Life was monstrous pleasant, for Lad, at the Place. And never, except
in early puppyhood, was he lonely. Never until the Master was so
foolish as to decide in his own shallow human mind that the big collie
would be happier with another collie for comrade and mate.
After that, loneliness more than once crept into Laddie's serene life;
and into the dark sorrowful eyes behind which lurked a soul. For, until
one has known and relied on the companionship of one's kind, there can
be no loneliness.
The Master made another blunder--this one on his own account and on the
Mistress's,--when he bought a second collie, to share Lad's realm of
forest and lawn and lake. For, it is always a mistake to own two dogs
at a time. A single dog is one's chum and guard and worshiper. If he be
rightly treated and talked to and taught, he becomes all-but human.
Because he is forced to rely solely on humans, for everything. And his
mind and heart respond to this. There is no divided allegiance.
One dog in a home is worth ten times as much to his owners, in every
way, as are two or more dogs. Especially if the one dog be such a
collie as Sunnybank Lad. This the Master was due to discover.
On a sloppy and drippy and muggy afternoon, late in October,--one of
those days nobody wants,--the Master came home from town; his fall
overcoat showing a decided list to starboard in the shape of an
egregiously bulged side-pocket.
The Mistress and Lad, as ever, came forth to greet the returning man.
Lad, with the gayly trumpeting bark which always he reserved for the
Mistress or the Master after an absence of any length, cavorted
rapturously up to his deity. But, midway in his welcoming advance, he
checked himself; sniffing the sodden October air, and seeking to locate
a new and highly interesting scent which had just assailed his
sensitive nostrils.
The Master put an end to the mystery, forthwith, by reaching deep into
his overcoat's swollen pocket and fishing out a grayish golden ball of
squirming fluff.
This handful of liveliness he set gingerly on the veranda floor; where
it revealed itself as an eight-weeks old collie pup.
"Her name is 'Lady,'" expounded the Master, as he and the Mistress
gazed interestedly down upon the sprawling and wiggling puppy. "Her
pedigree reads like a page in Burke's Peerage. She--"
He paused. For Lad had moved forward to where the infant collie was
trying valiantly to walk on the slippery boards. The big dog regarded
the puppy; his head on one side, his tulip ears cocked; his deep-set
eyes friendily curious. This was Lad's first experience with one of the
young of his species. And he was a bit puzzled; albeit vastly
interested.
Experimentally, he laid one of his tiny white forepaws lightly on the
mite's fuzzy shoulder. Instantly, the puppy growled a falsetto warning
to him to keep his distance. Lad's plumed tail began to wag at this
sign of spirit in the pigmy. And, with his curved pink ribbon of
tongue, he essayed to lick the shivering Lady. A second growl rewarded
this attention. And Lady sought to avoid further contact with the
shaggy giant, by scrambling at top speed to the edge of the veranda.
She miscalculated the distance or else her nearsighted baby eyes failed
to take account of the four-foot drop to the gravel drive below. Too
late, she tried to check her awkward rush. And, for a moment, her fat
little body swayed perilously on the brink.
The Mistress and the Master were too far away to catch her in time to
prevent a fall which might well have entailed a broken rib or a
wrenched shoulder. But Lad was nearer. Also, he moved faster.
With the speed of lightning, he made a dive for the tumbling Lady. As
tenderly as if he were picking up a ball of needles, he caught her by
the scruff of the neck, lifting her in the air and depositing her at
the Mistress's feet.
The puppy repaid this life-saving exploit by growling still more
wrathfully and by snapping in helpless menace at the big dog's nose.
But Lad was in no wise offended. Deaf to the praise of the Mistress,--a
praise which ordinarily threw him into transports of embarrassed
delight,--he stood over the rescued pup; every inch of his magnificent
body vibrant with homage and protectiveness.
From that hour, Lad was the adoring slave of Lady.
He watched over her, in her increasingly active rambles about the
Place. Always, on the advent of doubtful strangers, he interposed his
own furry bulk between her and possible kidnaping. He stood beside her
as she lapped her bread-and-milk or as she chewed laboriously at her
fragment of dog-biscuit.
