It began with a gap in a line fence. The gap should never have been
there. For, on the far side of it roamed creatures whose chief zest in
life is the finding of such gaps and in breaking through for forage.
The Place's acreage ended, to northward, in the center of an oak grove
whose northern half was owned by one Titus Romaine; a crabbed little
farmer of the old school. Into his half of the grove, in autumn when
mast lay thick and rich amid the tawny dead leaves, Romaine was wont to
turn his herd of swine.
To Lad, the giant collie, this was always a trying season. For longer
than he could remember, Lad had been the official watchdog of the
Place. And his chief duties were to keep two-footed and four-footed
strays from trespassing thereon.
To an inch, he knew the boundaries of the Master's land. And he knew
that no human intruder was to be molested; so long as such intruder had
the sense to walk straight down the driveway to the house. But woe to
the tramp or other trespasser who chanced to come cross lots or to
wander in any way off the drive! Woe also to such occasional cattle or
other livestock as drifted in from the road or by way of a casual
fence-gap!
Human invaders were to be met in drastic fashion. Quadruped trespassers
were to be rounded up and swept at a gallop up the drive and out into
the highroad. With cattle or with stray horses this was an easy job;
and it contained, withal, much fun;--at least, for Lad.
But, pigs were different.
Experience and instinct had taught Lad what few humans realize. Namely,
that of all created beasts, the pig is the worst and meanest and most
vicious; and hardest to drive. When a horse or a cow, or a drove of
them, wandered into the confines of the Place, it was simple and joyous
to head them off, turn them, set them into a gallop and send them on
their journey at top speed. It took little skill and less trouble to do
this. Besides, it was gorgeous sport. But pigs--!
When a porker wriggled and hunched and nosed a space in the line fence,
and slithered greasily through, Lad's work was cut out for him. It
looked simple enough. But it was not simple. Nor was it safe.
In the first instance, pigs were hard to start running. Oftener than
not they would stand, braced, and glare at the oncoming collie from out
their evil little red-rimmed eyes; the snouts above the hideous masked
tushes quivering avidly. That meant Lad must circle them, at whirlwind
speed; barking a thunderous fanfare to confuse them; and watching his
chance to flash in and nip ear or flank; or otherwise get the brutes to
running.
And, even on the run, they had an ugly way of wheeling, at close
quarters, to face the pursuer. The razor tushes and the pronged
forefeet were always ready, at such times, to wreak death on the dog,
unless he should have the wit and the skill and the speed to change, in
a breath, the direction of his dash. No, pigs were not pleasant
trespassers. There was no fun in routing them. And there was real
danger.
Except by dint of swiftness and of brain; an eighty-pound collie has no
chance against a six-hundred-pound pig. The pig's hide, for one thing,
is too thick to pierce with an average slash or nip: And the pig is too
close to earth and too well-balanced by build and weight, to be
overturned: And the tushes and forefeet can move with deceptive
quickness. Also, back of the red-rimmed little eyes flickers the redder
spirit of murder.
Locomotive engineers say a cow on a track is far less perilous to an
oncoming train than is a pig. The former can be lifted, by the impact,
and flung to one side. A pig, oftener than not, derails the engine.
Standing with the bulk of its weight close to the ground, it is
well-nigh as bad an obstacle to trains as would be a boulder of the
same size. Lad had never met any engineers. But he had identically
their opinion of pigs.
In all his long life, the great collie had never known fear. At least,
he never had yielded to it. Wherefore, in the autumns, he had attacked
with gay zest such of Titus Romaine's swine as had found their way
through the fence.
But, nowadays, there was little enough of gay zest about anything
Laddie did. For he was old;--very, very old. He had passed the
fourteenth milestone. In other words, he was as old for a dog as is an
octogenarian for a man.
Almost imperceptibly, but to his indignant annoyance, age had crept
upon the big dog; gradually blurring his long clean lines; silvering
his muzzle and eyebrows; flecking his burnished mahogany coat with
stipples of silver; spreading to greater size the absurdly small white
forepaws which were his one gross vanity; dulling a little the
preternaturally keen hearing and narrowing the vision.
Yes, Lad was old. And he was a bit unwieldy from weight and from age.
No longer could he lead Wolf and Bruce in the forest rabbit chases.
Wherefore he stayed at home, for the most part and seldom strayed far
from the Mistress and the Master whom he worshiped.
Moreover, he deputed the bulk of trespass-repelling to his fiery little
son, Wolf; and to the graver and sweeter Bruce;--"Bruce, the Beautiful."
