
+At the same time Lad gave ground, moving backward three or four yards,
+helped along by the impetus of his opponent. Home was a half-mile
+behind him, in an oblique line, and he could not turn to gauge his
+direction. Yet he moved in precisely the correct angle.
+
+(Indeed, a passer-by who witnessed the fight, and the Master, who went
+carefully over the ground afterward, proved that at no point in the
+battle did Lad swerve or mistake his exact direction. Yet not
+once could he have been able to look around to judge it, and his
+foot-prints showed that not once had he turned his back on the foe.)
+
+The hold Lad secured on Rex's cheek was good, but it was not good
+enough. At thirteen, a dog's "biting teeth" are worn short and dull,
+and his yellowed fangs are blunted; nor is the jaw by any means as
+powerful as once it was. Rex writhed and pitched in the fierce grip,
+and presently tore free from it and to the attack again, seeking now
+to lunge over the top of Lad's lowered head to the vital spot at the
+nape of the neck, where sharp teeth may pierce through to the spinal
+cord.
+
+Thrice Rex lunged, and thrice Lad reared on his hind legs, meeting the
+shock with his deep, shaggy breast, snapping and slashing at his enemy
+and every time receding a few steps between charges. They had left
+the path now, and were plowing a course through deep snow. The snow
+was scant barrier to Rex's full strength, but it terribly impeded the
+steadily backing Lad. Lad's extra flesh, too, was a bad handicap; his
+wind was not at all what it should have been, and the unwonted
+exertion began to tell sharply on him.
+
+Under the lead-hued skies and the drive of the snow the fight swirled
+and eddied. The great dogs reared, clashed, tore, battered against
+tree-trunks, lost footing and rolled, staggered up again and renewed
+the onslaught. Ever Lad manoeuvered his way backward, waging a
+desperate "rear-guard action." In the battle's wake was an irregular
+but mathematically straight line of trampled and blood-spattered snow.
+
+Oh, but it was slow going, this ever-fighting retreat of Lad's,
+through the deep drifts, with his mightier foe pressing him and
+rending at his throat and shoulders at every backward step! The old
+dog's wind was gone; his once-superb strength was going, but he fought
+on with blazing fury--the fury of a dying king who _will_ not be
+deposed.
+
+In sheer skill and brain-work and generalship, Lad was wholly Rex's
+superior, but these served him ill in a death-grapple. With dogs, as
+with human pugilists, mere science and strategy avail little against
+superior size and strength and youth. Again and again Lad found or
+made an opening. Again and again his weakening jaws secured the right
+grip only to be shaken off with more and more ease by the younger
+combatant.
+
+Again and again Lad "slashed" as do his wolf cousins and as does
+almost no civilized dog but the collie. But the slashes had lost their
+one-time lightning speed and prowess. And the blunt "rending fangs"
+scored only superficial furrows in Rex's fawn-colored hide.
+
+There was meager hope of reaching home alive. Lad must have known
+that. His strength was gone. It was his heart and his glorious
+ancestry now that were doing his fighting--not his fat and age-depleted
+body. From Lad's mental vocabulary the word _quit_ had ever been
+absent. Wherefore--dizzy, gasping, feebler every minute--he battled
+fearlessly on in the dying day; never losing his sense of direction,
+never turning tail, never dreaming of surrender, taking dire
+wounds, inflicting light ones.
+
+There are many forms of dog-fight. Two strange dogs, meeting, will fly
+at each other because their wild forbears used to do so. Jealous dogs
+will battle even more fiercely. But the deadliest of all canine
+conflicts is the "murder-fight." This is a struggle wherein one or
+both contestants have decided to give no quarter, where the victor
+will fight on until his antagonist is dead and will then tear his body
+to pieces. It is a recognized form of canine mania.
+
+And it was a murder-fight that Rex was waging, for he had gone quite
+insane. (This is wholly different, by the way, from "going mad.")
