Nor did Lad's misery seem ridiculous to the Place's many kindly neighbors; with whom the great dog was a favorite and who were righteously indignant over the killing of Lady.

Then in a single minute came the cure.

On Labor Day afternoon, the finals in a local tennis tournament were to be played at the mile distant country club. The Mistress and the Master went across to the tournament; taking Lad along. Not that there could be anything of the remotest interest to a dog in the sight of flanneled young people swatting a ball back and forth. But Lad was a privileged guest at all outdoor functions; and he enjoyed being with his two deities.

Thus, when the two climbed the clubhouse veranda, Lad was at their heels; pacing along in majestic unhappiness and not turning his beautiful head in response to any of a dozen greetings flung at him. The Mistress found a seat among a bevy of neighbors. Lad lay down, decorously, at her feet; and refused to display the faintest interest in anything that went on around him.

The playing had not yet begun. New arrivals were drifting up the steps of the clubhouse. Car after car disgorged women in sport clothes and men in knickerbockers or flannels. There was plenty of chatter and bustle and motion. Lad paid no heed to any of it.

Then, up to the foot of the veranda steps jarred a flashy runabout; driven by a flashier youth. At word from the policeman in charge he parked his car at the rear of the clubhouse among fifty others, and returned on foot to the steps.

"That's young Rhuburger," someone was confiding to the Mistress. "You must have read about him. He was arrested as a Conscientious Objector, during the war. Since then, his father has died, and left him all sorts of money. And he is burning it; in double handfuls. No one seems to know just how he got into the club, here. And no one seems to—"

The gossipy maundering broke off short; drowned in a wild beast growl.

Both the Mistress and her husband had been eyeing Rhuburger as he ascended the veranda steps in all the glory of unbelievably exquisite and gaudy raiment. There seemed to both of them something vaguely familiar about the fellow; though neither could place him. But, to Lad, there was nothing at all vague in his recollections of the gorgeous newcomer.

As Rhuburger reached the topmost step, the collie lifted his head, his nostrils dilating wide. A thrill went through him. His nearsighted eyes swept the crowd. They rested at last on Rhuburger. Another deep inhalation told him all he needed to know. Not in vain had Lad sniffed so long and so carefully at those faint footprints in the road dust, at the spot where Lady died. In his throat a deep growl was born.

"Hello, folks!" Rhuburger was declaiming, to a wholly unenthusiastic circle of acquaintances. "Made another record, just now. The little boat spun me here from Montclair in exactly nineteen minutes. That's—that's roughly an average rate of a mile in seventy-five seconds. Not so bad, eh? That car sure made a hit with ME, all right. Not so much of a hit, maybe, with a couple of chickens and a fat old dog that had the bad luck to be asleep in the middle of the—"

His plangent brag was lost in a sound seldom heard on the hither side of jungle or zoo. From the group of slightly disgusted onlookers, a huge and tawny shape burst forth; hurtling through the air, straight for the fat throat of the boaster.

Rhuburger, by some heaven-sent instinct, flung up his arms to shield his menaced jugular. He had no time to do more.

Lad's fury-driven eighty pounds of muscular weight crashed full against his chest. Lad's terrible teeth, missing their throat-goal, drove deep into the uplifted right forearm; shearing through imported tweed coat-sleeve and through corded silken shirt, and through flabby flesh and clean to the very bone.

The dog's lion-roar blended with the panic-screeches of the victim. And, under that fearful impact, Rhuburger reeled back from the stairhead, and went crashing down the steps, to the broad stone flagging at the bottom.

Not once, during that meteoric, shriek-punctured downward flight, did Lad loose his grip on the torn forearm. But as the two struck the flagging at the bottom, he shifted his hold, with lightning speed; stabbing once more for the exposed jugular.

He lunged murderously at his mark. Yes, and this time he found it. His teeth had touched the pudgy throat, and began to cleave their remorseless way to the very life of the man who had slain Lady.

But, out of the jumble of cries and stamping feet and explosive shouts from the scared onlookers on the veranda above, one staccato yell pierced the swirl of rage-mists in the avenging collie's brain.

"LAD!" came the Master's sharp, scandalized mandate. "LAD!!!"

Hating the thought of desisting from his cherished revenge, the dog heard and heeded. With visible reluctance, he drew back from the slaughter; and turned his noble head to face the man who was running down the steps toward him.

Lad knew well what he might expect, for this thing he had done. He knew the Law. He knew, almost from birth, the courteous tolerance due to folk among whom his deities took him. And now he had made an industrious effort to kill one of these people.

It was no light offense for a dog to attack a human. Lad, like every well-trained collie, knew that. His own death might well follow. Indeed, from the babel of voices on the veranda, squalling confusedly such hackneyed sentiments as "Mad dog!" and "Get a gun!" it seemed highly probable that Lad was due to suffer full penalty, from the man-pack.

Yet he gave no heed to the clamor. Instead, turning slowly, he faced the Master; ready for whatever might follow. But nothing followed,—nothing at least that he expected.

The Master simply commanded:—

"Down, Lad!"

As the dog, obediently, dropped to the ground, the Master bent to examine the groaning and maudlinly weeping Rhuburger. In this Samaritan task he was joined by one or two of the club's more venturesome members who had followed him down the steps.

Rhuburger was all-but delirious with fright. His throat was scored by the first raking of Lad's teeth; but in the merest of flesh-wounds. The chewed arm was more serious; but no bone or tendon was injured. A fortnight of care would see it as good as new. By more or less of a miracle, no bones had been broken and no concussion caused by the backward dive down the flight of steps. There were bad bruises a-plenty; but there was nothing worse.

As the Master and the few others who had descended the steps were working over the fallen man, the Mistress checked the turmoil on the veranda. At Lad's leap, memory of this speed-mad motorist had rushed back to her.

Now, tersely, for the benefit of those around, she was identifying him with the killer of Lady; whose death had roused so much indignation in the village. And, as she spoke, the people who had clamored loudest of mad dogs and who had called so frantically for a gun, waxed silent. The myriad glances cast at the prostrate and blubbering Rhuburger were not loving. Someone even said, loudly:

"GOOD old Laddie!"

As the Mistress and the Master were closing the house for the night, a car came down the drive. Out of it stepped their friend of many years, Maclay, the local Justice of the Peace.

"Hello, Mac!" hailed the Master. "Here to take us all to jail for assault-and-battery; or just to serve a 'dangerous dog' notice on us?"

He spoke lightly; but he was troubled. Today's escapade might well lead the village law to take some cognizance of Lad's ferocious deed.

"No," laughed Maclay. "Neither of those things. I'm here, unprofessionally. I thought you people might like to know a few things, before you go to bed. In the first place, the doctor patched up Rhuburger's bites and took him home. He couldn't take him home in Rhuburger's own car. For some of the tennis crowd had gotten at that. What they did to that $6,000 runabout was a crime! They stripped it of everything. They threw the carburetor and the wheels and the steering gear and a lot of other parts into the lake."

"WHAT?"

"Then they left their cards pinned to the dismantled machine's cushions;—in case Rhuburger cares to go further into the matter. While they were doing all that, the club's Governors had a hurry-call meeting. And for once the Board was unanimous about something. It was unanimous—in expelling Rhuburger from the club. Then we—By the way, where's Laddie? Curled up by Lady's grave, as usual, I suppose? Poor old dog!"

"No," denied the Mistress. "He's asleep in his 'cave' under the piano. He went there, of his own accord. And he ate a perfectly tremendous supper, tonight. He's—he's CURED!"



CHAPTER VIII. In Strange Company

Lad was getting along in years.

Not yet had age begun to claw at him; blearing the wondrous deep-set dark eyes and silvering the classic muzzle and broadening the shapely skull and stiffening the sweepingly free gait; dulling the sharp ears or doing any of the other pitiably tragic things that nature does to the dog who is progressing in his teens. Those, humiliations were still waiting for Lad, one by one; beyond the next Turn of the Road.

