But the Harmons were late risers. And the sun had been up for some hours before any of the household were astir.

If Lad had been the professionally Faithful Hound, of storybooks, he would doubtless have waited on the mat until someone should come to let him in. But, after lying there until broad daylight, he was moved to explore this new section of the world. The more so, since house after house within range of his short vision showed signs of life and activity.

Several people passed and repassed along the private roadway in front of the Harmons' door; and nearly all of these paused to peer at Lad, in what seemed to the collie a most flattering show of interest.

At last, the dog got to his feet, stretched himself fore-and-aft, in true collie fashion; and trotted down the paved walk to the road. There for a moment, he stood hesitant. As he stood, he was surveying the scene;—not only with his eyes, but with those far stronger sense organs, his ears and his nostrils. His ears told him nothing of interest. His nose told him much. Indeed, before he had fairly reached the road, these nostrils had telegraphed to his brain an odor that not only was highly interesting, but totally new to him. Lad's experience with scents was far-reaching. But this smell lay totally outside all his knowledge or memory.

It was a rank and queer smell;—not strong enough, out there in the open, to register in a human-brain; but almost stingingly acute to the highly sensitized dog. It was an alluring scent; the sort of odor that roused all his curiosity and seemed to call for prompt investigation.

Nose to ground, Lad set off to trace the smell to its source. Strong as it was, it grew stronger and fresher at every step. Even a mongrel puppy could have followed it. Oblivious to all else, Lad broke into a canter; nose still close to earth; pleasurably excited and keenly inquisitive.

He ran along the private road for perhaps a hundred yards. Then, he wheeled in at another paved walk and ran up a low flight of veranda steps. The front door of a house stood invitingly open to the cool air of the morning. In through the doorway went Lad; unheeding the gobbling call of a maid-servant who was sweeping the far end of the veranda.

Lad did not know he was committing trespass. To him an open door had always meant permission to enter. And the enticingly rank scent was tenfold stronger indoors than out. Across a hallway he trotted, still sniffing; and up a flight of stairs leading to the second story of the house.

At the stairhead, a room door stood wide. And into this room led the odor. Lad went in. He was in a large and sunlit room; but in the most disorderly room he had ever set eyes on. The room needed airing, too. For all its four windows were closed, except one which was open for perhaps six inches from the top.

Lad circled the room, twice; from door to windows, and thence to center table and around the walls; pausing at one window sill and again at the threshold; picking his way daintily over heaps of litter on the floor. Yes, the room was full of the scent. But, whence the scent emanated, Lad could not, for the life of him, tell. The room gave him no clew. And, after a few minutes of futile investigation, he turned to depart.

At the stairhead, he came upon the same servant he had seen sweeping the veranda. She cried: "Shoo!" at him and brandished her broom. Lad, in offended dignity, stalked past her and out of the house.

His quest having proven vain, he betook himself to the Harmons', arriving there as the Mistress and the Master emerged upon the veranda in company with their hosts. In wild delight, Lad scampered up to the Mistress; his whole stately body wriggling in eager welcome, his tiny white forepaws patting at her feet, his muzzle thrusting itself into her cupped hand.

"Why, Lad!" she cried. "Laddie! We were so worried about you. They just phoned from the kennels that you had gotten away. I might have known you'd find your way to us. We—"

She got no further. Up the walk, from the road, came running an apoplectically red and puffing man of late middle age;—a man whose face bore traces of lather; and who was swathed in a purple bathrobe. Flapping slippers ill-covered his sockless feet.

The Master recognized the fast-advancing newcomer. He recognized him from many pictures in newspapers and magazines.

This was Rutherford Garretse, world-famed author and collector; the literary lion and chief celebrity of the summer colony at Daylight Park. But what eccentricity of genius could account for his costume and for this bellicose method of bearing down upon a neighbor's home, was more than the Master could guess.

Nor did the visitor's first words clear up the mystery. Halting at the foot of the steps, Rutherford Garretse gesticulated in dumb anguish, while he fought for breath and for coherent speech. Then, disregarding Harmon's wondering greeting, the celebrity burst into choking staccato speech.

"That dog!" he croaked. "That—that—DOG! The maid saw him go into the house. Saw him go up to my study. She was afraid to follow, at first. But in a few minutes she did. She saw him coming out of my study! COME!!! I demand it. All of you. COME!"

Without another word, he wheeled and made off down the road, pausing only to beckon imperiously. Marveling, the group on the veranda followed. Deaf to their questions, he led the way. Lad fell into line behind the perplexed Mistress.

Down the road to the next house, stalked Rutherford Garretse. At the doorway, he repeated his dramatic gesture and commanded:

"COME!"

Up the broad stairs he stamped. Behind him trailed the dumfounded procession; Laddie still pattering happily along with the Mistress. At the open door of a large room at the stairhead, the author stood aside and pointed in silent despair through the doorway.

"What's up?" queried Harmon, for perhaps the tenth time. "Is anything—?"

His question ended in a grunt. And, like the others, he stared aghast on the scene before him.

The room, very evidently, was a study. But much of its floor, just now, was heaped, ankle high, with hundreds of pages of torn and crumpled paper.

The desk-top and a Sheraton cabinet and table were bare of all contents. On the floor reposed countless shattered articles of glass and porcelain; jumbled together with blotters an pastepot and shears and ink-stand and other utensils. Ink had been poured in grotesque pattern on rugs and parquetry and window curtains.

In one corner lay a typewriter, its keys twisted and its carriage broken. Books—some of them in rare bindings,—lay gutted and ink-smeared, from one end of the place to the other.

Through the daze of general horror boomed the tremblingly majestic voice of Rutherford Garretse.

"I wanted you to see!" he declaimed. "I ordered everything left as it was. That mess of papers all over the floor is what remains of the first draft of my book. The book I have been at work on for six months! I—"

"And it was the dog, there!" sputtered the maid-servant; emotion riding over discipline. "I c'n swear the room was neat and all dusted. Not a blessed thing out of place; and all the paper where Mr. Garretse had stacked 'em in his portfolio, yonder. I dusted this study and then the dining room. And then I went out to sweep the veranda; like I always do, before breakfast. And maybe ten minutes later I see this brute trot out of Mr. Harmon's place, and along the road, and come, asnuffing up the steps and into the house. And when I followed him upstairs and scatted him out, I saw the room looking like it is, now; and I yells to Mr. Garretse, and he's shaving, and—"

"That will do, Esther!" snapped the author. "And, now, sir—"

"But, Mr. Garretse," put in the Mistress, "Lad never did such a thing as this, in all his life! He's been brought up in the house. Even as a puppy, he was—"

"The evidence shows otherwise," interrupted Garretse, with a visible struggle at self-control. "No human, unless he were a maniac, would have done such a wantonly destructive thing. No other animal has been here. The dog was seen entering and leaving this room. And my work of six months is not only destroyed by him, but many of the very best pieces in my glass-and-porcelain cabinet."

"But—"

"I consented to stay on at Daylight Park, only on the solemn assurance of the Governors that no animal should be allowed again within the Park precincts. I detest animals. Particularly dogs. And now I see my dislike is not mere prejudice. May I ask what the owners and—and the harborer—of the cur mean to do about this outrage? Notice, please, that I am speaking with studied moderation, in asking this vital question. I—"

"It is my fault,—or rather, it is a mistake,—that Lad is in the Park," spoke up the Master. "Mr. Harmon is wholly innocent in the matter. I can testify to that. If there is any fine or other penalty in connection with my dog's being here, I'm ready to settle for it. But if you expect me to believe that Laddie did all this weird damage to your manuscript and your collection and your room,—why, that's absurd! Utterly absurd! Lad, never in his life,—"

"The courts will think otherwise!" blazed Garretse, losing a fraction of his hard-held selfmastery. "And the case shall go through every court in the land, since you persist in this idiotic denial of a proven fact. I warn you, I shall—Look there!" he broke off, furiously, leveling a shakily vehement forefinger at Lad. "Watch him! He's prowling around, even now, in search of more things to injure. He—"

The author finished his sentence by catching up a heavy metal paperweight and drawing it back as if for a throw. His muscles flexed. The Mistress moved, as by accident, between the raging man and the dog.

The Master, for the moment, lacked presence of mind to do even that much for his canine chum's safety. He was too much taken up in glaring unbelievingly at Lad.

The sedate collie, after following the bevy of excited humans upstairs, had stood gravely, just inside the threshold; looking with keen interest from one to the other of the gesticulating and noisy group. Then, as a sharp whiff of that same baffling scent assailed his nose, he began a new tour of the room.

The odor was fresher than before. And Lad's curiosity was roused to the full. He sniffed to right and left, exploring the floor rubbish with inquiring muzzle, and circling the despoiled writing desk.