Which brings us by needfully prosy degrees to a morning, when two
marauders came to the Place at the same time, if by different routes.
They could not well have come at a more propitious time, for
themselves; nor at a worse time for those whose domain they visited.
Bruce and Wolf had trotted idly off to the forest, back of the Place,
for a desultory ramble in quest of rabbits or squirrels. This they had
done because they were bored. For, the Mistress and the Master had
driven over for the morning mail; and Lad had gone with them, as usual.
Had it been night, instead of morning, neither Wolf nor Bruce would
have stirred a step from the grounds. For both were trained watchdogs,
But, thus early in the day, neither duty nor companionship held them at
home. And the autumn woods promised a half-hour of mild sport.
The superintendent and his helpers were in the distant "upper field,"
working around the roots of some young fruit trees. But for the maids,
busy indoors, the Place was deserted of human or canine life.
Thus, luck was with the two intruders.
Through the fence-gap in the oak-grove, bored Titus Romaine's hugest
and oldest and crankiest sow. She was in search of acorns and of any
other food that might lie handy to her line of march. In her owner's
part of the grove, there was too much competition, in the food-hunt,
from other and equally greedy pigs of the herd. These she could fight
off and drive from the choicest acorn-hoards. But it was easier to
forage without competition.
So through the gap she forced her grunting bulk; and on through the
Place's half of the oak-grove. Pausing now and then to root amid the
strewn leaves, she made her leisurely way toward the open lawn with its
two-hundred-year-old shade-oaks, and its flower-borders which still
held a few toothsome bulbs.
The second intruder entered the grounds in much more open fashion. He
was a man in the late twenties; well-set up, neatly, even sprucely,
dressed; and he walked with a slight swagger. He looked very much at
home and very certain of his welcome.
A casual student of human nature would have guessed him to be a
traveling salesman, finely equipped with nerve and with confidence in
his own goods. The average servant would have been vastly impressed
with his air of self assurance; and would have admitted him to the
house, without question. (The long-memoried warden of Auburn Prison
would have recognized him as Alf Dugan, one of the cleverest automobile
thieves in the East.)
Mr. Dugan was an industrious young man; as well as ingenious. And he
had a streak of quick-witted audacity which made him an ornament to his
chosen profession. His method of work was simple. Coming to a rural
neighborhood, he would stop at some local hotel, and, armed with clever
patter and a sheaf of automobile insurance documents, would make the
rounds of the region's better-class homes.
At these he sold no automobile insurance; though he made seemingly
earnest efforts to do so. But he learned the precise location of each
garage; the cars therein; and the easiest way to the highroad, and any
possible obstacles to a hasty flight thereto. Usually, he succeeded in
persuading his reluctant host to take him to the garage to look at the
cars and to estimate the insurable value of each. While there, it was
easy to palm a key or to get a good look at the garage padlock for
future skeleton-key reference; or to note what sort of car-locks were
used.
A night or two later, the garage was entered and the best car was
stolen. Dugan, like love, laughed at locksmiths.
Sometimes,--notably in places where dogs were kept,--he would make his
initial visit and then, choosing a time when he had seen some of the
house's occupants go for a walk with their dogs, would enter by broad
daylight, and take a chance at getting the car out, unobserved. If he
were interrupted before starting off in the machine, why, he was that
same polite insurance aunt who had come back to revise his estimate on
the premium needed for the car; and was taking another look at it to
make certain. Once in the driver's seat and with the engine going, he
had no fear of capture. A whizzing rush to the highroad and down it to
the point where his confederate waited with the new number-plates; and
he could snap his fat fingers at pursuit.
Dugan had called at the Place, a week earlier. He had taken interested
note of the little garage's two cars and of the unlocked garage doors.
He had taken less approving note of the three guardian collies: Lad,
still magnificent and formidable, in spite of his weight of
years;--Bruce, gloriously beautiful and stately and aloof;--young Wolf,
with the fire and fierce agility of a tiger-cat. All three had watched
him, grimly. None had offered the slightest move to make friends with
the smooth-spoken visitor. Dogs have a queerly occult sixth sense,
sometimes, in regard to those who mean ill to their masters.
This morning, idling along the highroad, a furlong from the Place's
stone gateway, Dugan had seen the Mistress and the Master drive past in
the smaller of the two cars. He had seen Lad with them. A little later,
he had seen the men cross the road toward the upper field. Then, almost
on the men's heels, he had seen Bruce and Wolf canter across the same
road; headed for the forest. And Dugan's correctly stolid face rippled
into a pleased smile.
