<hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></SPAN>CHAPTER II<br/> "QUIET"</h2>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>There were other people at The Place—people
to whom a dog must be courteous, as becomes a<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</SPAN></span>
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.</p>
<p>Of all the dogs on The Place, big Lad alone
had free run of the house, by day and by night.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>Then, all at once, into the sweet routine of the
House of Peace, came Horror.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</SPAN></span>
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.</p>
<p>In this way, by sustained effort that wrenched
every giant muscle in the collie's body, they came at
last to land.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Instead, it had just begun.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Then from the Master's voice and look, Lad<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</SPAN></span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</SPAN></span>
the drive, just now. Better send them all away
somewhere till she is better. The house must be
kept perfectly quiet."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</SPAN></span>
into the car and carried away to the boarding-kennels.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"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>I've</i> tried to do
it, but he only snarls at me. And in a dangerous
case like this——"</p>
<p>"Leave him alone," briefly ordered the Master.</p>
<p>But when the nurse, sniffing, passed on, he called
Lad over to him. Reluctantly, the dog quitted the
door and obeyed the summons.</p>
<p>"Quiet!" ordered the Master, speaking very
slowly and distinctly. "You must keep quiet.
<i>Quiet!</i> Understand?"</p>
<p>Lad understood. Lad always understood. He
must not bark. He must move silently. He must
make no unnecessary sound. But, at least, the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</SPAN></span>
Master had not forbidden him to snarl softly and
loathingly at that detestable white-clad woman
every time she stepped over him.</p>
<p>So there was one grain of comfort.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</SPAN></span>
growl did the pain wring from him. "<i>Quiet!</i>" had
been the command, and he was obeying.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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).</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Wherefore he lay there, crushing his body close
against the door and—waiting.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>One night, the doctor did not go home at all.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</SPAN></span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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,
<i>dear</i> 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.</p>
<p>"Come in, old friend," said the Master, opening
the door and standing aside for Lad to enter.</p>
<p>At a bound, the collie was in the room. There<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</SPAN></span>
lay the Mistress. She was very thin, very white,
very feeble. But she was there. The dread Something
had lost the battle.</p>
<p>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,</p>
<p>"<i>Quiet!</i>"</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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!"</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 yearn<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</SPAN></span>ing
to show, in noise, his own wild relief, was all
but irresistible. Then the Master said:</p>
<p>"Run on, Lad. You can come back by-and-by."</p>
<p>And the dog gravely made his way out of the
room and out of the house.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Peter Grimm, the Mistress's cynical and temperamental
gray cat, was picking its dainty way across
the lawn as Lad emerged from the house.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</SPAN></span>
Instead, he galloped to the rear of the house where
stood the dairy.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</SPAN></span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>Courteously refusing to carry the matter further,
in face of a half-dozen shouting humans, Lad
cantered homeward.</p>
<p>From the clothes-line, on the drying-ground at
The Place, fluttered a large white object. It was
palpably a nurse's uniform—palpably <i>the</i> nurse's
uniform. And Lad greeted its presence there with
a grin of pure bliss.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</SPAN></span>
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!</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>Which, of course, was a manifestly asinine way
for a grown man to talk.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>He slept so soundly that the locking of the house
for the night did not rouse him. But something<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</SPAN></span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</SPAN></span>
sound would have given them ample warning of the
stranger's presence.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>A booming, trumpeting bark of warning sprang
into Lad's throat—and died there. The sharp
command "<i>Quiet!</i>" 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The blinds parted slowly. Over the window-sill
the man threw a leg. Then he stepped down, noiselessly
into the room.</p>
<p>He stood there a second, evidently listening.</p>
<p>And, before he could stir or breathe, something
in the darkness hurled itself upon him.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>The negro was less considerate of the Mistress'
comfort. With a screech that would have waked<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</SPAN></span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</SPAN></span>
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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 to<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</SPAN></span>gether
and down onto the driveway below. The
entire combat had not lasted for more than thirty
seconds.</p>
<p>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 jardinière 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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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
"<i>Quiet!</i>" 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<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</SPAN></span>
him? Perhaps. Humans have such odd ideas of
Justice. He——</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>It was good—<i>passing</i> 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.</p>
<p>Then, feeling much, <i>much</i> better, he ambled
homeward, to take up normal life again after a
whole fortnight of martyrdom.</p>
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