It was then that Garretse called attention to him. And it was then that Lad's nose suddenly pointed skyward. In another moment, he had bounded eagerly toward one of the windows,—the window that was slightly open from the top.

From that direction, the scent now came; and it was more potent than at any earlier time in his quest.

Even as the astonished eyes of the group followed Lad window-ward, those same eyes were attracted by a partial darkening of the open space at the window's top.

Into the room, through the narrow aperture wiggled a hairy form, moving with eel-like speed.

Thence, it leaped to the floor. For the fraction of a second, the intruder crouched there; peering about, to determine into what company his jump had landed him.

He was a gray monkey, small, infinitely aged and withered of aspect. His paws and forearms were black with half-dry ink. Here and there, all over his fuzzy gray body, ink-blobs were spattered. In one skinny paw he still clutched the splintered fragment of a Satsuma vase.

By the time the gaping humans could get a single good look at the monkey, Lad was at him. Here at last was the solution of that mysterious scent, so new to the collie.

Lad galloped toward the wizened and malodorous gray bunch; more intent on investigation than on attack. The monkey did not wait for him. With an incredibly agile leap, he was on the spattered window curtains and swarming up to the rod at the top. There he squatted, well out of reach; grimacing horribly and chattering in simian wrath.

"It's—it's a devil!" stammered Rutherford Garretse; his nearsighted eyes squinting as he sought to take in the motley details of the creature's appearance. "I—"

"It's Mrs. McMurdle's pest of a monkey, sirs" blithered the maid. "Asking your pardon. The one she made such a fuss about sending away, last month, when all beastees was barred from the Park. It must 'a' strayed back from where she sent it to, the crafty little nuisance! It's—"

"Incidentally," said the Master, "it is the creature that wrecked your room. See the ink on it. And that bit of porcelain it's brandishing at us looks like a match for some of these smashed bits on the floor. It got in here, I suppose, through that window, earlier,—and—"

"No," corrected the Mistress, wiser at deduction. "Through the doorway, downstairs. From somewhere outside. Probably while the maid was dusting the dining-room. It came in here and began destroying things; as monkeys love to. And Laddie struck its trail and followed it up here. It heard Lad coming and it got out through the window. Then, just now, something outside scared it; and it climbed back in again. I wonder if—"

As she talked, the Mistress had moved toward the nearest window.

"See?" she finished, in triumph, as she pointed out and down.

On the patch of back lawn, below, stood a very much flustered old lady, her worried gaze upraised to the study. In one hand she carried a leash, in the other a half-peeled banana.

"It's Mrs. McMurdle!" exclaimed Harmon. "The maid was right. She must have disobeyed the ordinance and had the miserable monkey hidden in her house all the time. It must have gotten out, this morning; and she hunted around till she saw it perched on the top of the window cornice. I suppose it dived back in here, at sight of her. She—"

"Come on, Laddie!" whispered the Mistress, under cover of a new outbreak of multiple talk. "YOU'RE acquitted, anyhow. And the rest of the scene is really no business of ours. The sooner we get you to the boarding kennels again, the less chance there is of trouble. And Master and I will come to see you there, every single day, till we go back home."

A week later, the car turned in again at the gates of the Place. This time, Lad rode in state atop the flat trunk on the rear seat. As the car halted at the veranda, he sprang to earth without waiting for the tonneau door to be opened.

For, dashing toward him from the direction of the lake, Lady hove in sight. Behind her, and trotting more leisurely, came Wolf. At sight and scent of her returned mate, Lady fairly squealed with delight. She whirled up to Lad, frantically licking his face and spinning about him with little staccato yelps of joy.

Lad was deliriously happy. Not only was he at home again; but Lady was welcoming him with an effusion that she had not shown him for many a sorrowful month. He could not understand it. Nor did he try to. He was content to accept the miracle; and to rejoice in it with all his great honest heart.

Knowing nothing of feminine psychology, he could not realize that a week of Puppy Wolf's sole and undiluted companionship had bored Lady horribly and had begun to get on her nerves;—nor that she had learned to miss and yearn for the big, wise, ever-gentle mate whom she had so long neglected.

It was enough for Lad to know that he was no longer a neglected outsider, in the Place's canine family; but that his worshiped mate was wild with joy to see him again.

"Look!" said the Master. "The old chap has forgiven her for every bit of her rottenness to him. He's insanely happy, just because she chooses to make much of him, once more."

"Yes," assented the Mistress, cryptically "Sometimes dogs are pitifully—human!"



CHAPTER VI. The Tracker

The child's parents were going to Europe for three months, that winter. The child himself was getting over a nervous ailment. The doctors had advised he be kept out of school for a term; and be sent to the country.

His mother was afraid the constant travel from place to place, in Europe, might be too much for him. So she asked leave of the Mistress and the Master,—one of whom was her distant relative,—for the convalescent to stay at the Place during his parents' absence.

That was how it all started.

The youngster was eleven years old; lank and gangling, and blest with a fretful voice and with far less discipline and manners than a three-month collie pup. His name was Cyril. Briefly, he was a pest,—an unspeakable pest.

For the first day or two at the Place, the newness of his surroundings kept Cyril more or less in bounds. Then, as homesickness and novelty alike wore off, his adventurous soul expanded.

He was very much at home; far more so than were his hosts, and infinitely more pleased than they with the situation in general. He had an infinite genius for getting into trouble. Not in the delightfully normal fashion of the average growing boy; but in furtively crafty ways that did not belong to healthy childhood.

Day by day, Cyril impressed his odd personality more and more on everything around him. The atmosphere of sweet peace which had brooded, like a blessing, over the whole Place, was dispersed.

The cook,—a marvel of culinary skill and of long service, gave tearful warning, and departed. This when she found the insides of all her cooking utensils neatly soaped; and the sheaf of home-letters in her work-box replaced by cigar-coupons.

One of the workmen threw over his job with noisy blasphemy; when his room above the stables was invaded by stealth and a comic-paper picture of a goat's head substituted for his dead mother's photograph in the well-polished little bronze frame on his bureau.

And so on, all along the line.

The worst and most continuous sufferer from Cyril's loathed presence on the Place was the massive collie, Lad.

The child learned, on the first day of his visit, that it would be well-nigh as safe to play with a handful of dynamite as with Lad's gold-and-white mate, Lady. Lady did not care for liberties from anyone. And she took no pains to mask her snappish first-sight aversion to the lanky Cyril. Her fiery little son, Wolf, was scarce less formidable than she, when it came to being teased by an outsider. But gallant old Lad was safe game.

He was safe game for Cyril, because Lad's mighty heart and soul were miles above the possibility of resenting anything from so pitifully weak and defenseless a creature as this child. He seemed to realize, at a glance, that Cyril was an invalid and helpless and at a physical disadvantage. And, as ever toward the feeble, his big nature went out in friendly protection to this gangling wisp of impishness.

Which was all the good it did him.

In fact, it laid the huge collie open to an endless succession of torment. For the dog's size and patience seemed to awaken every atom of bullying cruelty in the small visitor's nature.

Cyril, from the hour of his arrival, found acute bliss in making Lad's life a horror. His initial step was to respond effusively to the collie's welcoming advances; so long as the Mistress and the Master chanced to be in the room. As they passed out, the Mistress chanced to look back.

She saw Cyril pull a bit of cake from his pocket and, with his left hand, proffer it to Lad. The tawny dog stepped courteously forward to accept the gift. As his teeth were about to close daintily on the cake, Cyril whipped it back out of reach; and with his other hand rapped Lad smartly across the nose.

Had any grown man ventured a humiliating and painful trick of that sort on Lad, the collie would have been at the tormentor's throat, on the instant. But it was not in the great dog's nature to attack a child. Shrinking back, in amaze, his abnormally sensitive feelings jarred, the collie retreated majestically to his beloved "cave" under the music-room piano.

To the Mistress's remonstrance, Cyril denied most earnestly that he had done the thing. Nor was his vehemently tearful denial shaken by her assertion that she had seen it all.

Lad soon forgave the affront. And he forgave a dozen other and worse mal-treatments which followed. But, at last, the dog took to shunning the neighborhood of the pest. That availed him nothing; except to make Cyril seek him out in whatsoever refuge the dog had chosen.

Lad, trotting hungrily to his dinner dish, would find his food thick-strewn with cayenne pepper or else soaked in reeking gasoline.

Lad, seeking peace and solitude in his piano cave, would discover his rug, there, cleverly scattered with carpet tacks, points upward.

Lad, starting up from a snooze at the Mistress's call, would be deftly tripped as he started to bound down the veranda steps, and would risk bruises and fractures by an ugly fall to the driveway below.

Wherever Lad went, whatever Lad did, there was a cruel trick awaiting him. And, in time, the dog's dark eyes took on an expression of puzzled unhappiness that went straight to the hearts of the two humans who loved him.