+
+Down went Lad, for perhaps the tenth time, and once more--though now
+with an effort that was all but too much for him--he writhed to his
+feet, gaining three yards of ground by the move. Rex was upon him with
+one leap, the frothing and bloody jaws striking for his mangled
+throat. Lad reared to block the attack. Then suddenly, overbalanced,
+he crashed backward into the snowdrift.
+
+Rex had not reached him, but young Wolf had.
+
+Wolf had watched the battle with a growing excitement that at last
+had broken all bounds. The instinct, which makes a fluff-headed
+college-boy mix into a scrimmage that is no concern of his, had
+suddenly possessed Lad's dearly loved son.
+
+Now, if this were a fiction yarn, it would be edifying to tell how
+Wolf sprang to the aid of his grand old sire and how he thereby
+saved Lad's life. But the shameful truth is that Wolf did nothing
+of the sort. Rex was his model, the bully he had so long and
+so enthusiastically imitated. And now Rex was fighting a most
+entertaining bout, fighting it with a maniac fury that infected his
+young disciple and made him yearn to share in the glory.
+
+Wherefore, as Lad reared to meet Rex's lunge, Wolf hurled himself like
+a furry whirlwind upon the old dog's flank, burying his white teeth in
+the muscles of the lower leg.
+
+The flank attack bowled Lad completely over. There was no chance now
+for such a fall as would enable him to spring up again unscathed. He
+was thrown heavily upon his back, and both his murderers plunged at
+his unguarded throat and lower body.
+
+But a collie thrown is not a collie beaten, as perhaps I have said
+once before. For thirty seconds or more the three thrashed about in
+the snow in a growling, snarling, right unloving embrace. Then, by
+some miracle, Lad was on his feet again.
+
+His throat had a new and deep wound, perilously close to the
+jugular. His stomach and left side were slashed as with razor-blades.
+But he was up. And even in that moment of dire stress--with both
+dogs flinging themselves upon him afresh--he gained another yard
+or two in his line of retreat.
+
+He might have gained still more ground. For his assailants, leaping at
+the same instant, collided and impeded each other's charge. But, for
+the first time the wise old brain clouded, and the hero-heart went
+sick; as Lad saw his own loved and spoiled son ranged against him in
+the murder-fray. He could not understand. Loyalty was as much a part
+of himself as were his sorrowful brown eyes or his tiny white
+fore-paws. And Wolf's amazing treachery seemed to numb the old
+warrior, body and mind.
+
+But the second of dumfounded wonder passed quickly--too quickly for
+either of the other dogs to take advantage of it. In its place surged
+a righteous wrath that, for the instant, brought back youth and
+strength to the aged fighter.
+
+With a yell that echoed far through the forest's sinister silence, Lad
+whizzed forward at the advancing Rex. Wolf, who was nearer, struck for
+his father's throat--missed and rolled in the snow from the force
+of his own momentum. Lad did not heed him. Straight for Rex he
+leaped. Rex, bounding at him, was already in midair. The two met, and
+under the Berserk onset Rex fell back into the snow.
+
+Lad was upon him at once. The worn-down teeth found their goal above
+the jugular. Deep and raggedly they drove, impelled by the brief flash
+of power that upbore their owner.
+
+Almost did that grip end the fight and leave Rex gasping out his life
+in the drift. But the access of false strength faded. Rex, roaring
+like a hurt tiger, twisted and tore himself free. Lad realizing his
+own bolt was shot, gave ground, backing away from two assailants
+instead of one.
+
+It was easier now to retreat. For Wolf, unskilled in practical
+warfare, at first hindered Rex almost as much as he helped him, again
+and again getting in the bigger dog's way and marring a rush. Had
+Wolf understood "teamwork," Lad must have been pulled down and
+slaughtered in less than a minute.
+
+But soon Wolf grasped the fact that he could do worse damage by
+keeping out of his ally's way and attacking from a different quarter,
+and thereafter he fought to more deadly purpose. His favorite ruse was
+to dive for Lad's forelegs and attempt to break one of them. That is a
+collie manoeuver inherited direct from Wolf's namesake ancestors.
