did not wait for the negro’s knife to find his heart. As the man lunged, the dog transferred his profitless shoulderhold to a grip on the stabbing arm. The knife blade plowed an ugly furrow along his side. And the dog’s curved eye-tooth slashed the negro’s arm from elbow to wrist, clean through to the bone.
The knife clattered to the floor. The negro wheeled and made a leap for the open window; he had not cleared half the space when Lad bounded for the back of his neck. The dog’s upper set of teeth raked the man’s hard skull, carrying away a handful of wool and flesh; and his weight threw the thief forward on hands and knees again. Twisting, the man found the dog’s furry throat; and with both hands sought to strangle him; at the same time backing out through the window. But it is not easy to strangle a collie. The piles of tumbled ruff-hair form a protection no other breed of dog can boast. Scarcely had the hands found their grip when one of them was crushed between the dog’s vise-like jaws.
The negro flung off his enemy and turned to clear the veranda at a single jump. But before he had half made the turn, Lad was at his throat again, and the two crashed through the vines together and down onto the driveway below. The entire combat had not lasted for more than thirty seconds.
The Master, pistol and flashlight in hand, ran down to find the living-room amuck with blood and with smashed furniture, and one of the windows open. He flashed the electric ray through the window. On the ground below, stunned by striking against a stone jardinière in his fall, the negro sprawled senseless upon his back. Above him was Lad, his searching teeth at last having found their coveted throat-hold. Steadily, the great dog was grinding his way through toward the jugular.
There was a deal of noise and excitement and light after that. The negro was trussed up and the local constable was summoned by telephone. Everybody seemed to be doing much loud talking.
Lad took advantage of the turmoil to slip back into the house and to his “cave” under the piano; where he proceeded to lick solicitously the flesh wound on his left side.
He was very tired; and he was very unhappy and he was very much worried. In spite of all his own precautions as to silence, the negro had made a most ungodly lot of noise. The commandment “Quiet!” had been fractured past repair. And, somehow, Lad felt blame for it all. It was really his fault—and he realized it now—that the man had made such a racket. Would the Master punish him? Perhaps. Humans have such odd ideas of Justice. He——
Then it was that the Master found him; and called him forth from his place of refuge. Head adroop, tail low, Lad crept out to meet his scolding. He looked very much like a puppy caught tearing a new rug.
But suddenly, the Master and everyone else in the room was patting him and telling him how splendid he was. And the Master had found the deep scratch on his side and was dressing it, and stopping every minute or so, to praise him again. And then, as a crowning reward, he was taken upstairs for the Mistress to stroke and make much of.
When at last he was sent downstairs again, Lad did not return to his piano-lair. Instead, he went out-of-doors and away from The Place. And, when he thought he was far enough from the house, he solemnly sat down and began to bark.
It was good—passing good—to be able to make a noise again. He had never before known how needful to canine happiness a bark really is. He had long and pressing arrears of barks in his system. And thunderously he proceeded to divest himself of them for nearly half an hour.
Then, feeling much, much better, he ambled homeward, to take up normal life again after a whole fortnight of martyrdom.
Chapter III. A Miracle of Two
The connecting points between the inner and outer Lad were a pair of the wisest and darkest and most sorrowful eyes in all dogdom—eyes that gave the lie to folk who say no dog has a soul. There are such dogs once in a human generation.
Lad had but one tyrant in all the world. That was his dainty gold-and-white collie-mate, Lady; Lady, whose affections he had won in fair life-and-death battle with a younger and stronger dog; Lady, who bullied him unmercifully and teased him and did fearful things to his stately dignity; and to whom he allowed liberties that would have brought any other aggressor painfully near to death.
Lady was high-strung and capricious; a collie de luxe. Lad and she were as oddly contrasted a couple, in body and mind, as one could find in a day’s journey through their North Jersey hinterland. To The Place (at intervals far too few between to suit Lad), came human guests; people, for the most part, who did not understand dogs and who either drew away in causeless fear from them or else insisted on patting or hauling them about.
Lad detested guests. He met their advances with cold courtesy, and, as soon as possible, got himself out of their way. He knew the Law far too well to snap or to growl at a guest. But the Law did not compel him to stay within patting distance of one.
The careless caress of the Mistress or the Master—especially of the Mistress—was a delight to him. He would sport like an overgrown puppy with either of these deities; throwing dignity to the four winds. But to them alone did he unbend—to them and to his adored tyrant, Lady.
To The Place, of a cold spring morning, came a guest; or two guests. Lad at first was not certain which. The visible guest was a woman. And, in her arms she carried a long bundle that might have been anything at all.
Long as was the bundle, it was ridiculously light. Or, rather, pathetically light. For its folds contained a child, five years old; a child that ought to have weighed more than forty pounds and weighed barely twenty. A child with a wizened little old face, and with a skeleton body which was powerless from the waist down.
Six months earlier, the Baby had been as vigorous and jolly as a collie pup. Until an invisible Something prowled through the land, laying Its finger-tips on thousands of such jolly and vigorous youngsters, as frost’s fingers are laid on autumn flowers—and with the same hideous effect.
This particular Baby had not died of the plague, as had so many of her fellows. At least, her brain and the upper half of her body had not died.
Her mother had been counseled to try mountain air for the hopeless little invalid. She had written to her distant relative, the Mistress, asking leave to spend a month at The Place.
Lad viewed the arrival of the adult guest with no interest and with less pleasure. He stood, aloof, at one side of the veranda, as the newcomer alighted from the car.
But, when the Master took the long bundle from her arms and carried it up the steps, Lad waxed curious. Not only because the Master handled his burden so carefully, but because the collie’s uncanny scent-power told him all at once that it was human.
Lad had never seen a human carried in this manner. It did not make sense to him. And he stepped, hesitantly, forward to investigate.
The Master laid the bundle tenderly on the veranda hammock-swing, and loosed the blanket-folds that swathed it. Lad came over to him, and looked down into the pitiful little face.
There had been no baby at The Place for many a year. Lad had seldom seen one at such close quarters. But now the sight did something queer to his heart—the big heart that ever went out to the weak and defenseless, the heart that made a playfully snapping puppy or a cranky little lapdog as safe from his terrible jaws as was Lady herself.
He sniffed in friendly fashion at the child’s pathetically upturned face. Into the dull baby-eyes, at sight of him, came a look of pleased interest—the first that had crossed their blankness