All his life, Lad had been a privileged character on the Place. Never had he known nor needed whip or chain. Never had he,—or any of the Place's other dogs,—been wantonly teased by any human. He had known, and had given, only love and square treatment and stanch friendliness. He had ruled as benevolent monarch of the Place's Little People; had given loyal service to his two deities, the Mistress and the Master; and had stood courteously aloof from the rest of mankind. And he had been very, very happy.

Now, in a breath, all this was changed. Ever at his heels, ever waiting to find some new way to pester him, was a human too small and too weak to attack;—a human who was forever setting the collie's high-strung nerves on edge or else actively hurting him. Lad could not understand it. And as the child gained in health and strength, Lad's lot grew increasingly miserable.

The Mistress and the Master were keenly aware of conditions. And they did their best,—a useless best,—to mitigate them for the dog. They labored over Cyril, to make him leave Lad alone. They pointed out to him the mean cowardice of his course of torture. They even threatened to send him to nearer relatives until his parents' return. All in vain. Faced with the most undeniable proofs, the child invariably would lie. He denied that he had ever ill-used Lad in any way; and would weep, in righteous indignation, at the charges. What was to be done?

"I thought it would brighten up the house so, to have a child in it again!" sighed the Mistress as she and her husband discussed the matter, uselessly, for the fiftieth time, after one of these scenes. "I looked forward so much to his coming here! But he's—oh, he isn't like any child I ever heard of before!"

"If I could devote five busy minutes a day to him," grunted the Master, "with an axe-handle or perhaps a bale-stick—"

"You wouldn't do it!" denied his wife. "You wouldn't harm him; any more than Lad does. That's the trouble. If Cyril belonged to us, we could punish him. Not with a—a balestick, of course. But he needs a good wholesome spanking, more than anyone else I can think of. That or some other kind of punishment that would make an impression on him. But what can we do? He isn't ours—"

"Thank God!" interpolated the Master, piously.

"And we can't punish other people's child," she finished. "I don't know what we CAN do. I wouldn't mind half so much about the other sneaky things he does; if it wasn't for the way he treats Laddie. I—"

"Suppose we send Lad to the boarding kennels, at Ridgewood, till the brat is gone?" suggested the Master. "I hate to do it. And the good old chap will be blue with homesickness there. But at least he'll get kind treatment. When he comes over to me and looks up into my eyes in that terribly appealing way, after Cyril has done some rotten thing to him,—well, I feel like a cur, not to be able to justify his faith that I can make things all right for him. Yes, I think I'll send him to the boarding kennels. And, if it weren't for leaving you alone to face things here, I'd be tempted to hire a stall at the kennels for myself, till the pest is gone."

The next day, came a ray of light in the bothered gloom. And the question of the boarding kennels was dropped. The Mistress received a letter from Cyril's mother. The European trip had been cut short, for business reasons; and the two travelers expected to land in New York on the following Friday.

"Who dares say Friday is an unlucky day?" chortled the Master in glee, as his wife reached this stage of the letter.

"And," the Mistress read on, "we will come out to the Place, on the noon train; and take darling Cyril away with us. I wish we could stay longer with you; but Henry must be in Chicago on Saturday night. So we must catch a late afternoon train back to town, and take the night train West. Now, I—"

"Most letters are a bore," interpolated the Master. "Or else they're a bother. But this one is a pure rapture. Read it more slowly, won't, you, dear? I want to wallow in every blessed word of hope it contains. Go ahead. I'm sorry I interrupted. Read on. You'll never have such another enthusiastic audience."

"And now," the Mistress continued her reading, "I am going to ask both of you not to say a single word to precious Cyril about our coming home so soon. We want to surprise him. Oh, to think what his lovely face will be like, when he sees us walking in!"

"And to think what MY lovely face will be like, when I see him walking out!" exulted the Master. "Laddie, come over here. We've got the gorgeousest news ever! Come over and be glad!"

Lad, at the summons, came trotting out of his cave, and across the room. Like every good dog who has been much talked to, he was as adept as any dead-beat in reading the varying shades of the human voice. The voices and faces alike of his two adored deities told him something wonderful had happened. And, as ever, he rejoiced in their gladness. Lifting his magnificent head, he broke into a salvo of trumpeting barks; the oddly triumphant form of racket he reserved for great moments.

"What's Laddie doing?" asked Cyril, from the threshold. "He sounds as if he was going mad or something."

"He's happy," answered the Mistress.

"Why's he happy?" queried the child.

"Because his Master and I are happy," patiently returned the Mistress.

"Why are YOU happy?" insisted Cyril.

"Because today is Thursday," put in the Master. "And that means tomorrow will be Friday."

"And on Friday," added the Mistress, "there's going to be a beautiful surprise for you, Cyril. We can't tell you what it is, but—"

"Why can't you tell me?" urged the child. "Aw, go ahead and tell me! I think you might."

The Master had gone over to the nearest window; and was staring out into the gray-black dusk. Mid-winter gripped the dead world; and the twilight air was deathly chill. The tall naked treetops stood gaunt and wraithlike against a leaden sky.

To the north, the darkness was deepest. Evil little puffs of gale stirred the powdery snow into myriads of tiny dancing white devils. It had been a fearful winter, thus far; colder than for a score of years; so cold that many a wild woodland creature, which usually kept far back in the mountains, had ventured down nearer to civilization for forage and warmth.

Deer tracks a-plenty had been seen, close up to the gates of the Place. And, two days ago, in the forest, half a mile away, the Master had come upon the half-human footprints of a young bear. Starvation stalked abroad, yonder in the white hills. And need for provender had begun to wax stronger among the folk of the wilderness than their inborn dread of humans.

"There's a big snowstorm coming up," ruminated the Master, as he scanned the grim weather-signs. "A blizzard, perhaps. I—I hope it won't delay any incoming steamers. I hope at least one of them will dock on schedule. It—"

He turned back from his musings, aware for the first time that a right sprightly dialogue was going on. Cyril was demanding for the eighth time:

"WHY won't you tell me? Aw, I think you might! What's going to happen that's so nice, Friday?"

"Wait till Friday and see," laughed the Mistress.

"Shucks!" he snorted. "You might tell me, now. I don't want to wait and get s'prised. I want to know, NOW. Tell me!"

Under her tolerant smile, the youngster's voice scaled to an impatient whine. He was beginning to grow red.

"Let it go at that!" ordained the Master. "Don't spoil your own fun, by trying to find out, beforehand. Be a good sportsman."

"Fun!" snarled Cyril. "What's the fun of secrets? I want to know—"

"It's snowing," observed the Mistress, as a handful of flakes began to drift past the windows, tossed along on a puff of wind.

"I want to KNOW!" half-wept the child; angry at the change of subject, and noting that the Mistress was moving toward the next room, with Lad at her heels. "Come back and tell me!"

He stamped after her to bar her way. Lad was between the irate Cyril and the Mistress. In babyish rage at the dog's placid presence in his path, he drew back one ungainly foot and kicked the astonished collie in the ribs.

At the outrage, Lad spun about, a growl in his throat. But he forbore to bite or even to show his teeth. The growl had been of indignant protest at such unheard-of treatment; not a menace. Then the dog stalked haughtily to his cave, and lay down there.

But the human witnesses to the scene were less forbearing;—being only humans. The Mistress cried out, in sharp protest at the little brute's action. And the Master leaned forward, swinging Cyril clear of the ground. Holding the child firmly, but with no roughness, the Master steadied his own voice as best he could; and said:—

"This time you've not even bothered to wait till our backs were turned. So don't waste breath by crying and saying you didn't do it. You're not my child; so I have no right to punish you. And I'm not going to. But I want you to know you've just kicked something that's worth fifty of you."

"You let me down!" Cyril snarled.

"Lad is too white and clean and square to hurt anything that can't hit back," continued the Master. "And you are not. That's the difference between you. One of the several million differences,—all of them in Lad's favor. When a child begins life by being cruel to dumb animals, it's a pretty bad sign for the way he's due to treat his fellow-humans in later years,—if ever any of them are at his mercy. For your own sake, learn to behave at least as decently as a dog. If—"

"You let me down, you big bully!" squalled Cyril, bellowing with impotent fury. "You let me down! I—"

"Certainly," assented the Master, lowering him to the floor. "I didn't hurt you. I only held you so you couldn't run out of the room, before I'd finished speaking; as you did, the time I caught you putting red pepper on Lad's food. He—"

"You wouldn't dare touch me, if my folks were here, you big bully!" screeched the child, in a veritable mania of rage; jumping up and down and actually foaming at the mouth. "But I'll tell 'em on you! See if I don't! I'll tell 'em how you slung me around and said I was worsen a dirty dog like Lad. And Daddy'll lick you for it. See if he don't! He—"

The Master could not choke back a laugh; though the poor Mistress looked horribly distressed at the maniac outburst, and strove soothingly to check it. She, like the Master, remembered now that Cyril's doting mother had spoken of the child's occasional fits of red wrath. But this was the first glimpse either of them had had of these. Hitherto, craft had served Cyril's turn better than fury.

