THE THROWBACK
The Place was nine miles north of the county-seat city of Paterson.
And yearly, near Paterson, was held the great North Jersey Livestock
Fair--a fair whose awards established for the next twelve-month
the local rank of purebred cattle and sheep and pigs for thirty
miles in either direction.
From the Ramapo hill pastures, south of Suffern, two days before the
fair, descended a flock of twenty prize sheep--the playthings of a man
to whom the title of Wall Street Farmer had a lure of its own--a lure
that cost him something like $30,000 a year; and which made him a
scourge to all his few friends.
Among these luckless friends chanced to be the Mistress and the Master
of The Place. And the Gentleman Farmer had decided to break his
sheep's fair-ward journey by a twenty-four-hour stop at The Place.
The Master, duly apprised of the sorry honor planned for his home, set
aside a disused horse-paddock for the woolly visitors' use. Into this
their shepherd drove his dusty and bleating charges on their arrival.
The shepherd was a somber Scot. Nature had begun the work of
somberness in his Highland heart. The duty of working for the Wall
Street Farmer had added tenfold to the natural tendency. His name was
McGillicuddy, and he looked it.
Now, in northern New Jersey a live sheep is well nigh as rare as a
pterodactyl. This flock of twenty had cost their owner their weight in
merino wool. A dog--especially a collie--that does not know sheep, is
prone to consider them his lawful prey, in other words, the sight of a
sheep has turned many an otherwise law-abiding dog into a killer.
To avoid so black a smirch on The Place's hospitality, the Master had
loaded all his collies, except Lad, into the car, and had shipped them
off, that morning, for a three-day sojourn at the boarding kennels,
ten miles away.
"Does the Old Dog go, too, sir?" asked The Place's foreman, with a
questioning nod at Lad, after he had lifted the others into the
tonneau.
Lad was viewing the proceedings from the top of the veranda steps. The
Master looked at him, then at the car, and answered:
"No. Lad has more right here than any measly imported sheep. He won't
bother them if I tell him not to. Let him stay."
The sheep, convoyed by the misanthropic McGillicuddy, filed down the
drive, from the highroad, an hour later, and were marshaled into the
corral.
As the jostling procession, followed by its dour shepherd, turned in
at the gate of The Place, Lad rose from his rug on the veranda. His
nostrils itching with the unfamiliar odor, his soft eyes outraged by
the bizarre sight, he set forth to drive the intruders out into the
main road.
Head lowered, he ran, uttering no sound. This seemed to him an
emergency which called for drastic measures rather than for monitory
barking. For all he knew, these twenty fat, woolly, white things
might be fighters who would attack him in a body, and who might even
menace the safety of his gods; and the glum McGillicuddy did not
impress him at all favorably. Hence the silent charge at the foe--a
charge launched with the speed and terrible menace of a thunderbolt.
McGillicuddy sprang swiftly to the front of his flock, staff
upwhirled; but before the staff could descend on the furry defender of
The Place, a sweet voice called imperiously to the dog.
The Mistress had come out upon the veranda and had seen Lad dash to
the attack.
"Lad!" she cried. "_Lad!_"
The great dog halted midway in his rush.
"Down!" called the Mistress. "Leave them alone! Do you hear, Lad?
_Leave them alone!_ Come back here!"
Lad heard, and Lad obeyed. Lad always obeyed. If these twenty
malodorous strangers and their staff-brandishing guide were friends of
the Mistress he must not drive them away. The order "Leave them
alone!" was one that could not be disregarded.
Trembling with anger, yet with no thought of rebelling, Lad turned and
trotted back to the veranda. He thrust his cold nose into the
Mistress' warm little hand and looked up eagerly into her face,
seeking a repeal of the command to keep away from the sheep and their
driver.
But the Mistress only patted his silken head and whispered:
"We don't like it any more than you do, Laddie; but we mustn't let
anyone know we don't. Leave them alone!"
Past the veranda filed the twenty priceless sheep, and on to the
paddock.