+
+Several times his jaws reached the slender white forelegs, cutting and
+slashing them and throwing Lad off his balance. Once he found a hold
+on the left haunch and held it until his victim shook loose by
+rolling.
+
+Lad defended himself from this new foe as well as he might, by dodging
+or by brushing him to one side, but never once did he attack Wolf, or
+so much as snap at him. (Rex after the encounter, was plentifully
+scarred. Wolf had not so much as a scratch.)
+
+Backward, with ever-increasing difficulty, the old dog fought his way,
+often borne down to earth and always staggering up more feebly than
+before. But ever he was warring with the same fierce courage; despite
+an ache and bewilderment in his honest heart at his son's treason.
+
+The forest lay behind the fighters. The deserted highroad was
+passed. Under Lad's clawing and reeling feet was the dear ground of
+The Place--The Place where for thirteen happy years he had reigned as
+king, where he had benevolently ruled his kind and had given
+worshipful service to his gods.
+
+But the house was still nearly a furlong off, and Lad was well-nigh
+dead. His body was one mass of wounds. His strength was turned to
+water. His breath was gone. His bloodshot eyes were dim. His brain
+was dizzy and refused its office. Loss of blood had weakened him full
+as much as had the tremendous exertion of the battle.
+
+Yet--uselessly now--he continued to fight. It was a grotesquely futile
+resistance. The other dogs were all over him--tearing, slashing,
+gripping, at will--unhindered by his puny effort to fend them off. The
+slaughter-time had come. Drunk with blood and fury, the assailants
+plunged at him for the last time.
+
+Down went Lad, helpless beneath the murderous avalanche that
+overwhelmed him. And this time his body flatly refused to obey the
+grim command of his will. The fight was over--the good, _good_ fight
+of a white-souled Paladin against hopeless odds.
+
+The living-room fire crackled cheerily. The snow hissed and slithered
+against the glass. A sheet of frost on every pane shut out the stormy
+twilit world. The screech of the wind was music to the comfortable
+shut-ins.
+
+The Mistress drowsed over her book by the fire. Bruce snored snugly
+in front of the blaze. The Master had awakened from his nap and was in
+the adjoining study, sorting fishing-tackle and scouring a rusted
+hunting-knife.
+
+Then came a second's lull in the gale, and all at once Bruce was wide
+awake. Growling, he ran to the front door and scratched imperatively
+at the panel. This is not the way a well-bred dog makes known his
+desire to leave the house. And Bruce was decidedly a well-bred dog.
+
+The Mistress, thinking some guest might be arriving whose scent
+or tread displeased the collie, called to the Master to shut
+Bruce in the study, lest he insult the supposed visitor by barking.
+Reluctantly--very reluctantly--Bruce obeyed the order. The Master
+shut the study door behind him and came into the living-room,
+still carrying the half-cleaned knife.
+
+As no summons at bell or knocker followed Bruce's announcement, the
+Mistress opened the front door and looked out. The dusk was falling,
+but it was not too dark for her to have seen the approach of anyone,
+nor was it too dark for the Mistress to see two dogs tearing at
+something that lay hidden from her view in the deep snow a hundred
+yards away. She recognized Rex and Wolf at once and amusedly wondered
+with what they were playing.
+
+Then from the depth of snow beneath them she saw a feeble head rear
+itself--a glorious head, though torn and bleeding--a head that
+waveringly lunged toward Rex's throat.
+
+"They're--they're killing--_Lad!_" she cried in stark, unbelieving
+horror. Forgetful of thin dress and thinner slippers, she ran toward
+the trio. Halfway to the battlefield the Master passed by her,
+running and lurching through the knee-high snow at something like
+record speed.
+
+She heard his shout. And at sound of it she saw Wolf slink away from
+the slaughter like a scared schoolboy. But Rex was too far gone in
+murder-lust to heed the shout. The Master seized him by the studded
+collar and tossed him ten feet or more to one side. Rage-blind, Rex
+came flying back to the kill. The Master stood astride his prey, and
+in his blind mania the cross-breed sprang at the man.