At sound of the Master's unintentional laugh the unfortunate child went quite beside himself in his transport of rage.

"I won't stay in your nasty old house!" he shrieked. "I'm going to the very first house I can find. And I'm going to tell 'em how you hammered a little feller that hasn't any folks here to stick up for him. And I'll get 'em to take me in and send a tel'gram to Daddy and Mother to come save me. I—"

To the astonishment of both his hearers, Cyril broke off chokingly in his yelled tirade; caught up a bibelot from the table, hurled it with all his puny force at Lad, the innocent cause of the fracas; and then rushed from the room and from the house.

The Mistress stared after him, dumfounded; his howls and the jarring slam of the house door echoing direfully in her ears. It was the Master who ended the instant's hush of amaze.

"Whenever I've heard a grown man say he wished he was a boy again," he mused, "I always set him down for a liar. But, for once in my life, I honestly wish I was a boy, once more. A boy one day younger and one inch shorter and one pound lighter than Cyril. I'd follow him out of doors, yonder, and give him the thrashing of his sweet young life. I'd—"

"Oh, do call him back!" begged the Mistress. "He'll catch his death of cold, and—"

"Why will he?" challenged the Master, without stirring. "For all his noble rage, I noticed he took thought to grab up his cap and his overcoat from the hall, as he wafted himself away. And he still had his arctics on, from this afternoon. He won't—"

"But suppose he should really go over to one of the neighbors," urged the Mistress, "and tell such an awful story as he threatened to? Or suppose—"

"Not a chance!" the Master reassured her. "Now that the summer people are away, there isn't an occupied house within half a mile of here. And he's not going to trudge a half-mile through the snow, in this bitter cold, for the joy of telling lies. No, he's down at the stables or else he's sneaked in through the kitchen; the way he did that other time when he made a grandstand exit after I'd ventured to lecture him on his general rottenness. Remember how worried about him you were, that time; till we found him sitting in the kitchen and pestering the maids? He—"

"But that time, he was only sulky," said the Mistress. "Not insanely angry, as he is now. I do hope—"

"Stop worrying!" adjured the Master. "He's all right."

Which proved, for perhaps the trillionth time in history, that a woman's intuitions are better worth following than a man's saner logic. For Cyril was not all right. And, at every passing minute he was less and less all right; until presently he was all wrong.

For the best part of an hour, in pursuance of her husband's counsel, the Mistress sat and waited for the prodigal's return. Then, surreptitiously, she made a round of the house; sent a man to ransack the stables, telephoned to the gate lodge, and finally came into the Master's study, big-eyed and pale.

"He isn't anywhere around," she reported, frightened. "It's dinner time. He's been gone in hour. Nobody's seen him. He isn't on the Place. Oh, I wonder if—"

"H'm!" grumbled her husband. "He's engineering an endurance contest, eh? Well, if he can stand it, we can."

But at sight of the deepening trouble in his wife's face, he got up from his desk. Going out into the hall, he summoned Lad.

"We might shout our heads off," he said, "and he'd never answer; if he's really trying to scare us. That's part of his lovable nature. There's just one way to track him, in double time. LAD!"

The Master had been drawing on his mackinaw and hipboots as he spoke. Now he opened the front door.

"Laddie!" he said, very slowly and incisively to the expectantly eager collie. "Cyril! Find CYRIL! FIND him!"

To the super-wise collie, there was nothing confusing in the command. Like many another good dog, he knew the humans of the household by their names; as well as did any fellow-human. And he knew from long experience the meaning of the word, "Find!"

Countless times that word had been used in games and in earnest. Its significance, now, was perfectly plain to him. The Master wanted him to hunt for the obnoxious child who so loved to annoy and hurt him.

Lad would rather have found anyone else, at the Master's behest. But it did not occur to the trained collie to disobey. With a visible diminishing of his first eager excitement, but with submissive haste, the big dog stepped out on to the veranda and began to cast about in the drifts at the porch edge.

Immediately, he struck Cyril's shuffling trail. And, immediately, he trotted off along the course.

The task was less simple than ordinarily. For, the snow was coming down in hard-driven sheets; blotting out scent almost as effectively as sight. But not for naught had a thousand generations of Lad's thoroughbred ancestors traced lost sheep through snowstorms on the Scottish moors. To their grand descendant they had transmitted their weird trailing power, to the full. And the scent of Cyril, though faint and fainter, and smothered under swirling snow, was not too dim for Lad's sensitive nostrils to catch and hold it.

The Master lumbered along, through the rising drifts, as fast as he could. But the way was rough and the night was as black dark as it was cold. In a few rods, the dog had far outdistanced him. And, knowing how hard must be the trail to follow by sense of smell, he forbore to call back the questing collie, lest Lad lose the clew altogether. He knew the dog was certain to bark the tidings when he should come up with the fugitive.

The Master by this time began to share his wife's worry. For the trail Lad was following led out of the grounds and across the highway, toward the forest.

The newborn snowstorm was developing into a very promising little blizzard. And the icy lash of the wind proved the fallacy of the old theory, "too cold to snow." Even by daylight it would have been no light task to steer a true course through the whirling and blinding storm. In the darkness, the man found himself stumbling along with drunkenly zigzag steps; his buffeted ears strained, through the noise of the wind for sound of Lad's bark.

But no such sound came to him. And, he realized that snow and adverse winds can sometimes muffle even the penetrating bark of a collie. The man grew frightened. Halting, he shouted with all the power of his lungs. No whimper from Cyril answered the hail. Nor, at his master's summons, did Lad come bounding back through the drifts. Again and again, the Master called.

For the first time in his obedient life, Lad did not respond to the call. And the Master knew his own voice could not carry, for a single furlong, against wind and snowfall.

"I'll go on for another half-hour," he told himself, as he sought to discern the dog's all-but obliterated footsteps through the deepening snow. "And then I'll go back and raise a search party."

He came to a bewildered stop. Fainter and more indistinguishable had Lad's floundering tracks become. Now,—by dint of distance and snow,—they ceased to be visible in the welter of drifted whiteness under the glare of the Master's flashlight.

"This means a search-party," decided the man.

And he turned homeward, to telephone for a posse of neighbors.

Lad, being only a dog, had no such way of sharing his burden. He had been told to find the child. And his simple code of life and of action left him no outlet from doing his duty; be that duty irksome or easy. So he kept on. Far ahead of the Master, his keen ears had not caught the sound of the shouts. The gale and the snow muffled them and drove them back into the shouter's throat. Cyril, naturally, had not had the remotest intent of laboring through the bitter cold and the snow to the house of any neighbor; there to tell his woeful tale of oppression. The semblance of martyrdom, without its bothersome actuality, was quite enough for his purpose. Once before, at home, when his father had administered a mild and much-needed spanking, Cyril had made a like threat; and had then gone to hide in a chum's home, for half a day; returning to find his parents in agonies of remorse and fear, and ready to load him with peace-offerings. The child saw no reason why the same tactics should not serve every bit as triumphantly, in the present case.

He knew the maids were in the kitchen and at least one man was in the stables. He did not want his whereabouts to be discovered before he should have been able to raise a healthy and dividend-bringing crop of remorse in the hearts of the Mistress and the Master, so he resolved to go farther afield.

In the back of the meadow, across the road, and on the hither side of the forest, was a disused cattle-barrack, with two stalls under its roof-pile of hay. The barrack was one of Cyril's favorite playhouses. It was dry and tight. Through his thick clothing he was not likely to be very cold, there, for an hour or two. He could snuggle down in the warm hay and play Indians, with considerable comfort; until such time as the fright and penitence of his hosts should have come to a climax and make his return an ovation.

Meanwhile, it would be fun to picture their uneasiness and fear for his safety; and to visualize their journeyings through the snow to the houses of various neighbors, in search of the lost child.

Buoyed up by such happy thoughts as these, Cyril struck out at a lively pace for the highroad and into the field beyond. The barrack, he knew, lay diagonally across the wide meadow, and near the adjoining woods. Five minutes of tramping through the snow ought to bring him to it. And he set off, diagonally.

But, before he had gone a hundred yards, he lost his first zest in the adventure. The darkness had thickened; and the vagrant wind-gusts had tightened into a steady gale; a gale which carried before it a blinding wrack of stingingly hard-driven snow.

The gray of the dying dusk was blotted out. The wind smote and battered the spindling child. Mechanically, he kept on for five or six minutes, making scant and irregular progress. Then, his spirit wavered. Splendid as it would be to scare these hateful people, there was nothing splendid in the weather that numbed him with cold and took away his breath and half-blinded him with snow.