"I suppose they'll carry off all the prizes at the fair, won't they?"
asked the Mistress civilly, as McGillicuddy plodded past her at the
tail of the procession.
"Aiblins, aye," grunted McGillicuddy, with the exquisite courtesy of a
member of his race and class who feels he is being patronized.
"Aiblins, aye. Aiblins, na'. Aiblins--ugh-uh."
Having thus safeguarded his statement against assault from any side at
all, the Scot moved on. Lad strolled down toward the paddock to
superintend the task of locking up the sheep. The Mistress did not
detain him. She felt calmly certain her order of "Leave them alone!"
had rendered the twenty visitors inviolate from him.
Lad walked slowly around the paddock, his gaze on the sheep. These
were the first sheep he had ever seen. Yet his ancestors, for a
thousand years or more, had herded and guarded flocks on the moors.
Atavism is mysteriously powerful in dogs, and it takes strange
forms. A collie, too, has a queer strain of wolf in him--not only in
body but in brain, and the wolf was the sheep's official murderer, as
far back as the days when a humpbacked Greek slave, named AEsop, used
to beguile his sleepless nights with writing fables.
Round and round the paddock prowled Lad; his eyes alight with a myriad
half-memories; his sensitive nostrils quivering at the scents that
enveloped them.
McGillicuddy, from time to time, eyed the dog obliquely, and with a
scowl. These sheep were not the pride of his heart. His conscientious
heart possessed no pride--pride being one of the seven deadly sins,
and the sheep not being his own; but the flock represented his
livelihood--his comfortably overpaid job with the Wall Street Farmer.
He was responsible for their welfare.
And McGillicuddy did not at all like the way this beautiful collie
eyed the prize merinos, nor was the Scot satisfied with the strength
of the corral. Its wire fencing was rusty and sagging from long
disuse, its gate hung crookedly and had a crazy hasp.
A sheep is one of the least intelligent creatures on earth. Should the
flock's leader decide at any time during the night to press his heavy
bulk against the gate or against some of the rustier wire strands,
there would presently be a gap through which the entire twenty could
amble forth. Once outside----
Again McGillicuddy glowered dourly at Lad. The collie returned the
look with interest; a well-bred dog being as skilled in reading human
faces as is any professional dead beat. Lad saw the dislike in
McGillicuddy's heavy-thatched eyes; cordially he yearned to prove his
own distaste for the shepherd, but the Mistress' command had immuned
this sour stranger.
So Lad merely turned his back on the man, sat down, flattened his
furry ears close against his head, thrust his pointed nose skyward,
and sniffed. McGillicuddy was too much an animal man not to read the
insult in the dog's posture and action, and the shepherd's fist
tightened longingly round his staff.
Half an hour later the Wall Street Farmer himself arrived at The
Place. He came in a runabout. On the seat beside him sat his
pasty-faced, four-year-old son. At his feet was something which, at
first glance, might have been either a quadruped or a rag bag.
The Mistress and the Master, with dutiful hypocrisy, came smilingly
out on the veranda to welcome the guests. Lad, who had returned from
the impromptu sheep-fold, stood beside them. At sight and scent
of this new batch of visitors the collie doubtless felt what
old-fashioned novelists used to describe as "mingled emotions."
There was a child in the car. And though there had been few children
in Lad's life, yet he loved them, loved them as a big-hearted and
big-bodied dog always loves the helpless. Wherefore, at sight of the
child, Lad rejoiced.
But the animal crouching at the Wall Street Farmer's feet was quite a
different form of guest. Lad recognized the thing as a dog--yet no
such dog as ever he had seen. An unwholesome-looking dog. Even as the
little boy was an unwholesome-looking child.
"Well!" sonorously proclaimed the Wall Street Farmer as he scrambled
out of the runabout and bore down upon his hosts, "here I am! The
sheep got here all safe? Good! I knew they would. McGillicuddy's a
genius; nothing he can't do with sheep. You remember Mortimer?"
lifting the lanky youngster from the seat. "He teased so to come
along, his mother said I'd better bring him. I knew you'd be
glad. Shake hands with them, Morty, darling."