Yet the romp and the spirit of bubbling fun and the lavishly needless exercise—these were merging into sobriety. True, at rare times, with the Mistress or the Master—especially with the Mistress, Lad would forget he was middle-aged and dignified; and would play like a crazy puppy. But, for the most part he had begun to carry his years a trifle seriously.

He was not yet in the winter or even the Indian Summer of his beautiful life. But, at least, he had strolled into its early autumn.

And this, be it well remembered, is the curse which Stepmother Nature placed upon The Dog, when he elected to turn his back on his own kind, and to become the only one of the world's four-footed folk to serve Man of his own accord. To punish the Dog for this abnormality, Nature decreed that his life should begin to fail, almost as soon as it had reached the glory of its early prime.

A dog is not at his best, in mind or in body, until he has passed his third year. And, before he nears the ten-year mark, he has begun to decline. At twelve or thirteen, he is as decrepit as is the average human of seventy. And not one dog in a hundred can be expected to live to fourteen.

(Lad, by some miracle, was destined to endure past his own sixteenth birthday; a record seldom equaled among his race.)

And so to our story:—

When the car and the loaded equipment-truck drew up at the door, that golden October day, Lad forgot his advancing years. In a moment, he was once more a puppy. For he knew what it all meant. It did not need the advent of the Mistress and the Master from the house, in rough outing clothes, nor the piling of duffle-bags and the like into the car's tonneau, to send Laddie into a transport of trumpeting and gyrations. The first sight and sniff of the tents, rolled tight in the truck, had done that. Lad understood. Lad always understood.

This gear meant the annual fall camping trip in the back reaches of the Ramapo Mountains, some twenty-odd miles north of the Place; the fortnight of tent-life, of shooting, of fishing, of bracingly chill nights and white-misted dawns and of drowsily happy campfire evenings. It meant all manner of adventure and fun for Lad.

Now, on a fishing jaunt, the presence of any kind of dog is a liability; not an asset. A thousand dog-fancier fishermen can attest to that. And, when humans are hunting any sort of game, a collie is several degrees worse than worthless.

Thus, Lad's usefulness, as a member of the party, was likely to be negligible;—except in the matter of guarding camp and as an all-round pal for the two campers.

Yet, as on former years, there was no question of leaving him at home. Where the Mistress and the Master went, he went, too; whenever such a thing were possible. He was their chum. And they would have missed him as much as he would have missed them.

Which, of course, was an absurd way for two reasonably sane people to regard a mere dog. But, then, Lad was not a "mere" dog.

Thus it was that he took his place, by invitation, in the car's tonneau, amid a ruck of hand-luggage; as the camp-ward pilgrimage began. Ten miles farther on, the equipment truck halted to take aboard a guide named Barret, and his boy; and their professionally reliable old Irish setter.

This setter had a quality, not over-common with members of his grand breed; a trait which linked his career pathetically with that of a livery-plug. He would hunt for anybody. He went through his day's work, in stubble or undergrowth, with the sad conscientiousness of an elderly bookkeeper.

Away from the main road, and up a steadily rising byway that merged into an axle-snapping mountain-track, toiled the cars; at last coming to a wheezy and radiator-boiling halt at the foot of a rock-summit so steep that no vehicle could breast it. In a cup, at the summit of this mountain-top hillock, was the camp-site; its farther edge only a few yards above a little bass-populated spring-lake.

The luggage was hauled, gruntily, up the steep; and camp was pitched. Then car and truck departed for civilization. And the two weeks of wilderness life set in.

It was a wonderful time for old Lad. The remoteness and wild stillness of it all seemed to take him back, in a way, to the wolf-centuries of his ancestors. It had been monstrous pleasant to roam the peaceful forest back of the Place. But there was a genuine thrill in exploring these all-but manless woods; with their queer scents of wild things that seldom ventured close to the ordained haunts of men.

It was exciting, to wake at midnight, beside the smoldering campfire, and to hear, above the industrious snoring, of the guide and his boy, the stealthy forest noises; the pad-pad-pad of some wary prowler circling at long range the twinkling embers; the crash of a far-off buck; the lumbering of some bear down to the lake to drink. The almost moveless sharp air carried a myriad fascinating scents which human nostrils were too gross to register; but which were acutely plain and understandable to the great dog.

Best of all, in this outing, Lad's two deities, the Mistress and the Master, were never busy at desk or piano, or too much tangled up with the society of silly outsiders, to be his comrades and playmates. True, sometimes they hurt his supersensitive feelings most distressingly, by calling to him: "No, no, Laddie. Back! Watch camp'" when he essayed to join them as they set forth with rods over their shoulders for a half-day's fishing; or as, armed with guns, they whistled up the bored but worthy setter for a shooting trip. But, for the most, Lad was close at their sides, during these two wonderful weeks. And he was very happy.

Once, during a solitary ramble, before the humans had awakened in the morning, Lad caught an odd scent; and followed it for a quarter mile down the mountainside. It waxed stronger and ranker. At last, a turn around a high boulder brought him face to face with its source. And he found himself confronting a huge black bear.

The bear was busy looting a bee-tree. It was the season when he and his like are stocking up, with all the fatmaking food they can gorge, in preparation for the winter's "holing-in." Thus, he viewed with sluggish non-interest the advent of the dog. He had scented Lad for as long a time as Lad had scented him. But he had eaten on, unperturbed. For he knew himself to be the match of any four dogs; especially if the dogs were unaccompanied by men. And, a long autumn of food had dulled his temper.

So, he merely checked his honey-gorging long enough to roll a rotted log to one side and to scoop up from under it a pawful of fat white grubs which had decided to winter beneath the decayed trunk. Then, absent-mindedly brushing aside a squadron of indignant bees, he continued his sweet feast.

As Lad rounded the boulder and came to a growling halt, the bear raised his honey-smeared head, showed a yellowing fang from under one upcurled corner of his sticky lips; and glowered evilly at the collie from out of his reddening little eyes. Then he made as though to go on eating.

But Lad would not have it so. Into his rejuvenated heart stole a tinge of the mischief which makes a collie puppy dash harrowingly at a tethered cow. Barking with sheer delight in the excitement of meeting this savage-looking monster, the dog rushed merrily at the bear. His teeth were not bared. His hackles were not bristling. This was no fight; but a jolly game. Lad's dark eyes danced with fun.

Midway of his charge, he checked himself. Not through fear, but from utter astonishment. For his new acquaintance had done a right non-quadrupedal thing. Bruin had reared himself upon his hind legs; and was standing there, like a man, confronting the dog. He towered, thus, ever so high above Lad's head.

His short arms, with their saber-shaped claws, were outstretched toward Lad, as if in humble supplication. But there was nothing supplicating or even civil in the tiny red eyes that squinted ferociously down at the collie. Small wonder that Laddie halted his own galloping advance; and stood doubtful!

The Master, a minute earlier, had turned out of the blankets for his painfully icy morning plunge in the lakelet. The fanfare of barking, a quarter-mile below, changed his intent. A true dogman knows his dog's bark,—and its every shade of meaning,—as well as though it were human speech. From the manner wherewith Lad had given tongue, the Master knew he had cornered or treed something quite out of the common. Catching up his rifle, he made for the direction of the bark; running at top speed.

The bear put an end to the moment of hesitancy. Lunging forward, he raked at the crouching collie, with one of his murderous claws; in a gesture designed to gather the impudent dog into his death-embrace.

Now, even from humans, except only the Mistress and the Master, Lad detested patting or handling of any kind. Whether he thought this maneuver of the bear's an uncouth form of caress or knew it for a menace,—he moved back from it. Yet he did so with a leisurely motion, devoid of fear and expressive of a certain lofty contempt. Perhaps that is why he moved without his native caution.

At all events, the tip of one of the sweeping claws grazed his ear, opening the big vein, and hurting like the very mischief.