What was the fun of making others suffer; if he himself were suffering tenfold more? And, on reaching the barrack, he would have all that freezing and blast-hammering trip back again. Aw, what was the use?

And Cyril came to a halt. He had definitely abandoned his high enterprise. Turning around, he began to retrace his stumbling steps. But, at best, in a large field, in a blizzard and in pitch darkness, and with no visible landmarks, it is not easy to double back on one's route, with any degree of accuracy. In Cyril's case, the thing was wholly impossible.

Blindly, he had been traveling in an erratic half-circle. Another minute of walking would have brought him to the highroad, not far from the Place's gateway. And, as he changed his course, to seek the road, he moved at an obtuse angle to his former line of march.

Thus, another period of exhausting progress brought him up with a bump against a solid barrier. His chilled face came into rough contact with the top rail of a line fence.

So relieved was the startled child by this encounter that he forgot to whine at the abrasion wrought upon his cheek by the rail. He had begun to feel the first gnawings of panic. Now, at once, he was calm again. For he knew where he was. This was the line fence between the Place's upper section and the land of the next neighbor.

All he need do was to walk along in the shelter of it, touching the rails now and then to make certain of not straying, until he should come out on the road, at the gate lodge. It was absurdly easy; compared to what he had been undergoing. Besides, the lee of the fence afforded a certain shelter from wind and snow. The child realized he had been turned about in the dark; and had been going in the wrong direction. But now, at last, his course seemed plain to him.

So he set off briskly, close to the fence;—and directly away from the nearby road.

For another half-hour he continued his inexplicably long tramp; always buoyed up by the hope of coming to the road in a few more steps; and doggedly sure of his bearings. Then, turning out from the fence, in order to skirt a wide hazel thicket, he tripped over an outcrop of rock, and tumbled into a drift. Getting to his feet, he sought to regain the fence; but the fall had shaken his senses and he floundered off in the opposite direction. After a rod or two of such futile plunging, a stumbling step took him clean off the edge of the world, and into the air.

All this, for the merest instant. Then, he landed with a jounce in a heap of brush and dead leaves. Squatting there, breathless, he stretched out his mittened hand, along the ground. At the end of less than another yard of this exploring, his fingers came again to the edge of the world and were thrust out over nothingness.

With hideous suddenness, Cyril understood where he was; and what had happened to him and why. He knew he had followed the fence for a full mile, AWAY from the road; through the nearer woods, and gradually upward until he had come the line of hazels on the lip of the ninety-foot ravine which dipped down into a swamp-stretch known as "Pancake Hollow."

That was what he had done. In trying to skirt the hazels, he had stepped over the cliff-edge, and had dropped five feet or more to a rather narrow ledge that juts out over the ravine.

Well did he remember this ledge. More than once, on walks with the Mistress and the Master, he had paused to look down on it and to think fun it would be to imprison someone there and to stand above, guying the victim. It had been a sweet thought. And now, he, himself, was imprisoned there.

But for luck, he might have fallen the whole ninety feet; for the ledge did not extend far along the face of the cliff. At almost any other spot his tumble might have meant—

Cyril shuddered a little; and pursued the grisly theme no further. He was safe enough, till help should come. And, here, the blast of the wind did not reach him. Also, by cuddling low in the litter of leaves and fallen brush, he could ward off a little of the icy cold.

He crouched there; shaking and worn out. He was only eleven. His fragile body had undergone a fearful hour of toil and hardship. As he was drawing in his breath for a cry to any chance searchers, the boy was aware of a swift pattering, above his head. He looked up. The sky was shade or two less densely black than the ravine edge. As Cyril gazed in terror, a shaggy dark shape outlined itself against the sky-line, just above him.

Having followed the eccentric footsteps of the wanderer, with great and greater difficulty, to the fence-lee where the tracing was much easier, Lad came to the lip of the ravine a bare five minutes after the child's drop to the ledge.

There, for an instant, the great dog stood; ears cocked, head inquiringly on one side; looking down upon the ledge. Cyril shrank to a quivering little heap of abject terror, at sight of the indistinct animal shape looming mountain-high above.

This for the briefest moment. Then back went Lad's head in a pealing bark that seemed to fill the world and to reecho from a myriad directions at once. Again and again, Lad gave clamorous voice to his discovery of the lost child.

On a clear or windless night, his racket must have penetrated to the dullest ears at the Place, and far beyond. For the bark of a dog has more carrying power than has any other sound of double its volume. But, in the face of a sixty-mile gale laden with tons of flying snow, the report of a cannon could scarce have carried over the stretch of windswept ground between the ravine and the Place.

Lad seemed to understand this. For, after a dozen thunderous barks, he fell silent; and stood again, head on one side, in thought.

At first sound of the barking, Cyril had recognized the dog. And his terror had vanished. In its place surged a peevish irritation against the beast that had so frightened him. He groped for a rock-fragment to hurl up at the rackety collie.

Then, the child paused in his fumbling. The dog had scant reason to love him or to seek his society. Of late, Lad had kept out of his way as much as possible. Thus it was not likely the collie had come here of his own accord, on such a night; for the mere joy of being with his tormentor.

His presence must mean that the Master was close behind; and that the whole Place was in a ferment of anxiety about the wanderer. By stoning Lad away and checking the barks, Cyril might well prevent the searchers from finding him. Too weak and too numb with cold to climb up the five-foot cliff-face to the level ground above, he did not want to miss any chance for rescue.

Hence, as Lad ceased to bark, the child set up a yell, with all his slight lung-power, to attract the seekers' notice. He ordered Lad to "Speak!" and shook his fist angrily at the dog, when no answering bark followed.

Despairing of making anyone hear his trumpeting announcement that he had found the child, Lad presently made up his mind as to the only course that remained. Wheeling about, head down, he faced the storm again; and set off at what speed he could compass, toward home, to lead the Master to the spot where Cyril was trapped. This seemed the only expedient left. It was what he had done, long ago, when Lady had caught her foot in a fox-trap, back in the woods.

As the dog vanished from against the gray-black sky-line, Cyril set up a howl of wrathful command to him to come back. Anything was better than to be in this dreary spot alone. Besides, with Lad gone, how could Lad's Master find the way to the ledge?

Twice the child called after the retreating collie. And, in another few steps, Lad had halted and begun to retrace his way toward the ledge.

He did not return because of Cyril's call. He had learned, by ugly experience, to disregard the child's orders. They were wont to mean much unpleasantness for him. Nevertheless, Lad halted. Not in obedience to the summons; but because of a sound and a scent that smote him as he started to gallop away. An eddy of the wind had borne both to the dog's acute senses.

Stiffening, his curved eyeteeth baring themselves, his hackles bristling, Lad galloped back to the ravine-lip; and stood there sniffing the icy air and growling deep in his throat. Looking down to the ledge he saw Cyril was no longer its sole occupant. Crouched at the opening of a crevice, not ten feet from the unseeing child, was something bulky and sinister;—a mere menacing blur against the darker rock.

Crawling home to its lair, supper-less and frantic with hunger, after a day of fruitless hunting through the dead forest world, a giant wildcat had been stirred from its first fitful slumber in the ledge's crevice by the impact of the child upon the heap of leaves. The human scent had startled the creature and it had slunk farther back into the crevice. The more so when the bark and inimical odor of a big dog were added to the shattering of the ravine's solitude.

Then the dog had gone away. Curiosity,—the besetting trait of the cat tribe,—had mastered the crevice's dweller. The wildcat had wriggled noiselessly forward a little way, to learn what manner of enemy had invaded its lair. And, peering out, it had beheld a spindling child; a human atom, without strength or weapon.

Fear changed to fury in the bob-cat's feline heart. Here was no opponent; but a mere item of prey. And, with fury, stirred long-unsatisfied hunger; the famine hunger of mid-winter which makes the folk of the wilderness risk capture or death by raiding guarded hencoops.

Out from the crevice stole the wildcat. Its ears were flattened close to its evil head. Its yellow eyes were mere slits of fire. Its claws unsheathed themselves from the furry pads,—long, hooked claws, capable of disemboweling a grown deer at one sabre-stroke of the muscular hindlegs. Into the rubble and litter of the ledge the claws sank, and receded, in rhythmic motion.

The compact yellow body tightened into a ball. The back quivered. The feet braced themselves. The cat was gauging its distance and making ready for a murder-spring. Cyril, his head turned the other way, was still peering up along the cliff-edge for sight of Lad.

This was what Lad's scent and hearing,—and perhaps something else,—had warned him of, in that instant of the wind's eddying shift. And this was the scene he looked down upon, now, from the ravine-lip, five feet above.

The collie brain,—though never the collie heart,—is wont to flash back, in moments of mortal stress, to the ancestral wolf. Never in his own life had Sunnybank Lad set eyes on a wildcat. But, in the primal forests, wolf and bob-cat had perforce met and clashed, a thousand times. There they had begun and had waged the eternal cat-and-dog feud, of the ages.