"I wun't!" snarled Morty darling, hanging back.
Then he caught sight of Lad. The collie came straight up to the child,
grinning from ear to ear, and wrinkling his nose so delightedly that
every white front tooth showed. Morty flung himself forward to greet
the huge dog, but the Wall Street Farmer, with a shout of warning,
caught the boy in his arms and bravely interposed his own fat body
between Mortimer and Lad.
"What does the beast mean by snarling at my son?" fiercely demanded
the Wall Street Farmer. "You people have no right to leave such a
savage dog at large."
"He's not snarling," the Mistress indignantly declared, "he's
smiling. That's Lad's way. Why, he'd let himself be cut up into
squares sooner than hurt a child."
Still doubtful, the Wall Street Farmer cautiously set down his son on
the veranda. Morty flung himself bodily upon Lad; hauling and mauling
the stately collie this way and that.
Had any grown person, save only the Mistress or the Master, attempted
such treatment, the curving white eyeteeth would have buried
themselves very promptly in the offender.
Indeed, the Master now gazed, with some nervousness, at the performance;
but the Mistress was not worried as to her adored pet's behavior;
and the Mistress, as ever, was right.
For Lad endured the mauling--not patiently, but blissfully. He fairly
writhed with delight at the painful tugging of hair and ears; and
moistly he strove to kiss the wizened little face that was on a level
with his own. Morty repaid this attention by slapping Lad across the
mouth. Lad only wagged his plumy tail the more ecstatically and
snuggled closer to the preposterous baby.
Meantime, the Wall Street Farmer, in clarion tones, was calling
attention to the second of the two treasures he had brought along.
"Melisande!" he cried.
At the summons, the fuzzy monstrosity in the car ceased peering
snappishly over the doortop at Lad, and condescended to turn toward
its owner. It looked like something between an Old English sheep-dog
and a dachshund; straw-colored fur enveloped the scrawny body; a
miserable apology for a bushy tail hung limply between crooked hind
legs; evil little eyes peered forth from beneath a scarecrow stubble
of head fringe; it was not a pretty dog, this canine the Wall Street
Farmer had just addressed by the poetic title of "Melisande."
"What in blazes is he?" asked the Master.
"She is a Prussian sheep-dog," proudly replied the Wall Street
Farmer. "She is the first of her breed ever imported to America. Cost
me a clean $1100 to buy her from a Chicago man who brought her
over. I'm going to exhibit her at the Garden Show next winter. What do
you think of her, old man?"
"I'd hate to tell you," said the Master, "but I'll gladly tell you
what I think of that Chicago man. He's the original genius who sold
all the land between New York and Jersey City for a thousand dollars
an acre and issued the series of ten-dollar season admission tickets
to Central Park."
Being the Wall Street Farmer's host the Master said this in the
recesses of his own heart. Aloud, he blithered some complimentary lie
and watched the visitor lift the scraggy nondescript out of the car.
The moment she was on the ground, Melisande made a wild dash at
Lad. Snarling, she snapped ferociously at his throat. Lad merely
turned his shaggy shoulder to meet the onslaught. And Melisande found
herself gripping nothing but a mouthful of his soft hair. He made no
move to resent the attack. And the Wall Street Farmer, shouting
unobeyed mandates to his pet, dragged away the pugnacious Melisande by
the scruff of the neck.
The $1100 Prussian sheep-dog next caught a glimpse of one of the
half-grown peacock chicks--the joy of the Mistress' summer--strutting
across the lawn. Melisande, with a yap of glee, rushed off in pursuit.
The chick had no fear. The dogs of The Place had always been trained
to give the fowls a wide berth; so the pretty little peacock fell a
pitifully easy prey to the first snap of Melisande's jaws.
Lad growled, deep down in his throat, at this gross lawlessness. The
Mistress bit her lip to keep her self-control at the slaughter of her
pet. The Master hastily said something that was lost in the louder
volume of the Wall Street Farmer's bellow as he sought to call back
his $1100 treasure from further slaying.
