Scampering out of the dairy, ankle deep in a river of spilt milk, and paying no heed to the cries of the scandalized cook, he charged forth in the open again. His eye fell on a red cow, tethered by a long chain in a pasture-patch beyond the stables.She was an old acquaintance of his, this cow. She had been on The Place since before he was born. Yet, to-day Lad's spear knew no brother. He tore across the lawn and past the stables, straight at the astonished bovine. In terror, the cow threw up her tail and sought to lumber away at top speed. Being controlled by her tether she could run only in a wide circle. And around and around this circle Lad drove the bellowing brute as fast as he could make her run, until the gardener came panting to her relief.
But neither the gardener nor any other living creature could stay Lad's rampage that day. He fled merrily up to the Lodge at the gate, burst into[Pg 39] its kitchen and through to the refrigerator. There, in a pan, he found a raw leg of mutton. Seizing this twelve-pound morsel in his teeth and dodging the indignant housewife, he careered out into the highway with his prize, dug a hole in the roadside ditch and was gleefully preparing to bury the mutton therein, when its outraged owner rescued it.
A farmer was jogging along the road behind a half-dozing horse. A painful nip on the rear hind-leg turned the nag's drowsy jog into a really industrious effort at a runaway. Already, Lad had sprung clear of the front wheel. As the wagon bumped past him, he leaped upward; deftly caught a hanging corner of the lap-robe and hauled it free of the seat.
Robe in mouth, he capered off into a field; playfully keeping just out of the reach of the pursuing agrarian; and at last he deposited
the stolen treasure in the heart of a bramble-patch a full half-mile from the road.
Lad made his way back to The Place by a wide detour that brought him through the grounds of a neighbor of the Master's.
This neighbor owned a dog--a mean-eyed, rangy and mangy pest of a brute that Lad would ordinarily have scorned to notice. But, most decidedly, he noticed the dog now. He routed it out of its kennel and bestowed upon it a thrashing that brought its possessor's entire family shrieking to the scene of conflict.
[Pg 40]
Courteously refusing to carry the matter further, in face of a half-dozen shouting humans, Lad cantered homeward.
From the clothes-line, on the drying-ground at The Place, fluttered a large white object. It was palpably a nurse's uniform--palpably
the nurse's uniform. And Lad greeted its presence there with a grin of pure bliss.
In less than two seconds the uniform was off the line, with three huge rents marring its stiff surface. In less than thirty seconds, it was reposing in the rich black mud on the verge of the lake, and Lad was rolling playfully on it.
Then he chanced to remember his long-neglected enemies, the squirrels, and his equally-neglected prey, the rabbits. And he loped off to the forest to wage gay warfare upon them. He was gloriously, idiotically, criminally happy. And, for the time, he was a fool.
All day long, complaints came pouring in to the Master. Lad had destroyed the whole "set" of cream. Lad had chased the red cow
till it would be a miracle if she didn't fall sick of it. Lad had scared poor dear little Peter Grimm so badly that the cat seemed likely to spend all the rest of its nine lives squalling in the tree-top and crossly refusing to come down.
Lad had spoiled a Sunday leg of mutton, up at the Lodge. Lad had made a perfectly respectable horse run madly away for nearly twenty-five feet,[Pg 41] and had given the horse's owner a blasphemous half-mile run over a plowed field after a cherished and rav-ished lap-robe. Lad had well-nigh killed a neighbor's particularly killable dog. Lad had wantonly destroyed the nurse's very newest and most expensive uniform. All day it was Lad--Lad--Lad!
Lad, it seemed, was a storm-center, whence radiated complaints that ran the whole gamut from tears to lurid profanity; and, to each and every complainant, the Master made the same answer:
"Leave him alone. We're just out of hell--Lad and I! He's doing the things I'd do myself, if I had the nerve." Which, of course, was a manifestly asinine way for a grown man to talk.
Long after dusk, Lad pattered meekly home, very tired and quite sane. His spell of imbecility had worn itself out. He was once more
his calmly dignified self, though not a little ashamed of his babyish pranks, and mildly wondering how he had come to behave so.
14
Still, he could not grieve over what he had done. He could not grieve over anything just yet. The Mistress was alive! And while the craziness had passed, the happiness had not. Tired, drowsily at peace with all the world, he curled up under the piano and went to sleep.
He slept so soundly that the locking of the house for the night did not rouse him. But something[Pg 42] else did. Something that occurred long after everyone on The Place was sound asleep. Lad was joyously pursuing, through the forest aisles of dreamland, a whole army of squirrels that had not sense enough to climb trees--when in a moment, he was wide awake and on guard. Far off, very far off, he heard a man walking.
Now, to a trained dog there is as much difference in the sound of human footfalls as, to humans, there is a difference in the aspect
of human faces. A belated countryman walking along the highway, a furlong distant, would not have awakened Lad from sleep. Also, he knew and could classify, at any distance, the footsteps of everyone who lived on The Place. But the steps that had brought him wide awake and on the alert to-night, did not belong to one of The Place's people; nor were they the steps of anybody who had a right to be on the premises.
Someone had climbed the fence, at a distance from the drive, and was crossing the grounds, obliquely, toward the house. It was a man, and he was still nearly two hundred yards away. Moreover, he was walking stealthily; and pausing every now and then as if to reconnoiter.
No human, at that distance, could have heard the steps. No dog could have helped hearing them. Had the other dogs been at home instead of at the boarding-kennels, The Place would by this time have been re-echoing with barks. Both scent and[Pg 43] sound would have given them ample warning of the stranger's presence.
To Lad, on the lower floor of the house, where every window was shut, the aid of scent was denied. Yet his sense of hearing was enough. Plainly, he heard the softly advancing steps--heard and read them. He read them for an intruder's--read them for the steps of a man who was afraid to be heard or seen, and who was employing all the caution in his power.
A booming, trumpeting bark of warning sprang into Lad's throat--and died there. The sharp command "Quiet!" was still in force. Even in his madness, that day, he had uttered no sound. He strangled back the tumultuous bark and listened in silence. He had risen to his feet and had come out from under the piano. In the middle of the living-room he stood, head lowered, ears pricked. His ruff was abristle. A ridge of hair rose grotesquely from the shaggy mass of coat along his spine. His lips had slipped back from his teeth. And so he stood and waited.
The shuffling, soft steps were nearer now. Down through the trees they came, and then onto the springy grass of the lawn. Now
they crunched lightly on the gravel of the drive. Lad moved forward a little and again stood at attention.
The man was climbing to the veranda. The vines rustled ever so slightly as he brushed past them. His footfall sounded lightly on the veranda itself.
[Pg 44]
Next there was a faint clicking