On the instant, Lad changed from a mischievous investigator to a deeply offended and angry dog. No longer in doubt as to Bruin's intent, he slithered out of reach of the grasping arms, with all the amazing speed of a wolf-descended collie of the best sort. And, in practically the same fraction of a second, he had flashed back to the attack.

Diving in under the other's surprisingly agile arms, he slashed the bear's stomach with one of his razorlike eyeteeth; then spun to one side and was out of reach. Down came the bear, on all fours; raging from the slash. Lurching forward, he flung his huge bulk at the dog. Lad flashed out of reach, but with less leeway than he would have expected. For Bruin, for all his awkwardness, could move with bewildering speed.

And, as the bear turned, Lad was at him again, nipping the hairy flank, till his teeth met in its fat; and then diving as before under the lunging body of the foe.

It was at this point the Master hove in sight. He was just in time to see the flank-bite and to see Lad dance out of reach of the furious counter. It was an interesting spectacle, there in the gray dawn and in the primeval forest's depths;—this battle between a gallant dog and a ragingly angry bear. If the dog had been other than his own loved chum, the Master might have stood there and watched its outcome. But he was enough of a woodsman to know there could, in all probability, be but one end to such a fight.

Lad weighed eighty pounds,—an unusually heavy weight for a collie that carries no loose fat,—and he was the most compactly powerful dog of his size the Master had ever seen. Also, when he chose to exert it, Lad had the swiftness of a wildcat and the battling prowess of a tiger.

Yet all this would scarce carry him to victory, or even to a draw, against a black bear several times heavier than himself and with the ability to rend with his claws as well as with his teeth. Once let Lad's foot slip, in charge or in elusive retreat,—once let him misjudge time or distance—and he must be crushed to a pulp or ripped to ribbons.

Wherefore, the Master brought his rifle to his shoulder. His finger curled about the trigger. But it was no easy thing, by that dim light, to aim with any accuracy. Nor was there the slightest assurance that Lad,—dancing in and out and everywhere and nowhere at once,—might not come in line with the bullet. Thus,—from a tolerable knowledge of bears and of their comparative mildness in the plump season of the year,—he shouted at the top of his lungs; and, at the same time, fired into the air.

The bluff sufficed. Even as Lad jumped back from close quarters and whirled about, at sound of the voice and the shot,—the bear dropped to all fours, with ridiculous haste; and shambled off at very creditable speed into the tangle of undergrowth.

Not so far gone in the battle-lust had Bruin been that he cared to risk conflict with an armed man. Twice, before, in his somewhat long life, had he heard at close quarters the snap of a rifle, in the forest stillness, and the whine of a bullet. Once, such a bullet had found its mark by scoring a gouge on his scalp; a gouge which gnats and mayflies and "no-see-'ems" and less cleanly pests had made a torment for him, for weeks thereafter.

Bruin had a good memory. Just now, he had nothing to defend. He was not at bay. Nor had the fight-fury possessed him to the exclusion of sanity. Thus, he fled. And, eagerly, Lad gave chase.

But, at the very edge of the bush-rampart, the Master's call brought the collie back, to heel, exceeding glum and reluctant. Reproachfully, Lad gazed up at the man who had spoiled his morning of enthralling sport. Halfheartedly, Lad listened to the Master's rebuke, as he followed back to camp. His day had begun so delightfully! And, as usual, a human had interrupted the fun, at the most exciting time; and for no apparent reason. Humans were like that.

Barring one other incident, Lad's two weeks at camp were uneventful,—until the very last day. That "one incident" can be passed over, with modest brevity. It concerned a black-and-white cat which Lad saw, one evening, sneaking past the campfire's farthest shadows. He gave chase. The chase ended in less than ten seconds. And, Lad had to be bathed and scoured and rubbed and anointed, for the best part of twenty-four hours, before he was allowed to come again within fifty feet of the dining tent.

On a raw morning, the car and the truck made their appearance at the foot of the rocky mountaintop hillock. The tents had been struck, at daylight; and every cooking utensil and dish had been scoured and put into the crate as soon as it was used. Camp was policed and cleaned. The fire was beaten to death; a half-score pails of water were dowsed over its remains; and damp earth was flung upon it.

In short, the camping spot was not only left as it had been found and as one would want it to be found again, but every trace of fire was destroyed.

And all this, be it known, is more than a mere rule for campers. It should be their sacred creed. If one is not thoroughgoing sportsman enough to make his camp-site scrupulously clean, at least there is one detail he should never allow himself to neglect;—a detail whose omission should be punished by a term in prison: Namely, the utter extinction of the campfire.

Every year, millions of dollars' worth of splendid trees and of homes are wiped out, by forest fires. No forest fire, since the birth of time, ever started of its own accord. Each and every one has been due to human carelessness.

A campfire ill-extinguished;—a smolder of tobacco not stamped out;—the flaming cinders of a railroad train,—a match dropped among dry leaves before spark and blaze have both been destroyed,—these be the first and only causes of the average forest fire. All are avoidable. None is avoided. And the loss to property and to life and to natural resources is unbelievably great.

Any fool can start a forest fire. Indeed, a fool generally does. But a hundred men cannot check it. Forest wardens post warnings. Forest patrols, afoot or in airships, keep sharp watch. But the selfish carelessness of man undoes their best precautions.

Sometimes in spring or in lush summer, but far oftenest in the dry autumn, the Red Terror stalks over mountain and valley; leaving black ruin in its wake. Scarce an autumn passes that the dirty smoke reek does not creep over miles of sweet woodland, blotting out the sunshine for a time and blotting out rich vegetation for much longer.

This particular autumn was no exception. On the day before camp was broken, the Mistress had spied, from the eyrie heights of the knoll, a grim line of haze far to southward; and a lesser smoke-smear to the west. And the night sky, on two horizons, had been faintly lurid.

The campers had noted these phenomena, with sorrow. For, each wraithlike smoke-swirl meant the death of tree and shrub. Lad noted the smudges as distinctly as did they. Indeed, to his canine nostrils, the chill autumn air brought the faint reek of wood-smoke; an odor much too elusive, at that distance, for humans to smell. And, once or twice, he would glance in worried concern at these humans; as if wondering why they took so coolly a manifestation that a thousand-year-old hereditary instinct made the dog shrink from.

But the humans showed no outward sign of terror or of rage. And, as ever, taking his tone from his gods, Lad decided there was nothing to fear. So, he tried to give no further heed to the reek.

The driver of the truck and his assistant were full of tales of the fire's ravages in other sections. And their recital was heard with active interest by the folk who for fourteen days had been out of touch with the world.

"It's well we're lighting out for civilization," said the Master, as he superintended the loading of the truck. "The woods are as dry as tinder. And if the wind should change and grow a bit fresher, the blaze over near Wildcat Mountain might come in this direction. If ever it does, it'll travel faster than any gang of fire-fighters can block it. This region is dead ripe for such a thing. Not a drop of rain in a month . . . . No, no, Laddie!" he broke off in his maunderings, as the collie sought to leap aboard the truck in the wake of a roll of bedding. "No, no. You're going with us, in the car."

Now, long usage and an uncanny intelligence had given Lad a more than tolerable understanding of the English language's simpler phrases. The term, "You're going with us in the car," was as comprehensible to him as to any child. He had heard it spoken, with few variations, a thousand times, in the past nine years. At once, on hearing the Master's command, he jumped down from the truck; trotted off to the car, a hundred yards distant; and sprang into his wonted place in the luggage-cluttered tonneau.

He chanced to jump aboard, from one side; just as the guide's hobbledehoy son was hoisting a heavy and cumbersome duffle bag into the tonneau, from the other. Lad's eighty pounds of nervous energy smote the bag, amidships; as the boy was balancing it high in air, preparatory to setting it down between two other sacks. As a result, boy and bag rolled backward in a tangled embrace, across several yards of stony ground.