"Well, well, well!" the guest exclaimed as at last he returned to the
veranda, dragging Melisande along in his wake. "I'm sorry this
happened, but you must overlook it. You see, Melisande is so high
spirited she is hard to control. That's the way with thoroughbred
dogs. Don't you find it so?"
The Master, thus appealed to, glanced at his wife. She was momentarily
out of ear-shot, having gone to pick up the killed peacock and
stroke its rumpled plumage. So the Master allowed himself the
luxury of plainer speech than if she had been there to be grieved over
the breach of hospitality.
"A thoroughbred dog," he said oracularly, "is either the best dog on
earth, or else he is the worst. If he is the best he learns to mind,
and to behave himself in every way like a thoroughbred. He learns it
without being beaten or sworn at. If he is the worst--then it's wisest
for his owner to hunt up some Easy Mark and sell the cur to him for
$1100. You'll notice I said his 'owner'--not his 'master.' There's
all the difference in the world between those two terms. Anybody,
with price to buy a dog, can be an 'owner,' but all the cash coined
won't make a man a dog's 'master'--unless he's that sort of man. Think
it over."
The Wall Street Farmer glared apoplectically at his host, who was
already sorry that the sneer at Lad and the killing of his wife's pet
had made him speak so to a guest--even to a self-invited and undesired
guest. Then the Wall Street Man, with a grunt, put a leash on
Melisande and gruffly asked that she be fastened to one of the vacant
kennels.
The Mistress came back to the group as the $1100 beast was led away,
kennelward, by the gardener. Recovering her self-possession, the
Mistress said to her guest:
"I never heard of a Prussian sheep-dog before. Is she trained to herd
your sheep?"
"No," replied the Wall Street Farmer, his rancor forgotten in the
prospect of exploiting his wondrous dog, "not yet. In fact, she
hates the sheep. She's young, so we haven't tried to train her
for shepherding. Two or three times we have taken her into the
pasture--always on leash--but she flies at the sheep and goes almost
crazy with anger. McGillicuddy says it's bad for the sheep to be
scared by her. So we keep her away from them. But by next season----"
He got no further. A sound of lamentation--prolonged and leather-lunged
lamentation--smote upon the air.
"Morty!" ejaculated the visitor in panic. "It's Morty! Quick!"
Following the easily traceable direction of the squalling, he ran up
the veranda steps and into the house--closely followed by the Mistress
and the Master.
The engaging Mortimer was of the stuff whereof explorers are made. No
pent-up Utica--nor veranda--contracted his powers. Bored by the stupid
talk of grown folk, wearying of Lad's friendly advances, he had
slipped through the open house door into the living-room.
There, for the day was cool, a jolly wood fire blazed on the
hearth. In front of the fireplace was an enormous and cavernous
couch. In the precise center of the couch was curled something that
looked like a ball of the grayish fluff a maid sweeps under the bed.
As Mortimer came into the room the infatuated Lad at his heels, the
fluffy ball lazily uncurled and stretched--thereby revealing itself as
no ball, but a superfurry gray kitten--the Mistress' temperamental new
Persian kitten rejoicing in the dreamily Oriental name of Tipperary.
With a squeal of glad discovery, Mortimer grabbed Tipperary with both
hands, essaying to pull her fox-brush tail. Now, no sane person needs
to be told the basic difference between the heart of a cat and the
heart of a dog. Nor will any student of Persian kittens be surprised
to hear that Tipperary's reception of the ruffianly baby's advances
was totally different from Lad's.
A lightning stroke of one of her shapeless fore-paws, and Tipperary
was free. Morty stood blinking in amaze at four geometrically regular
red marks on the back of his own pudgy hand. Tipperary had not done
her persecutor the honor to run away. She merely moved to the far end
of the couch and lay down there to renew her nap.