At such times, he proved himself the mortal foe of Peter Grimm, the
Mistress's temperamental gray kitten, with whom he was ordinarily on
very comfortable terms. Peter Grimm was the one creature on the Place
whom Lady feared. On the day after her arrival, she essayed to worry
the haughty catkin. And, a second later, the puppy was nursing a brace
of deep red scratches at the tip of her inquiring black nostrils.
Thereafter, she gave Peter Grimm a wide berth. And the cat was wont to
take advantage of this dread by making forays on Lady's supper dish.
But, ever, Lad would swoop down upon the marauder, as Lady cowered
whimperingly back on her haunches; and would harry the indignant cat up
the nearest tree; herding her there until Lady had licked the dish
clean.
Lad went further, in his fealty to the puppy. Sacrificing his own regal
dignity, he would romp with her, at times when it would have been far
more comfortable to drowse. He bore, without murmur, her growling
assaults on his food; amusedly standing aside while she annexed his
supper's choicest bits.
He endured, too, her occasional flurries of hot temper; and made no
protest when Lady chose to wreak some grievance against life by flying
at him with bristling ruff and jaws asnarl. Her keen little milk teeth
hurt like the mischief, when they dug into his ears or his paws, in one
of these rage-gusts. But he did not resent the pain or the indignity by
so much as drawing back out of harm's way. And, afterward, when quick
repentance replaced anger and she strove to make friends with him
again, Lad was inordinately happy.
To both the Mistress and the Master, from the very outset, it was plain
that Lady was not in any way such a dog as their beloved Lad. She was
as temperamental as Peter Grimm himself. She had hair-trigger nerves, a
swirlingly uncertain temper that was scarce atoned for by her charm and
lovableness; and she lacked Lad's stanchness and elusive semi-human
quality. The two were as different in nature as it is possible for a
couple of well-brought-up thoroughbred collies to be. And the humans'
hearts did not go out to Lady as to Lad. Still, she was an ideal pet,
in many ways. And, Lad's utter devotion to her was a full set of
credentials, by itself.
Autumn froze into winter. The trees turned into naked black ghosts; or,
rather, into many-stringed harps whereon the northwest gales
alternately shrieked and roared. The fire-blue lake was a sheet of
leaden ice, twenty inches thick. The fields showed sere and grayly
lifeless in the patches between sodden snow-swathes. Nature had flown
south, with the birds; leaving the northern world a lifeless and empty
husk, as deserted as last summer's robin-nests.
Lady, in these drear months of a dead world, changed as rapidly as had
the smiling Place. From a shapeless gray-gold fuzzy baby, she grew lank
and leggy. The indeterminate fuzz was buried under a shimmering
gold-and-white coat of much beauty. The muskrat face lengthened and
grew delicately graceful, with its long muzzle and exquisite profile.
Lady was emerging from clownish puppyhood into the charm of youth. By
the time the first anemones carried God's message of spring through the
forests' lingering snow-pall, she had lost her adolescent gawkiness and
was a slenderly beautiful young collie; small and light of bone, as she
remained to the day of her death, but with a slimness which carried
with it a hint of lithe power and speed and endurance.
It was in the early spring that the Master promoted Lady from her
winter sleeping-quarters in the tool-house; and began to let her spend
more and more time indoors.
Lady had all the promise of becoming a perfect housedog. Fastidious,
quick to learn, she adapted herself almost at once to indoor life. And
Lad was overjoyed at her admission to the domain where until now he had
ruled alone. Personally, and with the gravity of an old-world host, he
conducted her from room to room. He even offered her a snoozing-place
in his cherished "cave," under the piano, in the music room the spot of
all others dearest to him.
But it was dim and cheerless, under the piano; or so Lady seemed to
think. And she would not go there for an instant. She preferred the
disreputable grizzly-bear rug in front of the living room hearth. And,
temporarily deserting his loved cave, Lad used to lie on this rug at
her side; well content when she edged him off its downy center and onto
the bumpy edges.