Quickening his pace, he hurried on to the gateway and down the drive.
But, as he passed the house on his way to the garage where stood the
other and larger car, he paused. Out of an ever-vigilant eye-corner, he
saw an automobile turn in at the gateway, two hundred yards up the
wooded slope; and start down the drive.
The Mistress and the Master were returning from the post office.
Dugan's smile vanished. He stopped in his tracks; and did some fast
thinking. Then, mounting the veranda steps, he knocked boldly at a side
door; the door nearest to him. As the maids were in the kitchen or
making up the bedrooms, his knock was unheard. Half hidden by the
veranda vines, he waited.
The car came down the driveway and circled the house to the side
farthest from Dugan. There, at the front door, it halted. The Mistress
and Lad got out. The Master did not go down to the garage. Instead, he
circled the house again; and chugged off up the drive; bound for the
station to meet a guest whose train was due in another ten minutes.
Dugan drew a long breath; and swaggered toward the garage. His walk and
manner had in them an easy openness that no honest man's could possibly
have acquired in a lifetime.
The Mistress, deposited at the front veranda, chirped to Lad; and
started across the lawn toward the chrysanthemum bed, a hundred feet
away.
The summer's flowers were gone--even to the latest thin stemmed Teplitz
rose and the last stalk of rose-tinted cosmos. For dining table, now,
and for living-room and guest rooms, nothing was left but the mauve and
bronze hardy chrysanthemums which made gay the flower border at the
crest of the lawn overlooking the lake. Thither fared the Mistress, in
search of blossoms.
Between her and the chrysanthemum border was a bed of canvas. Frost had
smitten the tall, dark stems; leaving only a copse of brown stalks. Out
of this copse, chewing greedily at an uprooted bunch of canna-bulbs,
slouched Romaine's wandering sow. At, sight of the Mistress, she paused
in her leisurely progress and, with the bunch of bulbs still hanging
from one corner of her shark-mouth, stood blinking truculently at the
astonished woman.
Now, Lad had not obeyed the Mistress's soft chirp. It had not reached
his dulling ears;--the ears which, of old, had caught her faintest
whisper. Yet, he would have followed her, as ever, without such
summons, had not his nostrils suddenly become aware of an alien scent.
Lad's sense of smell, like his hearing, was far less keen than once it
had been. But, it was still strong enough to register the trace of
intruders. His hackles bristled. Up went the classically splendid head,
to sniff the light breeze, for further information as to the reek of
pig and the lighter but more disquieting scent of man.
Turning his head, to reinforce with his near-sighted eyes the failing
evidence of his nostrils, he saw the sow emerge from the canna-clump.
He saw, too--or he divined--the look in her pale little red-rimmed
eyes; as they glared defiantly at the Mistress. And Lad cleared the
porch steps at one long leap.
For the instant, he forgot he was aged and stout and that his joints
ached at any sudden motion; and that his wind and his heart were not
what they had been;--and that his once-terrible fangs were yellowed and
blunt; and that his primal strength was forever fled. Peril was facing
the Mistress. That was all Laddie knew or cared. With his wonted
trumpet-bark of challenge, he sped toward her.
The Mistress, recovering from her surprise at the apparition of the
huge pig, noticed the bunch of canna-bulbs dangling from the slobbery
lips. This very week all the bulbs were to have been dug up and taken
into the greenhouse, for the winter. Angered,--with all a true
flower-lover's indignation,--at this desecrating of one of her beloved
plants, she caught up a stick which had been used as a rose-prop.
Brandishing this, and crying "Shoo!" very valiantly indeed, she
advanced upon the sow.
The latter did not stir; except to lower her bristling head an inch or
so; and let drop the bunch of bulbs from between her razor-teeth. The
Mistress advanced another step; and struck at the beast.
The sow veered, to avoid the blow; then, with ludicrous yet deadly
swiftness, wheeled back and charged straight for the woman.
Many a child and not a few grown men and women have gone down under
such murderous charges; to be trampled and gouged and torn to death,
before help could come. But the slaveringly foul jaws did not so much
as touch the hem of the Mistress's dress.
Between her and the sow flashed a swirl of mahogany-and-snow. Lad,
charging at full speed, crashed into the forward-lurching
six-hundredweight of solid flesh and inch-thick hide.