A mad fury fired the brain of Mortimer; a fury goaded by the pain of
his scratches. Screaming in rage he seized the cat by the nape of the
neck--to be safe from teeth and whizzing claws--and stamped across
toward the high-burning fire with her. His arm was drawn back to fling
the squirming and offending kitten into the scarlet heart of the
flames. And then Lad intervened.
Now Lad was not in the very least interested in Tipperary; treating
the temperamental Persian always with marked coldness. It is even
doubtful if he realized Morty's intent.
But one thing he did realize--that a silly baby was toddling straight
toward the fire. As many another wise dog has gone, before and since,
Lad quietly stepped between Morty and the hearth. He stood, broadside
to the fire and to the child--a shaggy wall between the peril and the
baby.
But so quickly had anger carried Mortimer toward the hearth that the
dog had not been able to block his progress until only a bare eighteen
inches separated the youngster from the blaze.
Thus Lad found the heat from the burning logs all but intolerable. It
bit through his thick coat and into the tender flesh beneath. Like a
rock he stood there.
Mortimer, his gentle plan of kitten killing foiled, redoubled his
screeches. Lad's back was higher than the child's eyes. Yet Morty
sought to hurl the kitten over this stolid barrier into the fire.
Tipperary fell short; landing on the dog's shoulders, digging her
needle claws viciously therein, and thence leaping to the floor, from
which she sprang to the top of the bookshelves, spitting back
blasphemously at her tormentor.
Morty's interest in the fire had been purely as a piece of immolation
for the cat, but finding his path to it barred, he straightway
resolved to go thither himself.
He started to move round to it, in front of Lad. The dog took a
forward step that again barred the way. Morty went insane with wrath
at this new interference with his sweet plans. His howls swelled to a
sustained roar, that reached the ears of the grown-ups on the lawn.
He flew at Lad, beating the dog with all the puny force of his fists,
sinking his milk teeth into the collie's back, wrenching and tearing
at the thick fur, stamping with his booted heels upon the absurdly
tiny white forepaws, kicking the short ribs and the tender stomach.
Never for an instant did the child slacken his howls as he punished
the dog that was saving him from death. Rather, he increased their
volume from moment to moment. Lad did not stir. The kicking and
beating and gouging and hair-pulling were not pleasant, but they were
wholly bearable. The heat was not. The smell of singed hair began to
fill the room, but Lad stood firm.
And then in rushed the relief expedition, the Wall Street Farmer at
its head.
At once concluding that Lad had bitten his son's bleeding hand, the
irate father swung aloft a chair and strode to the rescue.
Lad saw him coming.
With the lightning swiftness of his kind he whirled to one side as the
mass of wood descended. The chair missed him by a fraction of an inch
and splintered into pieces. It was a Chippendale, and had belonged to
the Mistress' great grandparents.
For the first time in all his blameless life Lad broke the sacred
Guest Law by growling at a vouched-for visitor. But surely this fat
bellower was no guest! Lad looked at his gods for information.
"Down, Lad!" said the Master very gently, his voice not quite steady.
Lad, perplexed but obedient, dropped to the floor.
"The brute tried to kill my boy!" stormed the Wall Street Farmer right
dramatically as he caught the howling Morty up in his arms to study
the extent of the wound.
"He's my guest! _He's my guest!_ HE'S MY GUEST!" the Master was saying
over and over to himself. "Lord, help me to keep on remembering he's
my GUEST!"
The Mistress came forward.
"Lad would sooner die than hurt a child," she declared, trying not to
think of the wrecked heirloom chair. "He loves children. Here, let me
see Morty's hand. Why, those are claw-marks! Cat scratches!"
"Ve nassy cat scwatched me!" bawled Morty. "Kill her, daddy! I twied
to. I twied to frow her in ve fire. But ve mizz'ble dog wouldn't let
me! Kill her, daddy! Kill ve dog too!"
The Master's mouth flew wide open.
"Won't you go down to the paddock, dear," hastily interposed the
Mistress, "and see if the sheep are all right? Take Lad along with
you."