Lad had not meant to cause any such catastrophe. Yet he stood looking down in keen enjoyment at the lively spectacle. But as the boy came to a halt, against a sharp-pointed rock, and sat up, sniveling with pain, the great dog's aspect changed. Seeming to realize he was somehow to blame, he jumped lightly down from the car and went over to offer to the sufferer such comfort as patting forepaw and friendly licking tongue could afford.

"Here!" called the guide, who had seen but a crosssection of the collision. "Here, you! Stop a-playin' with the dorg, and hustle them bags onto—"

"I wa'n't playin' with him," half-blubbered the boy, glowering dourly at the sympathetic Lad; and scrambling up from his bruise-punctured roll on the ground. "He came a-buntin' me; and I—"

"That'll do, Sonny!" rasped Barret, who was strong on discipline and who fancied he had witnessed the climax of a merry game between boy and dog, "I seen what I seen. And I don't aim to take no back-talk from a wall-eyed, long-legged, chuckle-headed brat; that's hired to help his poor old dad and who spends his time cuttin' monkeyshines with a dorg. You take that collie over to the truck, and ask his boss to look after him and to see he don't pester us while we're aworkin'. On the way back, stop at the lean-to and catch me that bag of cookin' things I left there. The's just room for 'em, under the seat. Chase!"

Woefully, the boy limped off; his hand clinched in the fur of Lad's ruff. The dog, ordinarily, would have resented such familiarity. But, still seeking to comfort the victim's manifest unhappiness, he suffered himself to be led along. Which was Lad's way. The sight of sorrow or of pain always made him ridiculously gentle and sympathetic.

The boy's bruises hurt cruelly. The distance to the truck was a full hundred yards. The distance to the lean-to (a permanent shed, back of the camp-site) was about the same, and in almost the opposite direction. The prospect of the double journey was not alluring. The youth hit on a scheme to shorten it. First glancing back to see that his father was not looking, he climbed the bare stony hillock, toward the lean-to; Lad pacing courteously along beside him.

Arrived at the shed, he took from a nail a rope-length; tied it around Lad's neck; fastened the dog to one of the uprights; shouldered the cooking-utensil bag; and started back toward the car.

He had saved himself, thus, a longer walk; and had obeyed his father's orders to take Lad away. He was certain the Master, or one of the others, missing the dog, would see him standing forlornly there, just outside the lean-to's corner; or that another errand would bring some of the party to the shed to release him. At best, the boy was sore of heart and of body, at his own rough treatment. And he had scant interest anything else.

Twenty minutes later, the truck chugged bumpily off, upon its trip down the hazardous mountain track. The guide's boy rode in triumph on the seat beside the truckman;—a position of honor and of excitement.

"Where's Lad?" asked the Mistress, a minute afterward, as she and the Master and the guide made ready to get into the car and follow.

"Aboard the truck," responded Barret, in entire good faith. "Him and my boy got a-skylarkin' here. So I sent Bud over to the truck with him."

"That's queer!" mused the Mistress. "Why, Laddie never condescends to play,—or 'skylark,' as you call it,—with anyone except my husband or myself! He—"

"Never mind!" put in the Master. "We'll catch up with the truck before it's gone a mile. And we can take Laddie aboard here, then. But I wonder he consented to go ahead, without us. That isn't like Lad. Holiday-spirits, I suppose. This trip has made a puppy of him. A stately old gentleman like Laddie would never think of rounding up bears and skunks, if he was at home." As he talked, the car got under way; moving at rackety and racking "first speed" over hummock and bump; as it joggled into the faint wheeltrack. By reason of this noise and of the Master's stupid homily, none of the trio heard an amazed little bark, from the knoll-top, a hundred yards behind them.

Nor did the car catch up with the truck. At the end of the first half mile, the horrible roadbed began to take toll of the elderly tires. There were two punctures, in rapid succession. Then came a blowout. And, at the bottom of the mountain a third puncture varied the monotony of the ride. Thus, the truck reached the Place well ahead of the faster vehicle.

The Mistress's first question was for Lad. Terror seized upon the guide's boy, as he remembered where he had left the dog. He glanced obliquely at the truckman, who had unloaded and who was cranking.

"Now—" said the scared youth, glibly, avoiding his father's unsuspecting eye. "Now—now, Lad he was settin' 'twixt Simmons and me. And he hops down and runs off around the house, towards—towards the lake—soon as we stopped here. Most likely he was thirsty-like, or something."

The Mistress was busy with details of the car's unpacking. So she accepted the explanation. It seemed probable that the long and dusty ride should have made Lad thirsty; and that after his drink at the lake, he had made the rounds of the Place; as ever was his wont after his few brief absences from home.

Not until dinnertime did she give another thought to her loved pet's absence. The guide and his boy had long since departed, on the truck, for their ten-mile distant home. Nor, even yet, did it occur to the Mistress to question the truth of the youngster's story. She merely wondered why, for the first time in his life, Lad should absent himself at dinnertime from his time-honored place on the dining-room floor, at the Master's left. And, amusedly, she recalled what her husband had said of the stately dog's new propensity for mischief. Perhaps Lad was exploring the friendly home-woods in search of a bear!

But when ten o'clock came and Lad did not seek the shelter of his "cave" under the music-room piano, for the night, there was real worry. The Mistress went out on the veranda and sounded long and shrilly upon the silver whistle which hung from her belt.

From puppyhood, Laddie had always come, at a sweeping gallop, on sound of this whistle. Its notes could travel, through still air, for a half mile or more. Their faintest echoes always brought the dog in eager response. But tonight, a dozen wait-punctuated blasts brought no other response than to set the distant village dogs to barking.

The Mistress went back into the house, genuinely worried. Acting on a sudden idea, she called up the Place's superintendent, at the gatelodge.

"You were down here when the truck came to the house this afternoon, weren't you?" she asked.

"Yes, ma'am," said the man. "I was waiting for it. Mike and I helped Simmons to unload."

"Did you see which way Lad went, when he jumped out of the truck?" pursued the Mistress. "Or have any of you seen him since then?"

"Why, no, ma'am," came the puzzled answer. "I haven't seen him at all. I supposed he was in the car with you, and that maybe he'd been in the house ever since. He wasn't on the truck: That's one sure thing. I saw it stop; and I stayed till they finished emptying it. Lad wasn't there."

There was a moment's pause. Then, the Mistress spoke again. Her voice slightly muffled, she said:

"Please find out if there is plenty of gas in my car;—enough to take it—say, forty miles. Thank you."

"What on earth—?" began the Master, as his wife left the telephone and picked up an ulster.

"Laddie didn't come home on the truck," she made tremulous reply. "And he wasn't with us. He hasn't come home all."

"He'll find his way, easily enough," returned the Master, albeit with no great assurance. "Lad's found his way farther than that. He—"

"If he was going to find his way," interrupted the Mistress, "he'd have found it before now. I know Laddie. So do you. He is up there. And he can't get back. He—"

"Nonsense!" laughed the Master. "Why, of course, he—"

"He is up there," insisted the Mistress, "and he can't get back. I know him well enough to be, sure he'd have overtaken us, when we stopped all those times to fix the tires;—if he had been left behind. And I know something else: When we started on, after that first puncture, we were about half a mile below the knoll. And as we went around the bend, there was a gap in the trees. I was looking back. For a second, I could see the lean-to, outlined ever so clearly against the sky. And alongside of it was standing some animal. It was far away; and we passed out of sight so suddenly, that I couldn't see what it was; except that it was large and dark. And it seemed to be struggling to move from where it stood. I was going to speak to you about it,—I supposed it was that black bear of Laddie's,—when we had the next puncture. And that made me forget all about it;—till now. Of course, it never occurred to me it could be Lad. Because Barret had said he was in the truck. But—but oh, it WAS Laddie! He—he was fastened, or caught, in some way. I know he was. Why, I could see him struggle to—"

"Come on!" broke in the Master, hustling into his mackinaw. "Unless you'll stay here, while I—"

"No," she protested. "I'm going. And I'm going because I'm thinking of the same thing that's troubling you. I'm thinking of those forest fires and of what you said about the wind changing and—"

"Come on!" repeated the Master; starting for the garage.