+
+The Master's hunting-knife caught him squarely behind the left
+fore-leg. And with a grunt like the sound of an exhausted soda-siphon,
+the huge dog passed out of this story and out of life as well.
+
+There would be ample time, later, for the Master to mourn his enforced
+slaying of the pet dog that had loved and served him so long. At
+present he had eyes only for the torn and senseless body of Lad lying
+huddled in the red-blotched snow.
+
+In his arms he lifted Lad and carried him tenderly into the house.
+There the Mistress' light fingers dressed his hideous injuries.
+Not less than thirty-six deep wounds scored the worn-out old
+body. Several of these were past the skill of home treatment.
+
+A grumbling veterinary was summoned on the telephone and was lured by
+pledge of a triple fee to chug through ten miles of storm in a balky
+car to the rescue.
+
+Lad was lying with his head in the Mistress' lap. The vet' looked the
+unconscious dog over and then said tersely:
+
+"I wish I'd stayed at home. He's as good as dead."
+
+"He's a million times better than dead," denied the Master. "I know
+Lad. You don't. He's got into the habit of living, and he's not going
+to break that habit, not if the best nursing and surgery in the State
+can keep him from doing it. Get busy!"
+
+"There's nothing to keep me here," objected the vet'. "He's----"
+
+"There's everything to keep you here," gently contradicted the
+Master. "You'll stay here till Lad's out of danger--if I have to steal
+your trousers and your car. You're going to cure him. And if you do,
+you can write your bill on a Liberty Bond."
+
+Two hours later Lad opened his eyes. He was swathed in smelly bandages
+and he was soaked in liniments. Patches of hair had been shaved
+away from his worst wounds. Digitalis was reinforcing his faint
+heart-action.
+
+He looked up at the Mistress with his only available eye. By a
+herculean struggle he wagged his tail--just once. And he essayed the
+trumpeting bark wherewith he always welcomed her return after an
+absence. The bark was a total failure.
+
+After which Lad tried to tell the Mistress the story of the battle.
+Very weakly, but very persistently he "talked." His tones dropped
+now and then to the shadow of a ferocious growl as he related
+his exploits and then scaled again to a puppy-like whimper.
+
+He had done a grand day's work, had Lad, and he wanted applause. He
+had suffered much and he was still in racking pain, and he wanted
+sympathy and petting. Presently he fell asleep.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was two weeks before Lad could stand upright, and two more before
+he could go out of doors unhelped. Then on a warm, early spring
+morning, the vet' declared him out of all danger.
+
+Very thin was the invalid, very shaky, snow-white of muzzle and with
+the air of an old, old man whose too-fragile body is sustained only by
+a regal dignity. But he was _alive_.
+
+Slowly he marched from his piano cave toward the open front door.
+Wolf--in black disgrace for the past month--chanced to be crossing
+the living-room toward the veranda at the same time. The two
+dogs reached the door-way simultaneously.
+
+Very respectfully, almost cringingly, Wolf stood aside for Lad to pass
+out.
+
+His sire walked by with never a look. But his step was all at once
+stronger and springier, and he held his splendid head high.
+
+For Lad knew he was still king!
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+AFTERWORD
+
+
+The stories of Lad, in various magazines, found unexpectedly kind
+welcome. Letters came to me from soldiers and sailors in Europe, from
+hosts of children; from men and women, everywhere.
+
+Few of the letter-writers bothered to praise the stories, themselves.
+But all of them praised Lad, which pleased me far better. And
+more than a hundred of them wanted to know if he were a real dog:
+and if the tales of his exploits were true.
+
+Perhaps those of you who have followed Lad's adventures, through these
+pages, may also be a little interested to know more about him.
+
+Yes, Lad was a "real" dog--the greatest dog by far, I have known or
+shall know. And the chief happenings in nearly all of my Lad stories
+are absolutely true. This accounts for such measure of success as the
+stories may have won.
+
+After his "Day of Battle," Lad lived for more than two years--still
+gallant of spirit, loyally mighty of heart, uncanny of wisdom--still
+the undisputed king of The Place's "Little People."