All winter, Lady's sleeping quarters had been the tool-house in the
back garden, behind the stables. Here, on a sweet-smelling (and
flea-averting) bed of cedar shavings, she had been comfortable and
wholly satisfied. But, at once, on her promotion, she appeared to look
upon the once-homelike tool-house as a newly rich daylaborer might
regard the tumbledown shack where he had spent the days of his poverty.
She avoided the tool-house; and even made wide detours to avoid passing
close to it. There is no more thoroughgoing snob, in certain ways, than
a high-bred dog. And, to Lady, the tool-house evidently represented a
humiliating phase of her outlived past.
Yet, she was foredoomed to go back to the loathed abode. And her return
befell in this way:
In the Master's study was something which Lady considered the most
enthrallingly wonderful object on earth. This was a stuffed American
eagle; mounted, rampant and with outflung wings, on a papier-mache
stump.
Why the eagle should have fascinated Lady more than did the
leopard-or-bear rugs or other chase-trophies, in the various downstairs
rooms, only Lady herself could have told. But she could not keep her
eyes off of it. Tiptoeing to the study door, she used to stand for half
an hour at a time staring at the giant bird.
Once, in a moment of audacity, she made a playful little rush at it.
Before the Master could intervene, Lad had dashed between her and the
sacred trophy; and had shouldered her gently but with much firmness out
of the room; disregarding her little swirl of temper at the
interference.
The Master called her back into the study. Taking her up to the eagle,
he pointed at it, and said, with slow emphasis:
"Lady! Let it ALONE! Let--it--ALONE!"
She understood. For, from babyhood, she had learned, by daily practice,
to understand and interpret the human voice. Politely, she backed away
from the alluring bird. Snarling slightly at Lad, as she passed him in
the doorway, she stalked out of the room and went out on the veranda to
sulk.
"I'm glad I happened to be here when she went for the eagle," said the
Master, at lunch that day. "If I hadn't, she might have tackled it
sometime, when nobody was around. And a good lively collie pup could
put that bit of taxidermy out of commission in less than five seconds.
She knows, now, she mustn't touch it."
He spoke smugly; his lore on the subject being bounded by his
experiences in teaching Lad the simple Law of the Place. Lad was one of
the rare dogs to whom a single command or prohibition was enough to fix
a lesson in his uncannily wise brain for life. Lady was not. As the
Master soon had occasion to learn.
Late one afternoon, a week afterward, the Mistress had set forth on a
round of neighborhood calls. She had gone in the car; and had taken Lad
along. The Master, being busy and abhorring calls, had stayed at home.
He was at work in his study; and Lady was drowsing in the cool lower
hall.
A few minutes before the Mistress was due to return for dinner, a whiff
of acrid smoke was wafted to the man's nostrils.
Now, to every dweller in the country, there is one all-present peril;
namely, fire. And, the fear of this is always lurking worriedly in the
back of a rural householder's brain. A vagrant breath of smoke, in the
night, is more potent to banish sleep and to start such a man to
investigating his house and grounds than would be any and every other
alarm known to mortals.
Even now, in broad daylight, the faint reek was enough to bring the
Master's mind back to earth and the Master's body to its feet.
Sniffing, he went out to find the cause of the smell. The chimneys and
the roof and the windows of the house showing no sign of smoke, he
explored farther; and presently located the odor's origin in a small
brush-fire at some distance behind the stables. Two of the men were
raking pruned vine-suckers and leaves onto the blaze. The wind set away
from the house and stables. There was nothing to worry over. Ashamed of
his own fussiness, the Master went back to his work.
As he passed the open study window, on his way indoors, a motion inside
made him stop. He was just in time to see Lady trot into the room,
crouch playfully, and then spring full at the stuffed eagle.
His shout deflected the young dog's leap, and kept her merrily
outstretched jaws from closing on the bird. As it was, the impact
knocked the eagle and the papier-mache stump to the floor; with much
clatter and dust.
The Master vaulted in through the window; arriving on the study floor
almost as soon as did the overthrown bird. Lady was slinking out into
the hall; crestfallen and scared. The Master collared her and brought
her back to the scene of her mischief.