The impact bowled him clean over, knocking the breath out of him. Not
from choice had he made such a blundering and un-collielike attack. In
other days, he could have flashed in and out again, with the speed of
light; leaving his antagonist with a slashed face or even a broken leg,
as souvenir of his assault. But those days were past. His uncannily
wise brain and his dauntless courage were all that remained of his
ancient prowess. And this brain and pluck told him his one chance of
checking the sow's charge on the Mistress was to hurl himself full at
her.
His impetus, which had knock him flat, scarce slowed down the pig's
lurching rush; scarce enabled the frightened Mistress to recoil a step.
Then, the sow was lunging at her again, over the prostrate dog's body.
But, even as he fell, Lad had gathered his feet under him. And the
shock which knocked him breathless did not make the wise brain waver in
its plan of campaign. Before he sought to rise, up drove his bared
teeth, at the sow that was plunging across him. And those teeth clove
deep into her pinkish nostrils;--well-nigh the only vulnerable spot,
(as Lad knew) in her bristling pigskin armor.
Lad got his grip. And, with all his fragile old strength, he hung on;
grinding the outworn fangs further and further into the sensitive nose
of his squealing foe.
This stopped the sow's impetuous charge; for good and all. With a heavy
collie hanging to one's tortured nose and that collie's teeth sunk deep
into it, there is no scope for thinking of any other opponent. She
halted, striking furiously, with her sharp cloven fore-hoofs, at the
writhing dog beneath her.
One ferociously driving hoof cut a gash in Lad's chest. Another tore
the skin from his shoulder. Unheeding, he hung on. The sow braced
herself, solid, on outspread legs; and shook her head and forequarters
with all her muscular might.
Lad was hurled free, his weakened jaws failing to withstand such a
yank. Over and over he rolled, to one side; the sow charging after him.
She had lost all interest in attacking the Mistress. Her flaming little
brain now held no thought except to kill and mangle the dog that had
hurt her snout so cruelly. And she rushed at him, the tushes glinting
from under her upcurled and bleeding lips.
But, the collie, for all his years and unwieldiness, was still a
collie. And, by the time he stopped rolling, he was scrambling to his
feet. Shrinking quickly to one side, as the sow bore down upon him, he
eluded her rush, by the fraction of an inch; and made a wolflike slash
for her underbody, as she hurtled by.
The blunted eyetooth made but a superficial furrow; which served only
to madden its victim still further. Wheeling, she returned to the
attack. Again, with a ghost of his old elusive speed; Laddie avoided
her rush, by the narrowest of margins; and, snapping furiously, caught
her by the ear.
Now, more than once, in other frays, Lad had subdued and scared
trespassing pigs by this hold. But, in those days, his teeth had been
keen and his jaw strong enough to crack a beef bone. Moreover, the pigs
on which he had used it to such effect were not drunk with the lust of
killing.
The sow squealed, afresh, with pain; and once more braced herself and
shook her head with all her might: Again, Lad was flung aside by that
shake; this time with a fragment of torn ear between his teeth.
As she drove slaveringly at him once more, Lad swerved and darted in;
diving for her forelegs. With the collie, as with his ancestor, the
wolf, this dive for the leg of an enemy is a favorite and tremendously
effective trick in battle. Lad found his hold, just above the right
pastern. And he exerted every atom of his power to break the bone or to
sever the tendon.
In all the Bible's myriad tragic lines there is perhaps none other so
infinitely sad,--less for its actual significance than for what it
implies to every man or woman or animal, soon or late,--than that which
describes the shorn Samson going forth in jaunty confidence to meet the
Philistines he so often and so easily had conquered:
"He wist not that the Lord was departed from him!"
To all of us, to whom the doubtful blessing of old age is granted, must
come the black time when we shall essay a task which once we could
accomplish with ease;--only to find its achievement has passed forever
beyond our waning powers. And so, this day, was it with Sunnybank Lad.
Of yore, such a grip as he now secured would have ham strung or
otherwise maimed its victim and left her wallowing helpless. But the
dull teeth merely barked the leg's tough skin. And a spasmodic jerk
ripped it loose from the dog's hold.
Lad barely had time to spring aside, to dodge the wheeling sow. He was
panting heavily. His wounds were hurting and weakening him. His wind
was gone. His heart was doing queer things which made him sick and
dizzy. His strength was turning to water. His courage alone blazed high
and undimmed.
Not once did it occur to him to seek safety in flight. He must have
known the probable outcome. For Lad knew much. But the great heart did
not flinch at the prospect. Feebly, yet dauntlessly, he came back to
the hopeless battle. The Mistress was in danger. And he alone could
help.