Ancestry now told Lad that there is perhaps no more murderously dangerous foe than an angry wildcat. Ancestry also told him a wolf's one chance of certain victory in such a contest. Ancestry's aid was not required, to tell him the mortal peril awaiting this human child who had so grievously and causelessly tormented him. But the great loyal heart, in this stark moment, took no thought of personal grudges. There was but one thing to do,—one perilous, desperate chance to take; if the child were to be saved.

The wildcat sprang.

Such a leap could readily have carried it across double the space which lay between it and Cyril. But not one-third of that space was covered in the lightning pounce.

From the upper air,—apparently from nowhere,—a huge shaggy body launched itself straight downward. As unerringly as the swoop of an eagle, the down-whizzing bulk flew. It smote the leaping wildcat, in mid-flight.

A set of mighty jaws,—jaws that could crack a beef-bone as a man cracks a filbert,—clove deep and unerringly into the cat's back, just behind the shoulders. And those jaws flung all their strength into the ravening grip.

A squall,—hideous in its unearthly clangor,—split the night silences. The maddened cat whirled about, spitting and yowling; and set its foaming teeth in the dog's fur-armored shoulder. But before the terrible curved claws could be called into action, Lad's rending jaws had done their work upon the spine.

To the verge of the narrow ledge the two combatants had rolled in their unloving embrace. Its last lurch of agony carped the stricken wildcat over the edge and out the ninety-foot drop into the ravine. Lad was all-but carried along with his adversary. He clawed wildly with his toes for a purchase on the smooth cliff wall; over which his hindquarters had slipped. For a second he hung, swaying, above the abyss.

Cyril, scared into semi-insanity by sight of the sudden brief battle, had caught up a stick from the rubbish at his feet. With this, not at all knowing what he did, he smote the struggling Lad with every atom of his feeble force, over the head.

Luckily for the gallant dog, the stick was rotten. It broke, in the blow; but not before its impact had well-nigh destroyed Lad's precarious balance.

One clawing hindfoot found toe-room in a flaw of rock. A tremendous heave of all his strained muscles; and Lad was scrambling to safety on the ledge.

Cyril's last atom of vigor and resistance had gone into that panic blow at the dog. Now, the child had flung himself helplessly down, against the wall of the ledge; and was weeping in delirious hysterics. Lad moved over to him; hesitated a moment, looking wistfully upward at the solid ground above. Then, he seemed to decide which way his duty pointed. Lying down beside the freezing child, he pressed his great shaggy body close to Cyril's; protecting him from the swirling snow and from the worst of the cold.

The dog's dark, deep-set eyes roved watchfully toward the crevice, alert for sign of any other marauder that might issue forth. His own shaggy shoulder was hurting him, annoyingly, from the wildcat's bite. But to this he gave no heed. Closer yet, he pressed his warm, furry body to the ice-cold youngster; fending off the elements as valorously as he had fended off the wildcat.

The warmth of the great body began to penetrate Cyril's numbed senses. The child snuggled to the dog, gratefully. Lad's pink tongue licked caressingly at the white face; and the collie whimpered crooning sympathy to the little sufferer.

So, for a time the dog and the child lay there; Cyril's numb body warming under the contact.

Then, at a swift intake of the windy air, Lad's whimper changed to a thunder of wild barking. His nostrils had told him of the search party's approach, a few hundred yards to the windward.

Their dispiritingly aimless hunt changing into a scrambling rush in the direction whence came the faint-heard barks, the searchers trooped toward the ledge.

"Here we are!" shrilled the child, as the Master's halloo sounded directly above. "Here we are! Down here! A—a lion tackled us, awhile back. But we licked him;—I and Laddie!"



CHAPTER VII. The Juggernaut

Long shadows were stretching lazily athwart the lawn from the gnarled old giant trees. Over the whole drowsing world brooded the solemn hush of late summer afternoon.

An amber light hung in the sleepy air; touching with gold the fire-blue lake, the circle of lovingly protecting green hills; the emerald slope which billowed up from the water-edge to the red-roofed gray house in its setting of ancient oaks.

On the bare flooring, in the coolest corner of the veranda, two collies lay sprawled. They were fast asleep; which means that they were ready to come back to complete wakefulness at the first untoward sound.

Of the two slumbrous collies, one was slenderly graceful of outline; gold-and-white of hue. She was Lady; imperious and temperamental wisp of thoroughbred caninity.

The second dog had been crowded out of the shadiest spot of the veranda, by his mate; so that a part of his burnished mahogany coat was under the direct glare of the afternoon sun. Shimmering orange tints blazed back the reflection of the torrid light.

He was Sunnybank Lad; eighty-pound collie; tawny and powerful; with absurdly tiny white forepaws and with a Soul looking out from his deep-set dark eyes. Chum and housemate he was to his two human gods;—a dog, alone of all worshipers, having the privilege of looking on the face of his gods and of communing with them without the medium of priest or of prayer.

Lady, only, of the Place's bevy of Little People, refused from earliest puppyhood to acknowledge Lad's benevolent rulership. She bossed and teased and pestered him, unmercifully. And Lad not only let her do all this, but he actually reveled in it. She was his mate. More,—she was his idol. This idolizing of one mate, by the way, is far less uncommon among dogs than we mere humans realize.

The summer afternoon hush was split by the whirring chug of a motor-car; that turned in from the highroad, two hundred yards beyond the house, and started down through the oak grove, along the winding driveway. Immediately, Lady was not only awake, but on her feet, and in motion. A furry gold-white whirlwind, she flashed off of the vine-shaded veranda and tore at top speed up the hill to meet the coming car.

No, it was not the Mistress and the Master whose approach stirred the fiery little collie to lightning activity. Lad knew the purr of the Place's car and he could distinguish it from any other, as far as his sensitive ears could catch its sound. But to Lady, all cars were alike; and all were signals for wild excitement.

Like too many other collies, she had a mania for rushing at any motor vehicle, and for whizzing along beside it, perilously close to its fast-moving wheels, barking and screaming hysterically and bounding upward at its polished sides.

Nor had punishment and scolding cured her of the trait. She was an addict at car-chasing. She was wholly incurable. There are such dogs. Soon or late, many of them pay high for the habit.

In early days, Lad also had dashed after motors. But a single sharp lecture from the Master had taught him that this was one of the direst breaches of the Place's simple Law. And, thenceforth,—though he might tremble with eagerness,—he stood statue-still when an automobile spun temptingly past him.

More,—he had cured pup after pup, at the Place, of car-chasing. But Lady he could not cure; though he never gave up the useless attempt.

Down the drive came a delivery truck; driven fast and with none too great skill. Before it had covered half the distance between gate and house, Lady was alongside. A wheel grazed her shoulder fur as, deftly, she slipped from in front of the vehicle and sprang up at its tonneau. With a ceaseless fanfare of barks,—delirious in her excitement,—she circled the car; springing, dodging, wheeling.

The delivery boy checked speed and shouted futile warnings to the insane collie. As he slowed down a bit on the steep grade, Lady hurled herself in front of the machine, as though taunting it for cowardice in abating its hot pace on her account.

Again and again had she run, head on, at advancing cars. It seemed to delight her when such cars slackened speed or swerved, in order not to kill her.

Now, as she whizzed backward, her vibrant muzzle a bare six inches from the shiny buffer, one of her flying feet slipped in a mud rut. Her balance gone, she tumbled.

A collie down is a collie up, in less than a second. But there was still less than a second's space between to overthrown Lady and the car's front wheels.

The boy slammed on the emergency brake. Through his mind ran the formless thought of his fate at the hands of his employer when he should return to the store with tidings that he had run over and killed a good customer's costly collie; and on the customer's own grounds.

In that single breathless instant, a huge mahogany-and-snow shape flashed forward, into the path of the machine.

Lad, following his mate, had tried to shoulder her aside and to herd her too far back from the drive for any possible return to the danger zone, until the car should have passed. More than once, at other times, had he done this. But, today, she had eluded his mighty shoulder and had flung herself back to the assault.

As she fell, she rolled over, twice, from her own momentum. The second revolution left her directly in front of the skidding wheels. One of them had actually touched her squirming spine; when white teeth gripped her by the scruff of the neck. Those teeth could crush a mutton-bone as a child cracks a peanut. But, on Lady, today, their power was exerted only to the extent of lifting her, in one swift wrench, clear of the ground and high in air.

The mischievous collie flew through space like a lithe mass of golden fluff; and came to earth, in a heap, at the edge of the drive; well clear of the menacing wheels. With Lad, it fared otherwise.

The great dog had braced himself, with all his might, for the muscle-wrenching heave. Wherefore, he had no chance to spring clear, in time to avoid the car. This, no doubt, he had realized, when he sprang to his adored mate's rescue. For Lad's brain was uncanny in its cleverness. That same cleverness, more likely than mere chance,—now came to his own aid.