The collie had disobeyed him. Flagrantly she had sinned in assailing
the bird; after his injunction of "Let it alone!" There could be no
doubt, from her wriggling aspect of guilt, that she knew she was doing
wrong. Worse, she had taken sneaky advantage of his absence in order to
spring at the eagle. And disgust warred with the Master's normal
indignation.
Speaking as quietly as he could bring himself to speak, he told Lady
what she had done and what a rotten thing it had been. As he talked to
the utterly crestfallen pup, he was ransacking a drawer of his desk in
search of a dogwhip he had put there long ago and had never had
occasion to use.
Presently, he found it. Pointing to the overthrown trophy, he brought
the lash down across the shrinking collie's loins. He did not strike
hard. But he struck half a dozen times; and with glum knowledge that it
was the only course to take.
Never before in her eight foolish months of life, had Lady known the
meaning of a blow. While the whip-slashes were too light to do more
than sting her well-mattressed back, yet the humiliation of them seared
deep into her sensitive nature. No sound did she utter. But she cowered
flat to the floor; and trembled as if in a hard chill.
The whipping was over, in a few seconds. Again the Master explained to
her what it had been inflicted for. Then, calling her to follow, he led
the way out of doors and toward the stables. Stomach to earth, the
shamed and miserable Lady writhed along, close at his heels.
The Master passed the stables and walked toward the brush fire, where
the two men were still at work. But he did not go within a hundred feet
of the fire. Turning, after he had left the stables behind him, he made
for the tool-house.
Lady saw whither he was bound. She ceased to follow. Wheeling about,
she trotted stealthily back toward the stables. Reaching the tool-house
door, the Master opened it and whistled to the unhappy young collie.
Lady was nowhere in sight. At a second summons, she appeared from
around the corner of the stables; moving close to the ground, and with
many wriggles of protest. Twice, she stopped; and looked appealingly at
the man.
The Master hardened his soul against the prettily pathetic appeal in
her eyes and actions; and called her to him again. His own momentary
anger against the luckless youngster was gone,--the more so since the
eagle had not been damaged by its fall,--but he knew it was needful to
impress strongly on Lady the fact of her punishment. This for her own
sake as much as for his; since a housedog is worthless until it learns
that each and every indoor object must be respected and held sacred
from mutilation.
Wherefore, he was minded to spare Lady from any future punishment by
making this present lesson sink deep into her brain. Disregarding her
manifest aversion for the tool-house, he motioned her into it and shut
the door behind her.
"You'll stay there, till morning," he told her, as he closed the window
and glanced in at the forlorn little wisp of fur and misery. "You'll be
comfortable. And the open spaces under the roof will give you all the
air you want. I don't dare leave this window open, for fear you might
be able to jump out. You've had your supper. And there's a pan of fresh
water in there. You'll be no worse off there than you were all winter.
A night in jail may teach you to be a decent, house-broke dog; and not
a mutt."
As he was on the way back to his study, in the sunset, the car came
down the drive, bearing the Mistress. Lad was seated in solemn joy on
the front seat, at her side. The big collie loved motoring. And, as a
rule, he was relegated to the back seat. But when the Mistress went out
alone, his was the tremendously-enjoyed privilege of sitting in front,
beside her.
"I had to lick Lady," reported the Master, shamefacedly, as he helped
his wife from the car. "She went for the eagle in my study. You
remember how I scolded her for that, last week, don't you? Well, that's
all the good it did. And I had to whip her. I hated to. I'm glad you
weren't here to look unhappy about it. Then I shut her up for the night
in the tool-house. She--"
He broke off, to look at Lad.
As the collie had jumped down from the car and had started toward the
house, he had struck Lady's trail; and he had followed it. It had led
him to the tool-house. Finding Lady was locked inside and unhappy, he
had come galloping back to the Master.