Which shows how maudlinly foolish two otherwise sane people can be; when they are lucky enough to own such a dog as Sunnybank Lad. Naturally, the right course, at so cold and late an hour of the autumn night, and after a long day of packing and motoring and unpacking, was to go to bed; and to trust to luck that the wise old collie would find his way back again. Instead, the two set off on a twenty-mile wildgoose chase, with worried faces and fast-beating hearts. It did not occur to either of them to stay at home; or to send someone else on the long, frosty drive in search of the missing dog.

Lad had watched the preparations for departure with increasing worry. Also, the abnormally sensitive old fellow was wretchedly unhappy. Except at dog-shows, he had never before been tied up. And at such shows, the Mistress and the Master were always on hand to pet and reassure him. Yet, here, he had suffered himself to be tied by a smelly rope to the rotting post of a lean-to, by a comparative stranger. And, in the open ground below the hillock, his deities moved back and forth without so much as an upward glance at him.

Then, to his dismay, truck and car had made off down the mountainside; and he had been left alone in his imprisonment. Except for a single unheard bark of protest, Lad made no effort to call back the departing humans. Never before had they forsaken him. And he had full trust that they would come back in a few minutes and set him free.

When the car halted, a half-mile below, Lad felt certain his faith was about to be justified. Then, as it moved on again, he sprang to the end of his short rope, and tried to break free and follow.

Then came the dying away of the chugging motor's echoes; and silence rolled up and engulfed the wilderness hilltop.

Lad was alone. They had gone off and left him. They had with never a word of goodby or a friendly command to watch camp until their return. This was not the dog's first sojourn in camp. And his memory was flawless. Always, he recalled, the arrival and the loading of the truck and the striking of tents had meant that the stay was over and that at the party was going home.

Home! The charm and novelty of the wilderness all at once faded. Lad was desperately lonely and desperately unhappy. And his feelings were cruelly hurt; at the strange treatment accorded him.

Yet, it did not occur to him to seek freedom and to follow his gods to the home he loved. He had been tied here, presumably by their order; certainly with their knowledge. And it behooved him to wait until they should come to release him. He knew they would come back, soon or late. They were his gods, his chums, his playmates. They would no more desert him than he would have deserted them. It was all right, somehow. Only, the waiting was tedious!

With a tired little sigh, the collie curled up in a miserable heap on the stony ground, the shortness of his tether making even this effort at repose anything but comfortable. And he waited.

A dog, that is happy and well, settles himself for a prolonged wait, by stretching out on his side;—oftenest the left side; and by dropping off into slumber. Seldom, unless he be cold or ill, does a big dog curl up into a ball, to rest. Nor is he thoroughly comfortable in such a posture.

Lad was not comfortable. He was not resting. He was wretched. Nor did he try to snooze. Curled in a compact heap, his sorrowful eyes abrim with sorrow, he lay scanning the bumpy mountainside and straining his ears, for sign of the car's return. His breathing was not as splendidly easy as usual. For, increasingly, that earlier twinge of acrid smoke-reek was tickling his throat. The haze, that had hovered over the farther hilltops and valleys, was thickening; and it was creeping nearer. The breath of morning breeze was stiffening into a steady wind; a wind that blew strong from the west and carried on it the smell of forest fire.

Lad did not enjoy the ever-stronger smoke scent. But he gave only half-heed to it. His main attention was centered on that winding wagon-track whence the car and the truck had vanished into the lowlands. And, through the solemnly spent hours he lay forlornly watching it.

But, after sunset, the smoke became too pervasive to be ignored longer. It was not only stinging his throat and lungs, but it was making his eyes smart. And it had cut off the view of all save the nearer mountain-peaks.

Lad got to his feet; whining softly, under his breath. Ancestral instinct was fairly shouting to his brain that here was terrible peril. He strained at his thick rope; and looked imploringly down the wagon-road.

The wind had swelled into something like a gale. And, now, to Lad's keen ears came the far-off snap and crack of a million dry twigs as the flame kissed them in its fast-crawling advance. This sharper sound rose and fell, as a theme to the endless and slowly-augmenting roar which had been perceptible for hours.

Again, Laddie strained at his heavy rope. Again, his smoke-stung eyes explored the winding trail down the mountain. No longer was the trail so distinguishable as before. Not only by reason of darkness, but because from that direction came the bulk of the eddying gusts of wind-driven smoke.

The fire's mounting course was paralleling the trail; checked from crossing it only by a streambed and an outcrop of granite which zigzagged upward from the valley. The darkness served also to tinge the lowering sky to south and to westward with a steadily brightening lurid glare. The Master had been right in his glum prophecy that a strong and sudden shift of wind would carry the conflagration through the tinder-dry undergrowth and dead trees of that side of the mountain, far faster than any body of fire-fighters could hope to check it.

The flame-reflection began to light the open spaces below the knoll, with increasing vividness. The chill of early evening was counteracted waves of sullen heat, which the wind sent swirling before it.

Lad panted; from warmth as much as from nervousness. He had gone all day without water. And a collie, more perhaps than any other dog, needs plenty of fresh, cool water to drink; at any and all times. The hot wind and the smoke were parching his throat. His thirst was intolerable.

Behind him, not very many yards away, was the ice-cold mountain lakelet in which so often he had bathed and drunk. The thought of it made him hate the stout rope.

But he made no serious effort to free himself. He had been tied there,—supposedly by the Master's command. And, as a well-trained dog, it was his place to stay where he was, until the Master should free him. So, apart from an instinctive tug or two at his moorings, he submitted to his fate.

But, in mid-evening, something occurred, to change his viewpoint, in this matter of nonresistance.

The line of fire, climbing the mountain toward him, had encountered a marshy stretch; where, in normal weather, water stood inches deep. Despite the drought, there was still enough moisture to stay the advance of the red line until the dampness could be turned to dust and tindery vegetation. And, in the meanwhile, after the custom of its kind, the fire had sought to spread to either side. Stopped at the granite-outcrop to the right, it had rolled faster through the herbage to the left.

Thus, by the time the morass was dry enough for the flame to pass it, there was a great sickle of crawling red fire to the left; which encircled a whole flank of the mountain and which was moving straight upward.

Lad knew nothing of this; nor why the advance of the fire's direct line had been so long checked. Nor did he know, presumably, that this sickle of flame was girdling the mountain-flank; like a murderous net; hemming in all live things within the flaming arc and forcing them on in panic, ahead of its advance. Perhaps he did not even note the mad scurryings in undergrowth and bramble, in front of the oncoming blaze. But one thing, very speedily, became apparent to him:—

From out a screen of hazel and witch-elm (almost directly in front of the place where the truck, that morning, had been loaded) crashed a right hideous object. By sight and by scent Lad knew the creature for his olden foe, the giant black bear.

Growling, squealing, a dozen stinging fiery sparks sizzling through his bushy coat, the bear tore his way from the hedge of thicket and out into the open. The fire had roused him from his snug lair and had driven him ahead of it with a myriad hornets of flame, in a crazed search for safety.

At sight of the formidable monster, Lad realized for the first time the full extent of his own helplessness. Tethered to a rope which gave him scarce twenty-five inches of leeway, he was in no fit condition to fend off the giant's assault.

He wasted no time in futile struggles. All his race's uncanny powers of resource came rushing to his aid. Without an instant's pause, he wheeled about; and drove his keen teeth into the rope that bound him to the post.

Lad did not chew aimlessly at the thick tether; nor throw away one ounce of useless energy. Seizing the hempen strands, he ground his teeth deeply and with scientific skill, into their fraying recesses. Thus does a dog, addicted to cutting his leash, attack the bonds which hold him.