The left front wheel struck him and struck him fair. It hit his massive shoulder, dislocating the joint and knocking the eighty-pound dog prone to earth, his ruff within an inch of the wheel. There was no time to gather his feet under him or to coerce the dislocated shoulder into doing its share toward lifting him in a sideways spring that should carry him out of the machine's way. There was but one thing Lad could do. And he did it.

His body in a compact bunch, he rolled midway between the wheels; making the single revolution at a speed the eye could scarce follow,—a speed which jerked him from under the impending left wheel which already had smitten him down.

Over him slid the wheel-locked car, through the mud of a recent rain; while the boy clung to the emergency brake and yelled.

Over him and past him skidded the car. It missed the prostrate dog,—missed him with all four wheels; though the rear axle's housing smeared his snowy ruff with a blur of black grease.

On went the machine for another ten feet, before it could halt. Then a chalk-faced delivery boy peered backward in fright,—to see Lad getting painfully to his feet and holding perplexedly aloft his tiny right forepaw in token of the dislocated shoulder.

The delivery boy saw more. In a swirl of black bad temper, Lady had gathered herself up from the ditch where Lad's toss had landed her. Without a moment's pause she threw herself upon the luckless dog whose rough toss had saved her life. Teeth aglint, growling ferociously, she dug her fangs into the hurt shoulder and slung her whole weight forward in the bite.

Thus was it the temperamental Lady's wont to punish real or fancied injuries from the Place's other animals,—and from humans as well, except only the Mistress and the Master. She charged first, and did her thinking afterward. Apparently, her brain, just then, could hold no impression except that her interfering mate had picked her up by the neck-scruff and had thrown her, head over heels, into a ditch. And such treatment called for instant penalty.

Under her fifty-pound impact, poor Lad's three-cornered balance gave way. Down he went in an awkward heap; while Lady snarled viciously and snapped for his momentarily exposed throat. Lad turned his head aside to guard the throat; but he made no move to resent this ungrateful onslaught; much less to fight back. Which was old Lad's way,—with Lady.

Dislocated shoulder or not, he would have flown at any male dog that assailed him; and would have made the aggressor fight for dear life. But his mate was sacred. And he merely protected his throat and let her nip agonizingly at his ears and paws; until her brief flurry of wrath should be past.

A shout from the veranda,—whither the racket had drawn the Master from his study,—put a sudden stop to Lady's brainstorm. Obedience was the first and foremost rule drilled into the Little People of the Place. And, from puppy days, the collies were taught to come,—and to come at a run,—at call from the Mistress or the Master.

Lady, with no good grace, desisted from her punitive task, and galloped down the drive to the house. Lad, rising with difficulty, followed; as fast as a three-legged gait would permit. And behind them chugged the delivery boy, bawling explanations.

A sharp word of reproof sent Lady skulking into a corner; anger forgotten in humiliation at the public rebuke. The Master paid no heed to her. Running up the drive, he met Lad, and picked up the suffering collie in his arms. Carrying him into the study, the Master gave first aid to the serious dislocation; then phoned for the nearest good vet.

As he left the study, to telephone, he encountered Lady, very woebegone and cringing, at the door. When he returned, he beheld the remorseful little gold-and-white vixen licking her mate's hurt shoulder and wagging a propitiatory tail in plea for forgiveness from the dog she had bitten and from the Master whose Law she had broken by her attack on the car.

Always, after her brief rages, Lady was prettily and genuinely repentant and eager to make friends again. And, as ever, Lad was meeting her apologies more than half-way;—absurdly blissful at her dainty attentions.

In the days that followed, Lady at first spent the bulk of her time near her lame mate. She was unusually gentle and affectionate with him; and seemed trying to make up to him for the enforced idleness of strained sinews and dislocated joint. In her friendliness and attention, Lad was very, very happy.

The vet had bandaged his shoulder and had anointed it with pungently smelly medicines whose reek was disgusting and even painful to the thoroughbred's supersensitive nostrils. Moreover, the vet had left orders that Lad be made to keep quiet until the hurt should heal; and that he risk no setback by undue exertion of any sort. It was sweet to lie in the Master's study,—one white forepaw or the great shapely head laid lovingly on the man's hiking boot; and with an occasional pat or a friendly word from his deity, as the latter pounded away on a clicky typewriter whose jarring noise Lad had long ago taught himself to tolerate.

Sweeter it was to be made much of and "poored" by the Mistress; and to have her light hands adjust his bandages; and to hear her tell him what a dear dog he was and praise his bravery in rescuing Lady.

Perhaps sweetest of all, in those early days of convalescence, was the amazing solicitude of Lady herself; and her queerly maternal tenderness toward him.

But, as the summer days dreamed themselves away and Lad's splendid health brought him nearer and nearer to recovery, Lady waxed restive under the long strain of indolence and of good temper. Lad had been her companion in the early morning rambles through the forest, back of the Place; in rabbit quests; in swims in the ice, cool lake at the foot of the lawn; in romps on the smooth green grass and in a dozen of the active pursuits wherein country-bred collies love to squander the outdoor days.

Less and less did Lady content herself with dull attendance on the convalescent. More and more often did she set forth without him on those cross-country runs that had meant so much to them both. Lad would watch her vanish up the drive,—their fiery little son, Wolf, cantering gleefully at her side. Then, his dark eyes full of sorrow, he would gaze at the Master and, with a sigh, would lie back on his rug—and wait.

There was something so human,—so uncomplainingly wretched,—in look and in sigh,—that the Master was touched by the big dog's loneliness and vexed at the flighty Lady's defection. Stooping down, at one such time, he ran his hand over the beautiful silky head that rested against his knee; and said in lame attempt at comfort:—

"Don't let it get under your skin, Laddie! She isn't worth it. One of your honest paws is worth more than her whole fly-away body.—Not that anyone ever was loved because he or she was worthy!—You're up against the penalty that is bound to get everybody with a soul, who is fool enough to love something or somebody without one . . . . We're going over for the mail,—the Mistress and I. Want to come along?"

At once the melancholy in Lad's deep eyes gave place to puppy-like exultance.

While, naturally, he did not understand one word in ten of the Master's frequent prosy homilies to him, or of the Mistress's more melodious speech, yet, from puppyhood, he had been talked to by both of them. And, as ever with a highbred collie, such constant conversation had borne ample fruit;—not only in giving the dog a startling comprehension of voice-meanings, but also in teaching him to understand many simple words and phrases.

For example, he recognized, as readily as would any five-year-old child, this invitation to go motoring. And it banished the memory of Lady's fickleness.

This morning, for the first time since his accident, Lad was able to spring into the car-tonneau, unaided. His hurt was all-but well. Enthroning himself in the precise center of the rear seat, he prepared to enjoy every inch of the ride.

No matter how long or how tedious were these jaunts, Lad never went to sleep or ceased to survey with eager attention the myriad details of the trip. There was something half-laughable, half-pathetic, in his air of strained interest.

Only when the Mistress and the Master both chanced to leave the car at the same time, at market or bank or postoffice, would Lad cease from this genial and absorbed inspection of everything in sight. Left alone in the machine, he always realized at once that he was on guard. Head on paws he would lie, intently scanning anyone who might chance to pause near the auto; and, with a glint of curved white fang beneath sharply upcurled lip, warning away such persons as ventured too close.

Marketing done, today, the trio from the Place started homeward. Less than a quarter-mile from their own gateway, they heard the blaring honk of a motor horn behind them.

Within a second thereafter, a runabout roared past, the cut-out making echoes along the still road; and a poisonously choking cloud of dust whirling aloft in the speedster's wake.

The warning honk had not given the Mistress time to turn out. Luckily she was driving well on her own side of the none-too-wide road. As it was, a sharp little jar gave testimony to the light touch of mudguards. And the runabout whizzed on.

"That's one of the speed-idiots who make an automobile an insult to everybody except its owner! The young fool!" stormed the Master, glowering impotently at the other car, already a hundred yards ahead; and at the back of its one occupant, a sportily-clad youth in the early twenties.

A high-pitched yelping bark,—partly of dismay, partly of warning,—from Lad, broke in on the Master's fuming remonstrance. The big dog had sprung up from his rear seat cushion and, with forepaws gripping the back of the front seat, he was peering forward; his head and shoulders between the Mistress and the Master.

Never before in all his rides had Lad so transgressed the rules of motoring behavior as to thrust himself forward like this. A word of rebuke died on the Master's tongue; as the Mistress, with a gasp of fear, pointed ahead, in the path of the speeding runabout.

Lady and Wolf had had a jolly gallop through the summer woodlands. And at last they had turned their faces homeward; for the plunge in the cool lake which was wont to follow a hot weather run. Side by side they jogged along, to the forest edge—and into the sixteen-acre meadow that stretches from forest to highway.