Standing in front of the man, and whining softly, he was scanning the
faces of his two deities with troubled eagerness. Evidently, he
considered that Lady had been locked in by mistake; and he was pleading
for her release. As these humans did not seem to catch the idea his
eyes and expression conveyed, he trotted a few steps toward the
tool-house and then paused to look invitingly back at them.
Twice he did this. Then, coming up to the Master, he caught the
latter's coat-hem lightly between his teeth and tugged on it as he
backed toward the tool-house.
"No, old friend," said the Master, petting the silken head so
appealingly upraised to him. "I know what you're getting at. But I
can't let her out. Tomorrow morning. Not till then. Come on up to
dinner."
Unwillingly and with wistful backward looks, Lad followed the Mistress
and the Master to the house and into the dining room and to his wonted
place on the floor at the Master's left side. But, more than once
during the meal, the man caught the collie's eyes fixed on him in
worried supplication; and was hard put to it not to grant the plea
which fairly clamored in his chum's mute gaze.
After dinner, when the Mistress and the Master set off on their usual
evening walk, Lad was not on hand to accompany them. As a rule, he was
all around them and in front and behind, in a series of gay rushes, as
they started on these walks. But not until the Master called him,
tonight, did he appear. And then he came up dolorously from the
tool-house.
Lad did not understand, at all, what was wrong. He knew only that Lady
had been shut up in a place she detested and that she was horribly
unhappy and that the Master would not let her out. It perplexed him;
and it made him increasingly wretched. Not only did he miss his
playfully capricious young mate, but her unhappiness made him heartsick.
Vainly, he tried to plead with the Master for her release, as the walk
began; and again at its end.
There were such a lot of things in the world that even the cleverest
collie could not make head or tail of! And most of these things were
sad.
That night, when the house was shut, Lad crept as usual into his cave
under the piano. And he lay down with a sigh, his great head between
his two absurdly small white forepaws. As a rule, before going to sleep
for the night, Lad used to spend much time in licking those same snowy
forepaws into shining cleanliness. The paws were his one gross vanity;
and he wasted more than an hour a day in keeping them spotlessly white.
But tonight he was too depressed to think of anything but the
whimpering little dog imprisoned down in the tool-house.
After a while, he fell asleep.
A true watchdog sleeps with all his senses or the very edge of
wakefulness. And when he wakens, he does not waken as do we
humans;--yawningly, dazedly, drunk with slumber. At one moment he is
sound asleep. At the next he is broad awake; with every faculty alert.
So ever it was, with Lad. So it was with him, this night. An hour
before dawn, he woke with sharp suddenness; and at once he was on his
feet; tense, on guard. He did not know what had roused him. Yet, now
that he was awake, two of his senses recorded something which banished
from him all thought of further sleep.
To his ears came a far-off muffled wail;--a wail which held more than
unhappiness;--a wail which vibrated with real terror. And he knew the
voice for Lady's.
To his sensitive nostrils, through the intervening distance and the
obstructing walls and windows, drifted a faint reek of smoke.
Now, the smoke-smell, by itself, meant nothing whatever to Lad. All
evening a trace of it had hung in the air; from the brush fire. And, in
any case, this whiff was too slight to have emanated from the house or
from any spot near the house. Yet, taken together with Lady's cry of
fear--
Lad crossed to the front door, and scratched imperiously at it. The
locked door did not yield to his push. Too sensible to keep on at a
portal he could not open, he ran upstairs, to the closed door of the
Master's room. There, again he scratched; this time harder and more
loudly. Twice and thrice he scratched; whining under his breath.
At last the deep-slumbering Master heard him. Rousing himself, and
still three-quarters asleep, he heard not only the scratching and the
whimper but, in the distance, Lady's wail of fear. And, sleep-drugged,
he mumbled:
"Shut up, Laddie!--I hear her.--Let her howl.--If she's lonely, down
there, she'll--she'll remember the lesson--all the better. Go
downstairs and--be quiet!"
He fell sound asleep again. Obedient to the slumbrous mandate, Lad
turned and pattered mournfully away. But, he was not content to return
to his own nap, with that terror-cry of Lady's echoing in his ears. And
he made a second attempt to get out.