It was Lad's first experience of the kind. But instinct served him well. The fact that the rope had been left out of doors, in all weathers, for several years, served him far better. Not only did it sever the more easily; but it soon lost the cohesion needed for resisting any strong pull.

The bear, lurching half-blindly, had reeled out into the open, below the knoll. There, panting and grunting, he turned to blink at the oncoming fire and to get his direction. For perhaps a half-minute he stood thus; or made little futile rushes from side to side. And this breathing space was taken up by Lad in the gnawing of the rope.

Then, while the collie was still toiling over the hempen mouthfuls, the bear seemed to recover his own wonted cleverness; and to realize his whereabouts. Straight up the hillock he charged, toward the lean-to; his splay feet dislodging innumerable surface stones from the rocky steep; and sending them behind him in a series of tiny avalanches.

Lad, one eye ever on his foe, saw the onrush. Fiercely he redoubled his efforts to bite through the rope, before the bear should be upon him. But the task was not one to be achieved in a handful of seconds.

Moving with a swiftness amazing for an animal of his clumsy bulk, the bear swarmed up the hillock. He gained the summit; not three yards from where Laddie struggled. And the collie knew the rope was not more than half gnawed through. There was no further time for biting at it. The enemy was upon him.

Fear did not enter the big dog's soul. Yet he grieved that the death-battle should find him so pitifully ill-prepared. And, abandoning the work of self-release, he flung himself ragingly at the advancing bear.

Then, two things happened. Two things, on neither of which the dog could have counted. The bear was within a hand's breadth of him; and was still charging, headlong. But he looked neither to right nor to left. Seemingly ignorant of Lad's presence, the huge brute tore past him, almost grazing the collie in his insane rush; and sped straight on toward the lake beyond.

That was one of the two unforeseen happenings. The other was the snapping of the rotted rope, under the wrench of Lad's furious leap.

Free, and with the severed rope's loop still dangling uselessly from around his shaggy throat, the dog stood staring in blank amaze after his former adversary. He saw the bear reach the margin of the icy lake and plunge nose deep into its sheltering waters. Here, as Bruin's instinct or experience had foretold, no forest fire could harm him. He need but wallow there until the Red Terror should have swept past and until the scorched ground should be once more cool enough to walk on.

Lad turned again toward the slope. He was free, now, to follow the wagon track to the main road and so homeward, guided perhaps by memory, perhaps by scent; most probably guided by the mystic sixth sense which has more than once enabled collies to find their way, over hundreds of miles of strange territory, back to their homes.

But, in the past few minutes, the fire's serpent-like course had taken a new twist. It had flung volleys of sparks across the upper reach of granite rock-wall, and had ignited dry wood and brier on the right hand side of the track. This, far up the mountain, almost at the very foot of the rock-hillock.

The way to home was barred by a three-foot-high crackling fence of red-gold flame; a flame which nosed hungrily against the barren rocks of the knoll-foot; as if seeking in ravenous famine the fuel their bare surfaces denied it.

And now, the side of the hillock showed other signs of forest life. Up the steep slope thundered a six-antlered buck, snorting shrilly in panic and flying toward the cool refuge of the little lake.

Far more slowly, but with every tired muscle astrain, a fat porcupine was mounting the hill; its claws digging frantically for foothold among the slippery stones. It seemed to flow, rather than to run. And as it hurried on, it chuckled and scolded, like some idiot child.

A bevy of squirrels scampered past it. A long snake, roused from its stony winter lair, writhed eerily up the slope, heedless of its fellow travelers' existence. A raccoon was breasting the steep, from another angle. And behind it came clawing a round-paunched opossum; grinning from the pain of sparks that were stinging it to a hated activity.

The wilderness was giving up its secrets, with a vengeance. And the Red Terror, as ever, was enforcing a truce among the forest-folk; a truce bred of stark fear. One and all—of those that had been aroused in time to get clear of the oncoming fiery sickle—the fugitives were making for the cool safety of the lake.

Lad scarce saw or noted any of his companions. The road to home was barred. And, again, ancestral instinct and his own alert wit came to his aid. Turning about, and with no hint of fear in his gait or in the steady dark eyes, he trotted toward the lake.

Already the bear had reached its soothing refuge; and was standing hip deep in the black waters; now and then ducking his head and tossing showers of cold spray over his scorched shoulder-fur.

Lad trotted to the brink. There, stooping—not fifty feet away from Bruin—he lapped thirstily until he had at last drunk his fill. Then, looking back once in the direction of the fire-line, he lay down, very daintily indeed, in shallow water; and prepared to enjoy his liberty. Scourged by none of the hideous fear which had goaded his fellow fugitives, he watched with grave interest the arrival of one after another of the refugees; as they came scurrying wildly down to the water.

Lad was comfortable. Here, the smoke-reek stung less acutely. Here, too, were grateful darkness, after the torrid glare of the fire, and cold water and security. Here were also many diverting creatures to watch. It would have been pleasant to go home at once. But, since that was out of the question, there were far worse things than to lie interestedly at ease until the Master should come for him.

The fire raged and flickered along the base of the bare rocky knoll; and, finding no path of advance, turned back on itself, fire-fashion; seeking new outlet. The thin line of bushes and other undergrowth at the hillock's foot were quickly consumed; leaving only a broad bed of ember and spark. And the conflagration swept on to the left, over the only course open to it. To the right, the multiple ridges of rock and the dearth of vegetation were sufficient "No Thoroughfare" enforcement.

This same odd rock-formation had kept the wagon track clear, up to the twist where it bore to leftward at the base of the knoll. And the Mistress and the Master were able to guide their rattlingly protesting car in safety up the trail from the main road far below. The set of the wind prevented them from being blinded or confused by smoke. Apart from a smarting of the eyes and a recurrent series of heat waves, they made the climb with no great discomfort;—until the final turn brought them to an abrupt halt at the spot where the wide swath of red coals and flaming ashes marked the burning of the hillock foot bushes.

The Master jumped to earth and stood confronting the lurid stretch of ash and ember with, here and there, a bush stump still crackling merrily. It was not a safe barrier to cross; this twenty-foot-wide fiery stretch. Nor, for many rods in either direction, was there any way around it.

"There's one comfort," the Master was saying, as he began to explore for an opening in the red scarf of coals, "the fire hasn't gotten up to the camp-site. He—"

"But the smoke has," said the Mistress, who had been peering vainly through the hazecurtain toward the summit. "And so has the heat. If only—"

She broke off, with a catch in her sweet voice. And, scarce realizing what she did, she put the silver whistle to her lips and blew a piercingly loud blast.

"What's that for?" asked the Master, crankily, worry over his beloved dog making his nerves raw. "If Lad's alive, he's fastened there. You say you saw him struggling to get loose, this morning. He can't come, when he hears that whistle. There's no sense in—How in blue blazes he ever got fastened there,—if he really was,—is more than I can—"

"Hush!" begged the Mistress, breaking in on his grumbled monologue. "Listen!"

Out of the darkness, beyond the knoll-top, came the sound of a bark,—the clear trumpeting welcome-bark which Lad reserved for the Mistress and the Master, alone; on their return from any absence.

Through the night it echoed, gaily, defiantly; again and again; ringing out above the obscene hiss and crackle and roar of the forest-fire. And at every repetition, it was nearer and nearer the dumfounded listeners at the knoll foot.

"It's—it's Laddie!" cried the Mistress, in wondering rapture. "Oh, it's LADDIE!"

The Master, hearing the glad racket, did a thoroughly asinine thing. Drawing in his breath and holding his coat in front of him, he prepared to make a dash through the wide smear of embers, to the hilltop; where, presumably, Lad was still tied. But, before he could take the first step, the Mistress stayed him.

"Look!" she cried, pointing to the hither side of the knoll; lividly bright in the ember-glow.