A few rods on the far side of the road which separated the meadow from the rest of the Place, Wolf paused to investigate a chipmunk hole. Lady was more interested just then in splashing her hot body in the chill of the lake than in exploring for hypothetical chipmunks.

Moreover, her keen ears caught a sound which rapidly swept nearer and nearer. A motor-car with the muffler cut out was approaching, at a most gratifyingly high speed.

The noise was as martial music to Lady. The speed promised exhilarating sport. Her trot merged into a headlong run; and she dashed out into the road.

The runabout was a bare fifty yards ahead of her, and it was coming on with a speed which shook even Lady's excitement-craving nerves. Here, evidently, was a playmate which it would be safer to chase than to confront head-on.

It was at this juncture, by the way, that Lad lurched forward from the rear seat and that the Mistress pointed in terror at the endangered collie.

Lady, for once overawed by speed, leaped to one side of the road. Not far, but leaving ample space for the driver to miss her by at least a yard. He had honked loudly, at sight of her. But, he had abated not an atom of his fifty-mile-an-hour pace.

Whether the man was rattled by the collie's antics,—whether he acted in sudden rage at her for startling him, whether he belonged to the filthy breed of motorist who recites chucklingly the record of his kills,—he did not hold his midroad course.

Instead,—still without checking speed,—he veered his machine slightly to the right; aiming the flying juggernaut directly at the mischievously-poised little collie who danced in imagined safety at the road-edge.

The rest was horror.

Merciful in its mercilessness, the hard-driven right front wheel smote the silky golden head with a force that left no terrible instant of fear or of agony. More lucky by far than the myriad innocent and friendly dogs that are left daily to scream out their lives writhingly in the wake of speeding motor-cars, Lady was killed at a single stroke.

The fluffy golden body was hurled far in front of its slayer; and the wheels struck it a second time. The force of the impact caused the runabout to skid, perilously; and the youthful driver brought it to a jarring and belated halt. Springing to the ground, he rolled the dead collie's impeding body into the shallow wayside ditch, clear of his wheels. Then, scrambling aboard again, he jammed down the accelerator.

Lad had made a flying leap over the door of the Master's car. He struck ground with a force which crumpled his healing right shoulder under him. Heedless of the pain, he hurled himself forward, on three legs, at an incredible speed; straight for the runabout. His great head low, his formidable teeth agleam beneath drawn-back lips, his soft eyes a-smolder with red flame, Lad charged.

But, for all his burst of speed, he was too late to avenge; even as he had been too late to save. By the time he could reach the spot where Lady lay crumpled and moveless in the ditch, the runabout had gathered full speed and was disappearing down the bend of the highway.

After it flew Lad, silent, terrible,—not stopping to realize that the fleetest dog,—even with all four of his legs in commission,—cannot hope to overhaul a motor-car driven at fifty miles an hour.

But, at the end of a furious quarter-mile, his wise brain took charge once more of his vengeance-craving heart. He halted, snarled hideously after the vanished car, and limped miserably back to the scene of the tragedy.

There, he found the Mistress sitting in the roadside dust, Lady's head in her lap. She was smoothing lovingly the soft rumpled fur; and was trying hard not to cry over the inert warm mass of gold-and-white fluffiness which, two minutes earlier, had been a beautiful thoroughbred collie, vibrant with life and fun and lovableness.

The Master had risen from his brief inspection of his pet's fatal injuries. Scowling down the road, he yearned to kick himself for his stupidity in failing to note the Juggernaut's number.

Head and tail a-droop, Lad toiled back to where Lady was lying. A queer low sound, strangely like a human sob, pulsed in his shaggy throat, as he bent down and touched his dead mate's muzzle with his own. Then, huddling close beside her, he reverted all at once to a trait of his ancestors, a thousand generations back.

Sitting on his haunches and lifting his pointed nose to the summer sky, he gave vent to a series of long-drawn wolf howls; horrible to hear. There was no hint of a housebred twentieth century dog in his lament. It was the death-howl of the primitive wolf;—a sound that sent an involuntary shiver through the two humans who listened aghast to their chum's awesome mourning for his lost mate.

The Master made as though to say something,—in comfort or in correction. The Mistress, wiser, motioned to him not to speak.

In a few seconds, Lad rose wearily to his feet; the spasm of primal grief having spent itself. Once more he was himself; sedate, wise, calm.

Limping over to where the car had halted so briefly, he cast about the ground, after the manner of a bloodhound.

Presently, he came to an abrupt halt. He had found what he sought. As motionless as a bird-dog at point, he stood there; nose to earth, sniffing.

"What in blazes—?" began the Master, perplexed.

The Mistress was keener of eye and of perception. She understood. She saw the Lad's inhalingly seeking muzzle was steady above a faint mark in the road-dust;—the mark of a buckskin shoe's print. Long and carefully the dog sniffed. Then, with heavy deliberation he moved on to the next footprint and the next. The runabout's driver had taken less than a half dozen steps in all; during his short descent to the ground. But Lad did not stop until he had found and identified each and every step.

"He knows!" marveled the Mistress. "He saw the brute jump down from his car. And he has found his footsteps. He'll remember them, too."

"Little good it will do the poor chap!" commented the Master. "He can't track him, that way. Get aboard, won't you?" he went on. "I'll make Lad go back into the tonneau again, too. Drive down to the house; and take Lad indoors with you. Better telephone to the vet to come over and have another look at his shoulder. He's wrenched it badly, in all that run. Anyway, please keep him indoors till—"

He finished his sentence by a glance at Lady. At the Master's order, Lad with sore reluctance left the body of his mate; whither he had returned after his useless finding of the footmarks. He had just curled up, in the ditch, pressing close to her side; and again that unnatural sobbing sound was in his throat. On the Master's bidding, Lad crossed to the car and suffered himself to be lifted aboard. The Mistress started down the drive. As they went, Lad ever looked back, with suffering despair in his dark eyes, at that huddle of golden fur at the wayside.

The Master carried the pitifully light armful to a secluded spot far beyond the stables; and there he buried it. Then, satisfied that Lad could not find his mate's grave, he returned to the house.

His heart was heavy with helpless wrath. Again and again, in the course of their drives, he and the Mistress had sickened at sight of mutely eloquent little bodies left in mid-road or tossed in some ditch,—testimony to the carelessness and callous hoggishness of autoists. Some few of these run-over dogs,—like poor Lady,—had of course tempted fate; spurred on by that strange craving which goaded them to fly at cars. But the bulk of them had been strolling peacefully along the highways or crossing to or from their own dooryards, when the juggernauts smashed them into torture or into instant death.

The Master reflected on the friendly country folk who pay taxes for the scenery and for the fine roads which make motoring so pleasant;—and on the reward so many motorists bestow upon these rural hosts of theirs by wanton or heedless murder of pet animals. For the first time, he could understand how and why farmers are tempted to strew glass or tacks in the road to revenge the slaying of a beloved dog.

For the next few days, until his shoulder was again in condition to bear his eighty-pound weight on it, Lad was kept indoors or on the veranda. As soon as he was allowed to go out alone, the big collie went straight to the spot where last he had seen Lady's body. Thence, he a made a careful detour of the Place,—seeking for—something. It was two days before he found what he sought.

In the meantime,—as ever, since his mate's killing,—he ate practically nothing; and went about in a daze.

"He'll get over it presently," prophesied the Master, to soothe his wife's worry.

"Perhaps so," returned the Mistress. "Or perhaps not. Remember he's a collie, and not just a human."

On the third day, Lad's systematic quartering of the Place brought him to the tiny new mound, far beyond the stables. Twice, he circled it. Then he lay down, very close beside it; his mighty head athwart the ridge of upflung sod.

There,—having seen him from a distance,—the Master came across to speak to him. But at sight of the man, the collie got up from his resting place and moved furtively away.

Time after time, during the next week, the Master or the Mistress found him lying there. And always, at their approach, he would get up and depart. Nor did he go direct to the mound, on these pilgrimages; but by devious paths; as though trying to shake off possible pursuit. No longer did he spend the nights, as from puppyhood, in his beloved "cave" under the piano in the music room. On one pretext or another, he would manage to slip out of the house, during the evening. Twice, in gray dawn, the Master found him crouched beside the mound, where, sleepless, he had lain all night.

The Mistress and the Master grew seriously troubled over their collie chum's continued grief. They thought, more than once, of sending him away to boarding kennels or to some friend, for a month or two; to remove him from the surroundings which made him so wretched. Oddly enough, his heartbreak struck neither of them as absurd.

They had made a long study of collie nature in all its million queer and half-human phases. They knew, too, that a grieving dog is upheld by none of the supports of Faith nor of Philosophy; and that he lacks the wisdom which teaches the wondrous anaesthetic powers of Time. A sorrowing dog sorrows without hope.