Lad, alone of all The Place's dogs, had the run of the house, night
and day, of the sacred dining-room. During the rest of that day he
did not avail himself of his high privilege. He kept out of the
way--perplexed, woe-begone, his burns still paining him despite the
Master's ministrations.
After talking long and loudly all evening of his sheep's peerless
quality and of their certain victory over all comers in the fair the
Wall Street Farmer consented at last to go to bed. And silence settled
over The Place.
In the black hour before dawn, that same silence was split in a score
of places--split into a most horrible cacophony of sound that sent
sleep scampering to the winds.
It was the mingling of yells and bleats and barks and the scurry of
many feet. It burst out all at once in full force, lasting for some
seconds with increasing clangor; then died to stillness.
By that time every human on The Place was out of bed. In more or less
rudimentary attire the house's inhabitants trooped down into the lower
hall. There the Wall Street Farmer was raving noisily and was yanking
at a door bolt whose secret he could not fathom.
"It's my sheep!" he shouted. "That accursed dog of yours has gotten at
them. He's slaughtering them. I heard the poor things bleating and I
heard him snarling among them. They cost me----"
"If you're speaking of Lad," blazed the Master, "he's----"
"Here are the flashlights," interposed the Mistress. "Let me open
that door for you. I understand the bolt."
Out into the dark they went, all but colliding with McGillicuddy. The
Scot, awakened like the rest, had gone to the paddock. He had now come
back to report the paddock empty and all the sheep gone.
"It's the collie tike!" sputtered McGillicuddy. "I'll tak' oath to
it. I ken it's him. I suspeecioned him a' long, from how he garred at
oor sheep the day. He----"
"I said so!" roared the Wall Street Farmer. "The murderous brute!
First, he tries to kill Morty. And now he slaughters my sheep. You----"
The Master started to speak. But a white little hand, in the darkness,
was laid gently across his mouth.
"You told me he always slept under the piano in your music room!"
accused the guest as the four made their way paddock-ward, lighting a
path with the electric flashlights. "Well, I looked there just now. He
isn't under the piano. He---- He----"
"Lad!" called the Master; then at the top of his lungs. "_Lad!_"
A distant growl, a snarl, a yelp, a scramble--and presently Lad
appeared in the farthest radius of the flashlight flare.
For only a moment he stood there. Then he wheeled about and vanished
in the dark. Nor had the Master the voice to call him back. The
momentary glimpse of the great collie, in the merciless gleam of the
lights, had stricken the whole party into an instant's speechlessness.
Vividly distinct against the darkness they had seen Lad. His
well-groomed coat was rumpled. His eyes were fire-balls. And--his
jaws were red with blood. Then he had vanished.
A groan from the Master--a groan of heartbreak--was the first sound
from the four. The dog he loved was a killer.
"It isn't true! It isn't true!" stoutly declared the Mistress.
The Wall Street Farmer and McGullicuddy had already broken into a
run. The shepherd had found the tracks of many little hoofs on the
dewy ground. And he was following the trail. The guest, swearing and
panting, was behind him. The Mistress and the Master brought up the
rear.
At every step they peered fearfully around them for what they dreaded
to see--the mangled body of some slain sheep. But they saw none. And
they followed the trail.
In a quarter mile they came to its end.
All four flashlights played simultaneously upon a tiny hillock that
rose from the meadow at the forest edge. The hillock was usually
green. Now it was white.
Around its short slopes was huddled a flock of sheep, as close-ringed
as though by a fence. At the hillock's summit sat Lad. He was sitting
there in a queer attitude, one of his snowy forepaws pinning something
to the ground--something that could not be clearly distinguished
through the huddle but which, evidently, was no sheep.
The Wall Street Farmer broke the tense silence with a gobbled
exclamation.
"Whisht!" half reverently interrupted the shepherd, who had been
circling the hillock on census duty. "There's na a sheep gone, nor--so
far's I can see--a sheep hurted. The fu' twenty is there."