No longer able to avoid the rushes, he met some of them with
pathetically useless jaws; going down under others and rising with ever
greater slowness and difficulty. The sow's ravening teeth found a goal,
more than once, in the burnished mahogany coat which the Mistress
brushed every day with such loving care. The pronged hoofs had twice
more cut him as he strove to roll aside from their onslaught after one
of his heavy tumbles.
The end of the fight seemed very near. Yet Lad fought on. To the
attack, after each upset or wound, he crawled with deathless courage.
The Mistress, at Lad's first charge, had stepped back. But, at once she
had caught up again the stick and belabored the sow with all her frail
muscular might. She might as well have been beating the side of a
concrete wall. Heedless of the flailing, the sow ignored her; and
continued her maddened assault on Lad. The maids, attracted by the
noise, crowded the front doorway; clinging together and jabbering. To
them the Mistress called now for the Master's shotgun, from the study
wall, and for a handful of shells.
She kept her head; though she saw she was powerless to save the dog she
loved. And her soul was sick within her at his peril which her puny
efforts could not avert.
Running across the lawn, toward the house, she met half way the maid
who came trembling forth with the gun and two shells. Without stopping
to glance at the cartridges,--nor to realize that they were filled with
Number Eight shot, for quails,--she thrust two of them into the breech
and, turning, fired pointblank at the sow.
Lad was down again; and the sow,--no longer in a squealing rush, but
with a new cold deadliness,--was gauging the distance to his exposed
throat. The first shot peppered her shoulder; the tiny pellets scarce
scratching the tough hide.
The Mistress had, halted, to fire. Now, she ran forward: With the
muzzle not three feet from the sow's head, she pulled trigger again.
The pig's huge jaws road opened with deliberate width. One forefoot was
pinning the helplessly battling dog to earth, while she made ready to
tear out his throat.
The second shot whizzed about her head and face. Two or three of the
pellets entered the open mouth.
With a sound that was neither grunt nor howl, yet which savored of
both, the sow lurched back from the flash and roar and the anguishing
pain in her tender mouth. The Mistress whirled aloft the empty and
useless gun and brought it crashing down on the pig's skull. The carved
mahogany stock broke in two. The jar of impact knocked the weapon from
its wielder's numbed fingers.
The sow seemed scarce to notice the blow. She continued backing away;
and champed her jaws as if to locate the cause of the agony in her
mouth. Her eyes were inflamed and dazed by the flash of the gun.
The Mistress took advantage of the moment's breathing space to bend
over the staggeringly rising Lad; and, catching him by the ruff, to
urge him toward the house. For once, the big collie refused to obey. He
knew pig nature better than did she. And he knew the sow was not yet
finished with the battle. He strove to break free from the loved grasp
and to stagger back to his adversary.
The Mistress, by main strength, drew him, snarling and protesting,
toward the safety of the house. Panting, bleeding, reeling, pitiably
weak, yet he resisted the tender urging; and kept twisting his bloody
head back for a glimpse of his foe. Nor was the precaution useless.
For, before the Mistress and her wounded dog were half-way across the
remaining strip of lawn, the sow recovered enough of her deflected wits
and fury to lower her head and gallop down after them.
At her first step, Lad, by a stupendous effort, wrenched free from the
Mistress's clasp; and flung himself between her and the charging mass
of pork. But, as he did so, he found breath for a trumpet-bark that
sounded more like a rallying cry.
For, dulled as were his ears, they were still keener than any human's.
And they had caught the sound of eight flying paws amid the dead leaves
of the drive. Wolf and Bruce, coming home at a leisurely trot, from
their ramble in the forest, had heard the two reports of the shotgun;
and had broken into a run. They read the meaning in Lad's exhausted
bark, as clearly as humans might read a printed word. And it lent wings
to their feet.
Around the corner of the house tore the two returning collies. In a
single glance, they seemed to take in the whole grisly scene. They,
too, had had their bouts with marauding swine; and they were still
young enough to enjoy such clashes and to partake of them without
danger.
The sow, too blind with pain and rage to know reinforcements were
coming to the aid of the half-dead hero, tore forward. The Mistress,
with both hands, sought to drag Lad behind her. The maids screeched in
plangent chorus.
Then, just as the sow was launching herself on the futilely snapping
Lad, she was stupidly aware that the dog had somehow changed to three
dogs. One of these three the Mistress was still holding. The two
others, with excellent teamwork, were assailing the sow from opposite
sides.