Down the steep was galloping at breakneck speed a great, tawny shape. Barking rapturously,—even as he had barked when first the whistle's blast had roused him from his lazy repose in the lakeside shallows,—Lad came whizzing toward the two humans who watched so incredulously his wild approach.

The Master, belatedly, saw that the collie could not avoid crashing into the spread of embers; and he opened his mouth to order Lad back. But there was not time.

For once, the wise dog took no heed of even the simplest caution. His lost and adored deities had called him and were awaiting him. That was all Lad knew or cared. They had come back for him. His horrible vigil and loneliness and his deadly peril were ended.

Too insanely happy to note where he was treading, he sprang into the very center of the belt of smoldering coals. His tiny white forefeet—drenched with icy water—did not remain among them long enough to feel pain. In two more bounds he had cleared the barrier and was dancing in crazy excitement around the Mistress and the Master; patting at them with his scorched feet; licking their eagerly caressing hands; "talking" in a dozen different keys of rapture, his whimpers and growls and gurgles running the entire gamut of long-pent-up emotions.

His coat and his feet had, for hours, been immersed in the cold water of the lake. And, he had fled through the embers at express-train speed. Scarce a blister marked the hazardous passage. But Lad would not have cared for all the blisters and burns on earth. His dear gods had come back to him,—even as he had known they would!

Once more,—and for the thousandth time—they had justified his divine Faith in them. Nothing else mattered.



CHAPTER IX. Old Dog; New Tricks

A mildewed maxim runs: "You can't teach an old dog new tricks."

Some proverbs live because they are too true to die. Others endure because they have a smug sound and because nobody has bothered to bury them. The one about old dogs and new tricks belongs in both categories. In a sense it is true. In another it is not.

To teach the average elderly dog to sit up and beg, or to roll over twice, or to do other of the asinine things with which humans stultify the natural good sense of their canine chums, is as hard as to teach a sixty-year-old grave-digger to become a musical composer.

But no dog with a full set of brains is ever past learning new things which are actually needful for him to learn. And, sad to say, many an old dog, on his own account, picks up odd new accomplishments—exploits which would never have occurred to him in his early prime. Nobody knows why. But it has happened, numberless times.

And so it was with Sunnybank Lad.

Laddie had passed his twelfth birthday; when, by some strange freak, he brought home one day a lace parasol. He had found it in the highroad, on his way back to the Place after a sedate ramble in the forest. Now, it was nothing new for the great collie to find missing articles belonging to the Mistress or to the Master. Every now and then he would lay at their feet a tobacco pouch or a handkerchief or a bunch of keys that had been dropped, carelessly, somewhere on the grounds; and which Lad recognized, by scent, as belonging to one of the two humans he loved.

These bits of treasure trove, he delighted in finding and restoring. Yes, and—though those who had never seen him do this were prone to doubt it—he was certain to lay the recovered object at the feet of whichever of the two had lost it. For instance, it never occurred to him to drop a filmy square of lace-and-cambric at the muddied feet of the Master; or a smelly old tobacco-pouch at the Mistress's little feet.

There was nothing miraculous about this knowledge. To a high-bred dog, every human of his acquaintance has a distinctive scent; which cannot be mistaken. Lad used no occult power inn returning to the rightful owner any article he chanced to find on lawn or on veranda.

But the lace parasol was different. That, presumably, had fallen from some passing motor-car, bound for Tuxedo or for the Berkshires. It did not belong at the Place.

Lad happened to see it, lying there in the highway. And he brought it, forthwith, to the house; carrying it daintily between his mighty jaws; and laying it on the living-room floor in front of the astonished Mistress. Probably, he laid it before her, instead of before the Master, because she was the first of the two whom he happened to encounter. It is doubtful if he realized that a parasol is a purely feminine adjunct;—although the Mistress always declared he did.

She picked up the gift and looked it over with real admiration. It was a flimsily beautiful and costly thing; whose ivory handle was deftly carven and set with several uncut stones; and whose deep fringe of lace was true Venetian Point.

"Why, Laddie!" she exclaimed, in wondering delight. "Where in the world did you get this? Look!" she went on, as her husband came in from his study. "See what Laddie brought me! I saw him coming down the drive with something in his mouth. But I had no idea what it was. Isn't it a beauty? Where do you suppose he—?"

"As long as motorists go around curves at forty miles an hour," decided the Master, "so long their piled-up valuables are likely to be jostled out of the tonneau. I found a satchel, last week, at the curve, up there, you remember; and a hat, the week before. What are you going to do about this thing?"

"Oh," said the Mistress, with a sigh of renunciation, "I suppose we'll have to advertise it; and watch the 'Lost and Found' columns, too. But—wouldn't it be glorious if nobody should see our advertisement or—or ever advertise for it? It's so lovely! I hate to think it may belong to somebody who can't appreciate it as I do."

Now, Laddie had lived on the Place for many more years than he could remember. And he had spent the bulk of that time in studying the faces and the voices and the moods of these two people whom he worshiped. Moreover, he had an intelligence that is not given to most dogs,—even to collies—and a queer psychic twist to his brain that had puzzled his owners as much as it had delighted them:

Watching the Mistress, now, with his classic head on one side and his deep-set dark eyes fixed on her eager face, he saw that his roadway gift had made her very happy. Also, that her caressing hand on his head showed pride in what he had done. And this, as ever, thrilled the old dog, to the very soul.

He wagged his plumed tail, in gladness, and thrust his nose into her palm and began to "talk" in gleeful treble. To none but the Mistress and the Master would Lad deign to "talk." And, none listening to him could doubt he was trying to copy the human voice and human meanings.

"Dear old Laddie!" praised the Mistress, running her fingers through his lion-like ruff. "GOOD Laddie! Thank you, ever so much! Nobody but a very, VERY wonderful collie named Lad could have had the perfect taste to pick out such a parasol. And now we're going to have a whole handful of animal crackers, for reward."

The crooningly sweet voice, the petting, the gift of animal crackers of which he was childishly fond—all these delighted Lad beyond measure. And they confirmed him in the belief that he had done something most laudable.

What he had done was to pick up a stray object, away from home, and bring it to the Mistress. He knew that. And that was all he knew. But, having won high praise for the deed, he resolved then and there to repeat it.

Which proves that old dogs can be taught new tricks. And which started all the trouble.

That afternoon, the Mistress and the Master went for a five-mile ramble through the woods and over the mountains, back of the Place. With them went old Laddie, who paced gravely between them. With them, also, went Bruce, the magnificent dark sable collie of kingly look and demeanor; who was second only to Lad in human traits and second to no living animal in beauty. Bruce was glorious to look upon. In physique and in character he had not a flaw. There was a strange sweetness to his disposition that I have found in no other dog.

With Lad and Bruce, on this walk, raced Lad's fiery little golden son, Wolf.

Of old, Lad had led such runs. Now, advancing age and increased weight had begun to make him chary of throwing away his fading energies. Wherefore, he walked between his two deities; and let the two younger dogs do the galloping and rabbit chasing.

And he had his reward. For, as they neared the highroad on the way home, Wolf and Bruce chanced to tree a squirrel. Thus, Lad was first to reach the road with the two humans. Suddenly, he darted ahead of them; and snatched up from the wayside the somewhat worn case of a thermos bottle which had been discarded there or had fallen from a car-seat. This he bore to the Mistress; fairly vibrating with pride in his own exploit.

Noting his joy in the deed, she made much of the shabby gift; praising and thanking Lad, inordinately; and forbearing to throw away the worn case until the collie was out of sight.

Of late, as Laddie began to show signs of age, she and the Master had taken to making more and more of him; to atone for his growing feebleness and to anticipate the dark day which every dog-owner must face;—the day when his voice and his caress can no longer mean anything to the pet who once rejoiced so utterly in them.