At each side of the piano, in the music room, was a long French window.
Often, by day, Lad used to pass in or out of these door-like windows.
He knew that they, as well as the doors, were a recognized means of
exit. Now, with eagerly scratching paw, he pushed at the nearest of
them.
The house was but carelessly locked at night. For Lad's presence
downstairs was a better burglar-preventive than the best bolts ever
forged. Tired and drowsy, the Master, this night, had neglected to bar
the French windows.
The window gave, at Lad's vehement scratch; and swung outward on its
hinges. A second later, the big dog was running at top speed toward the
tool-house.
Now, the ways of the most insignificant brushfire are beyond the exact
wisdom of man. Especially in droughty weather. When they knocked off
work for the day, the two laborers had gone back to the blaze beyond
the tool-house and conscientiously had scattered and stamped on its
last visible remnants. The Master, too, coming home from his evening
walk, had glanced toward the back garden and had seen no telltale spark
to hint at life in the trampled fire.
Nevertheless, a scrap of ember, hidden from the men's gaze beneath a
handful of dead leaves had refused to perish with its comrade-sparks.
And, in the course of five hours, an industrious little flicker had
ignited other bits of brush and of dried leafage and last year's weed
stumps. The wind was in the north. And it had guided the course of the
crawling thread of red. The advancing line had thrown out tendrils of
scarlet, as it went.
Most of these had died, in the plowed ground. One had not. It had crept
on, half-extinguished at times and again snapping merrily, until it had
reached the tool-house. The shed-like room stood on low joists, with a
clear space ten inches high between its flimsy board floor and the
ground. And, in this space, the leaves of the preceding autumn had
drifted in windrows. The persevering spark did the rest.
Lady woke from a fitful doze, to find herself choking from smoke. The
boards of the floor were too hot for endurance. Between their cracks
thin wavery slices of smoke were pouring upward into the room. The
leaves had begun to ignite the floor-boards and the lower part of the
ramshackle building's thin walls.
While the pain and humiliation of her whipping had not been able to
wring a sound from the young thoroughbred, yet fright of this sort was
afar different thing. Howling with panic terror, she dashed about the
small enclosure, clawing frantically at door and scantling. Once or
twice she made half-hearted effort to spring up at the closed window.
But, from lack of running-space as well as from lack of nerve to make
the high leap, she failed.
Across the lawn and door-yard and around the end of the stables
thundered Lad. With the speed of a charging bull he came on. Before he
reached the burning shack, he knew more of his mate's plight and peril
than any human could have known.
Around the small building he whirled, so close to it that the flames at
its base seared his mighty coat and blistered and blackened his white
paws.
Then, running back a yard or so, he flung his eighty-pound weight
crashingly at the fastened door. The door, as it chanced, was well-nigh
the only solid portion of the shack. And it held firm, under an impact
that bruised the flying dog and which knocked him breathless to the
fire-streaked ground.
At sound of her mate's approach, Lady had ceased wailing. Lad could
hear her terrified whimpers as she danced frantically about on the
red-hot boards. And the knowledge of her torture drove him momentarily
insane.
Staggering up from his fall, he flung his splendid head back and, with
muzzle to the clouded skies, he tore to shreds the solemn silences of
the spring night with a wolf-howl; hideous in its savage grief,
deafeningly loud.
As though the awesome yell had cleared his brain, he sprang to his feet
amid the stinging embers; steady, alert, calm; with no hint of despair
or of surrender.
His smarting eyes fixed themselves on the single dusty window of the
tool-house. Its sill was a full five feet above ground. Its four small
panes were separated by a wide old-fashioned cross-piece of hardwood
and putty. The putty, from age, was as solid as cement. The whole
window was a bare sixteen by twenty inches.
Lad ran back, once more, a few feet; his gaze fixed appraisingly on the
window and measuring his distance with the sureness of a sharpshooter.
The big collie had made up his mind. His plan was formed. And as he was
all-wise, with the eerie wisdom of the highest type of collie, there
can be scant doubt he knew just what that plan entailed.