She came to a sliding stop in her charge; blinking in bewildered fury.
Bruce had caught her by the torn left ear; and was keeping easily out
of her way, while he inflicted torture thereon. Wolf, like a furry
whirlwind, had stopped only long enough to slash her bleeding nose to
the bone; and now was tearing away at her hind leg in an industrious
and very promising effort to hamstring her. In front, Lad was still
straining to break the Mistress's loving hold; and to get at his
pestered enemy.
This was more than the huge porker had bargained for. Through all her
murder-rage, she had sense enough to know she was outnumbered and
beaten. She broke into a clumsy gallop; heading homeward.
But Bruce and Wolf would not have it so. Delightedly they tore in to
the attack. Their slashing fangs and their keenly nipping front teeth
were everywhere. They were all over her. In sudden panic, blinded by
terror and pain, the sow put her six hundred pounds of unwieldy weight
into the fastest motion she could summon. At a scrambling run, she set
off, around the house; head down, bitten tail aloft; the two dogs at
her bleeding haunches.
Dimly, she saw a big and black obstacle loom up in her path. It was
coming noisily toward her. But she was going too fast and too blindly
to swerve. And she met it, headlong; throwing her vast weight forward
in an attempt to smash through it. At the same time, Wolf and Bruce
left off harrying her flanks and sprang aside.
Dugan had reached the garage unseen. There, he had backed out the car,
by hand; shoving it into the open, lest the motor-whirr give premature
announcement of his presence. Then, as he boarded the machine and
reached for the self-starter, all bedlam broke loose, from somewhere in
the general direction of the house, fifty yards away.
Dugan, glancing up apprehensively, beheld the first phases of the
fight. Forgetting the need of haste and of secrecy, he sat there,
open-mouthed, watching a scrimmage which was beyond all his sporting
experience and which thrilled him as no prize-fight had ever done.
Moveless, wide eyed, he witnessed the battle.
But the arrival of the two other dogs and the flight of the sow roused
him to a sense of the business which had brought him thither. The
Mistress and the maids had no eyes or ears for anything but the wounded
Lad. Dugan knew he could, in all probability, drive to the main road
unnoticed; if he should keep the house between him and the women.
He pressed the self-starter; threw off the brake and put the car into
motion. Then, as he struck the level stretch of driveway, back of the
house, he stepped hard on the accelerator. Here, for a few rods, was
danger of recognition; and it behooved him to make speed. He made it.
Forward bounded the car and struck a forty-mile gait. And around the
house's far corner and straight toward Dugan came flying the sow and
the two collies. The dogs, at sight of the onrushing car, sprang aside.
The sow did not.
In the narrow roadway there was no room for Dugan to turn out. Nor did
he care to. Again and again he had run over dogs, without harming his
car or slackening its pace. And of course it would be the same with a
pig. He stepped harder on the accelerator.
Alf Dugan came to his senses in the hospital ward of the Paterson jail.
He had not the faintest idea how he chanced to be there. When they told
him the car had turned turtle and that he and a broken-necked pig had
been hauled out of the wreckage, he asked in all honesty:
"What car? What pig? Quit stringing me, can't you? Which of my legs did
you say is bust, and which one is just twisted? They both feel as bad
as each other. How'd I get here, anyhow? What happened me?"
When the vet had worked over Lad for an hour and had patched him up and
had declared there was no doubt at all about his getting well, Wolf and
Bruce were brought in to see the invalid. The Mistress thought he might
be glad to see them.
He was not.
Indeed, after one scornful look in their direction, Laddie turned away
from the visitors, in cold disgust. Also, he was less demonstrative
with the Mistress, than usual. Anyone could see his feelings were
deeply hurt. And anyone who knew Lad could tell why.
He had borne the brunt of the fight. And, at the last, these lesser
dogs had won the victory without his aid. Still worse, his beloved
Mistress,--for whom he had so blithely staked his aged life,--the
Mistress had held him back by force from joining in the delirious last
phases of the battle. She had made him stand tamely by, while others
finished the grand work he had begun.
It was not fair. And Laddie let everyone in sight know it was not fair;
and that he had no intention of being petted into a good humor.
Still, when, by and by, the Mistress sat down on the floor beside him
and told him what a darling and wonderful and heroic dog he was and how
proud she felt of his courage, and when her dear hand rumpled the soft
hair behind his ears,--well, somehow Lad found himself laying his head
in her lap; and making croony low sounds at her and pretending to bite
her little white hand.
It was always hard to stay offended at the Mistress.