The Master's flashlight found a gap through which its rays could reach
the hillock crest. The light revealed, under Lad's gently pinioning
forepaw, the crouching and badly scared Melisande--the $1100 Prussian
sheep dog.
McGullicuddy, with a grunt, was off on another and longer tour of
inspection. Presently he came back. He was breathing hard.
Even before McGillicuddy made his report the Master had guessed at the
main points of the mystery's solution.
Melisande, weary of captivity, had gnawed through her leash. Seeking
sport, she had gone to the paddock. There she had easily worried loose
the crazy gate latch. Just as she was wriggling through, Lad appeared
from the veranda.
He had tried to drive back the would-be killer from her prey. Lad was
a veteran of several battles. But, apart from her sex, Melisande was
no opponent for him. And he had treated her accordingly. Melisande
had snapped at him, cutting him deeply in the underjaw. During the
scrimmage the panic-urged sheep had bolted out of the paddock and had
scattered.
Remember, please, that Lad, ten hours earlier, had never in his life
seen a sheep. But remember, too, that a million of his ancestors had
won their right to a livelihood by their almost supernatural skill at
herding flocks. Let this explain what actually happened--the throwback
of a great collie's instinct.
Driving the scared and subdued Melisande before him--and ever hampered
by her unwelcome presence--Lad proceeded to round up the scattered
sheep. He was in the midst of the process when the Master called
him. Merely galloping back for an instant, and finding the summons was
not repeated, he returned to his atavistic task.
In less than five minutes the twenty scampering runaways were "ringed"
on the hillock. And, still keeping the Prussian sheep dog out of
mischief, Lad established himself in the ring's center.
Further than that, and the keeping of the ring intact, his primal
instincts did not serve him. Having rounded up his flock Lad had not
the remotest idea what to do with them. So he merely held them there
until the noisily gabbling humans should decide to take the matter out
of his care.
McGillicuddy examined every sheep separately and found not a scratch
or a stain on any of them. Then he told in effect what has here been
set down as to Lad's exploit.
As he finished his recital McGillicuddy looked shamefacedly around him
as though gathering courage for an irksome task. A sickly yellow dawn
was crawling over the eastern mountains, throwing a ghostly glow on
the shepherd's dour and craggy visage. Drawing a long breath of
resolve he advanced upon Lad. Dropping on one knee, his eyes on a
level with the unconcernedly observant collie's, McGillicuddy intoned:
"Laddie, ye're a braw, braw dog. Ou, a canny dog! A sonsie dog,
Laddie! I hae na met yer match this side o' Kirkcaldy Brae. Gin ye'll
tak' an auld fule's apology for wrangin' ye, an' an auld fule's hand
in gude fellowship, 'twill pleasure me, Laddie. Winna ye let bygones
be bygones, an' shake?"
Yes, the speech was ridiculous, but no one felt like laughing, not
even the Wall Street Farmer. The shepherd was gravely sincere and he
knew that Lad would understand his burring words.
And Lad did understand. Solemnly he sat up. Solemnly he laid one
white forepaw in the gnarled palm the kneeling shepherd outstretched
to him. His eyes glinted in wise friendliness as they met the
admiring gaze of the old man. Two born shepherds were face to
face. Deep was calling unto deep.
Presently McGillicuddy broke the spell by rising abruptly to his
feet. Gruffly he turned to the Master.
"There's na wit, sir," he growled, "in speirin' will ye sell
him. But--but I compliment ye on him, nanetheless."
"That's right; McGillicuddy's right!" boomed the Wall Street Farmer,
catching but part of his shepherd's mumbled words. "Good idea! He is a
fine dog. I see that now. I was prejudiced. I freely admit it. A
remarkable dog. What'll you take for him? Or--better yet, how would
you like to swap, even, for Melisande?"
The Master's mouth again flew ajar, and many sizzling words jostled
each other in his throat. Before any of these could shame his
hospitality by escaping, the Mistress hurriedly interposed:
"Dear, we left all the house doors wide open. Would you mind hurrying
back ahead of us and seeing that everything is safe? And--will you
take Lad with you?"