+
+Then, on a warm September morning in 1918, he stretched himself to
+sleep in the coolest and shadiest corner of the veranda. And, while he
+slept, his great heart very quietly stopped beating. He had no pain,
+no illness, none of the distressing features of extreme age. He had
+lived out a full span of sixteen years--years rich in life and
+happiness and love.
+
+Surely, there was nothing in such a death to warrant the silly grief
+that was ours, nor the heartsick gloom that overhung The Place! It
+was wholly illogical, not to say maudlin. I admit that without
+argument. The cleric-author of "The Mansion Yard" must have known the
+same miserable sense of loss, I think, when he wrote:
+
+  "Stretched on the hearthrug in a deep content,
+    Fond of the fire as I.
+  Oh, there was something with the old dog went
+    I had not thought could die!"
+
+We buried Lad in a sunlit nook that had been his favorite lounging
+place, close to the house he had guarded so long and so gallantly.
+With him we buried his honorary Red Cross and Blue Cross--awards
+for money raised in his name. Above his head we set a low granite
+block, with a carven line or two thereon.
+
+The Mistress wanted the block inscribed: "The Dearest Dog!" I
+suggested: "The Dog God Made." But we decided against both epitaphs.
+We did not care to risk making our dear old friend's memory ridiculous
+by words at which saner folk might one day sneer. So on the granite is
+engraved:
+
+            LAD
+
+  THOROUGHBRED IN BODY AND SOUL
+
+Some people are wise enough to know that a dog has no soul. These will
+find ample theme for mirth in our foolish inscription. But no one, who
+knew Lad, will laugh at it.
+
+  ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE.
+
+  "Sunnybank"
+    Pompton Lakes,
+      New Jersey.
+
+
+
+
+  [
+    Transcriber's Note:
+
+    The following is a list of changes made to the original.
+    The first line is the original line, the second the corrected one.
+
+    _Nineteenth Printing      March, 1922_
+    _Nineteenth Printing,   March, 1922_
+
+    _Twentieth Printing      August, 1922_
+    _Twentieth Printing,      August, 1922_
+
+    _Twenty-first Printing     Sept. 1922_
+    _Twenty-first Printing,    Sept., 1922_
+
+    You're--your're more of a man than I am, old
+    You're--you're more of a man than I am, old
+
+    the inner wooden blinds in search the catch.
+    the inner wooden blinds in search of the catch.
+
+    formally entered for the Novice class, at the Westminister
+    formally entered for the Novice class, at the Westminster
+
+    white sign, was inscribed "COLLIES" Here his
+    white sign, was inscribed "COLLIES." Here his
+
+    was apparently no part of the law. And Lad felt
+    was apparently no part of the Law. And Lad felt
+
+    Lad was viewing the procedings from the top of
+    Lad was viewing the proceedings from the top of
+
+    a bushy tail hung limpy between crooked hind legs;
+    a bushy tail hung limply between crooked hind legs;
+
+    Any body, with price to buy a dog, can be an 'owner,'
+    Anybody, with price to buy a dog, can be an 'owner,'
+
+    "'_Third_,' the Mistress read, her brows crinkling
+    "'_Third_,'" the Mistress read, her brows crinkling
+
+    And Schwartz was an eye-witeness to this--Schwartz,
+    And Schwartz was an eye-witness to this--Schwartz,
+
+    "A sight harder, responded Schwartz. "My
+    "A sight harder," responded Schwartz. "My
+
+    longily at Schwartz's throat.
+    longingly at Schwartz's throat.
+
+    and to accept it He reached into his pocket and
+    and to accept it. He reached into his pocket and
+
+    Now, this is no _Mowgili_ tale, but a true narrative.
+    Now, this is no _Mowgli_ tale, but a true narrative.
+
+    underlying, the primitive lust for mastery.
+    underling, the primitive lust for mastery.
+
+    he laid out his plain of campaign and put
+    he laid out his plan of campaign and put
+
+    action." In the battle's wage was an irregular but
+    action." In the battle's wake was an irregular but
+
+  ]
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Lad: A Dog, by Albert Payson Terhune
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