It was suicide. But, oh, it was a glorious suicide! Compared to it the
love-sacrifices of a host of Antonys and Abelards and Romeos are but
petty things. Indeed, its nearest approach in real life was perhaps
Moore's idiotically beautiful boast:
Through the fiery furnace your steps I'll pursue;
To find you and save you:--or perish there, too!
The great dog gathered himself for the insane hero-deed. His shaggy
body whizzed across the scarlet pattern of embers; then shot into the
air. Straight as a flung spear he flew; hurtling through the
flame-fringed billows of smoke.
Against the shut window he crashed, with the speed of a catapult.
Against it he crashed; and clean through it, into the hell of smoke and
fire and strangulation inside the shack.
His head had smashed the strong cross-piece of wood and dried putty and
had crumpled it like so much wet paper. His giant shoulders had ripped
the window-frame clean of its screws. Into the burning room spun Lad,
amid a hail of broken glass and splintered wood.
To the fire-eaten floor he was hurled, close to his cowering and
whimpering mate. He reeled to his feet, and stood there, shoulder to
shoulder with Lady. His work was done.
And, yet, it was not in Sunnybank Lad's nature to be such a fool as is
the usual melodrama hero. True, he had come to share Lady's fate, if he
could not rescue her. Yet, he would not submit tamely to death, until
every resource had been tried.
He glanced at the door. Already he had found by harsh experience that
his strength availed nothing in the battering down of those strong
panels. And he peered up, through the swirling red smoke, toward the
oblong of window, whereby he had made his tumultuous entrance to the
death-trap.
Again, he must have known how hopeless of achievement was the feat he
was about to try. But, as ever, mere obstacles were not permitted to
stand in Lad's way.
Wheeling, he seized Lady by the nape of the neck. With a mighty heave,
he swung her clear of the hot floor. Gathering all his fierce strength
into one sublime effort, he sprang upward toward the window; his mate
hanging from his iron jaws.
Yes, it was a ridiculous thing to attempt. No dog, with thrice Lad's
muscular strength, could have accomplished the impossibility of
springing out through that high, narrow window, carrying a weight of
fifty pounds between his teeth.
Lad's leap did not carry him half the distance he had aimed for. Back
to the floor he fell, Lady with him.
Maddened by pain and by choking and by stark terror, Lady had not the
wit to realize what Lad was attempting. All she knew was that he had
seized her roughly by the neck, and had leaped in air with her; and had
then brought her bangingly down upon the torturing hot boards. And her
panic was augmented by delirious rage.
At Lad's face she flew, snarling murderously. One slash of her curving
eyetooth laid bare his cheek. Then she drove for his throat.
Lad stood stock still. His only move was to interpose his shaggy
shoulder to her ravening jaws. And, deep into the fur and skin and
flesh of his shoulder her furious teeth shore their way.
It would have been child's play for him to have shaken her off and to
have leaped to safety, alone, through the sash-less window.
Yet he stood where he was; his sorrowful eyes looking tenderly down
upon the maddened youngster who was tearing into him so ferociously.
And that was the picture the Master beheld; as he flung open the door
and blinked gaspingly through the smoke for the dog he had locked in.
Brought out of bed, on the jump, by Lad's unearthly wolf howl, he had
smelt the smoke and had run out to investigate. But, not until he
unbarred the tool-house door did he guess that Lady was not the burning
shack's only prisoner.
"It'll be another six months before your wonderful coat grows out
again, Laddie dear," observed the Mistress, next day, as she renewed
the smelly wet cloths on Lad's burned and glass-cut body. "Dr. Hopper
says so. But he says the rest of you will be as well as ever, inside of
a fortnight. And he says Lady will be well, before you will. But,
honestly, you'll never look as beautiful, again, to me, as you do this
very minute. He--he said you look like a scarecrow. But you don't. You
look like a--like a--a-What gorgeously splendid thing DOES he look
like, dear?" she appealed to her husband.
"He looks," replied the Master, after deep thought, "he looks like LAD.
And that's about the highest praise I know how to give him;--or give to
anyone."