All of which went to confirm Lad in the natural belief that anything found on the road and brought to the Mistress would be looked on with joy and would earn him much gratitude. So,—as might a human in like circumstances,—he ceased to content himself with picking up trifles that chanced to be lying in his path, in the highway, and fell to searching for such flotsam and jetsam.

He began the hunt, next morning. Pacing gravely along the center of the road, he headed toward the mile-distant village. By sheer luck, such few automobiles as chanced along, at that hour, were driven by folk who had heart enough to slow down or to turn aside for the majestically strolling old dog. To the end of his long life, Lad could never be made to understand that he was not entitled to walk at will in the exact middle of the road. Perhaps his lofty assurance in taking such a course made motorists check speed to spare him.

This morning, he had fared but a half-mile when he saw a car drawn up at the edge of the road, beside a shaded bit of turf. Several people had just descended from it; and were making preparations for an early picnic lunch. One of them had finished depositing a basket on the ground, at the side of the car farthest from the strip of sward where the others were spreading a sea-rug and setting an impromptu table.

The man put the basket down in the road. Then he dived back into the nether regions of the machine for more provender. And he was engaged in this groping when Lad came in view, around a bend.

The big collie saw the basket standing there, unprotected and, so far as he knew, ownerless. Gravely he stepped forward, lifted the heavy receptacle by the handle and turned about with it; still moving with dignified slowness. The table-setters were busy; and the car was between him and them.

By the time the other member of the party succeeded in finding the things he was seeking under the rear seat, Lad had rounded the bend and was out of sight. To this day, none of the motorists has the remotest solution to the mystery of the vanished lunch.

Lad had not stolen the basket. He would have suffered himself to be cut in three, before sinking to theft or to any other sneaking act. He had found a basket standing alone in the highroad, several feet away from the nearest humans. He had no way of guessing it belonged to them. So far as he was concerned, this was as much a lost article as had been the gorgeous parasol. He had been praised to the skies for bringing the parasol and the thermos case to the Mistress. He had every reason to expect the same meed of praise for this new gift.

Indeed, to Lad's way of thinking, he might well hope for even higher praise. For the parasol had been an odorless and foolish thing of no apparent usefulness; while this basket exhaled most heavenly scents of fried chicken and other delectable foods. Heavy as was the burden, it did not occur to Lad to set it down. Fragrant as were its contents, it did not occur to him to nose the cover off and sample them. There was no tinge of snooping in his make-up. No, the basket was a gift for the Mistress. And as such he was bearing it home to her.

"See what Laddie brought me, this time!" cried the Mistress, coming into her husband's study, a few minutes later, and holding forth the trophy. "It's full of food, too; and of course he never touched a mouthful of it. But I gave him two of the frosted cakes, by way of reward. He's ridiculously happy over them,—and over the fuss I made about the basket."

"H'm!" mused the Master, inspecting the present. "Jostled off the car-seat, as some fool of a driver took the curve at top speed! Well, that same driver has paid for his recklessness, by the loss of his lunch. It's funny, though—There's not a trace of mud or dust on this; and even the food inside wasn't jostled about by the tumble. That curve is paying us big dividends, lately. It's a pity no bullion trucks pass this way. Still, parasols and picnic lunches aren't to be sneered at."

Lad was standing in the study doorway, eyes alight, tail waving. The Master called him over and petted him; praising this newest accomplishment of his, and prophesying untold wealth for the Place if the graft should but continue long enough.

There was something pathetic in dear old Laddie's pleasure over the new trick he had learned; or so it seemed to the two people who loved him. And they continued to flatter him for it;—even when, among other trophies, he dragged home a pickaxe momentarily laid aside by a road mender; and an extremely dead chicken which a motor-truck wheel had flattened to waferlike thickness.

Which brings us, by degrees to the Rennick kidnaping case.

Claude Rennick, a New York artist of considerable means, had rented for the summer an ancient Colonial farmhouse high among the Ramapo hills; some six miles north of the Place, There, he and his pretty young wife and their six-months-old baby had been living for several weeks; when, angered at a sharp rebuke for some dereliction in his work, Schwartz, their gardener, spoke insultingly to Mrs. Rennick.

Rennick chanced to overhear. Being aggressively in love with his wife, he did not content himself with discharging Schwartz. Instead, he thrashed the stalwart gardener, then and there; and ended the drastic performance by pitching the beaten man, bodily, out of the grounds.

Schwartz collected his battered anatomy and limped away to his home in the hills just above. And, that night, he called into council his two farmhand brothers and his wife.

Several characteristic plans of revenge were discussed in solemn detail. These included the burning of the Rennick house or barn, or both; the shooting of Rennick from among the hillside boulders as the artist sketched; of waylaying him on his walk to the post-office, by night, and crippling him for life; and other suggestions equally dear to the hearts of rural malefactors.

But one plan after another was vetoed. To burn any of the property would cause Rennick nothing worse than temporary annoyance; as he merely rented the farm. Daylight shooting was a dangerous and uncertain job; especially since automobiles had opened up the district to constantly passing outsiders. It was Schwartz himself who decided against waylaying his foe by night. He had too recent memories of Rennick's physical prowess to care about risking a second dose of the same medicine. And so on with the other proposals. One and all were rejected.

Then it was that Mrs. Schwartz hit upon an idea which promised not only punishment, but profit. She had done washing for the Rennicks and she had access to the house. She proposed that they steal the Rennick baby, on the first night when opportunity should offer; carry him to a car the brothers were to have waiting; and thence take him to her sister in Paterson.

There, the youngster would be well cared for. In a family of not less than seven children, the presence of an extra baby would not excite police query. Her sister had more than once taken babies to board with her, during their mothers' temporary absence in service or in jail. And the newcomer could pass readily as one of these.

Negotiations could set in; and, if care were taken, a reward of at least two thousand dollars might be extracted safely from the frantic parents. Thus, the Rennicks could be made to sweat blood and money too, in payment of the injuries wrought upon the aching frame of Schwartz. At first, the three men sheered off from the plan. Kidnaping is a word with an ugly sound. Kidnaping is a deed with ugly consequences. Kidnaping is a crime whose perpetrators can hope for no atom of sympathy from anybody. Kidnaping is perilous, past words.

But, deftly, Mrs. Schwartz met and conquered the difficulties raised. In the first place, the baby would come to no harm. Her sister would see to that. In the second, the matter of the reward and of the return could be juggled so as to elude detectives and rural constables. She had known of such a case. And she related the details;—clever yet utterly simple details, and fraught with safety to all concerned;—details which, for that very reason, need not be cited here.

Bit by bit, she went on with her outline of the campaign; testing each step and proving the practicability of each.

The next Thursday evening, Rennick and his wife went, as usual, to the weekly meeting of a neighborhood bridge club which they had joined for the summer. The baby was left in charge of a competent nurse. At nine o'clock, the nurse went to the telephone in reply to a call purporting to be from an attendant at a New York hospital.

This call occupied the best part of twenty minutes. For the attendant proceeded to tell her in a very roundabout way that her son had been run over and had come to the hospital with a broken leg. He dribbled the information; and was agonizingly long-winded and vague in answering her volley of frightened questions.

Shaken between duty to her job and a yearning to catch the next train for town, the nurse went back at last to the nursery. The baby's crib was empty.

It had been the simplest thing in the world for Mrs. Schwartz to enter the house by the unfastened front door, while one of her husband's brothers held the nurse in telephone talk; and to go up to the nursery, unseen, while the other servants were in the kitchen quarters. There she had picked up the baby and had carried him gently down to the front door and out of the grounds.

One of Schwartz's brothers was waiting, beyond the gate; with a disreputable little runabout. Presently, the second brother joined him. Mrs. Schwartz lifted the baby into the car. One of the men held it while the other took his place at the steering wheel. The runabout had started upon its orderly fourteen-mile trip to Paterson, before the panic stricken nurse could give the alarm.

Mrs. Schwartz then walked toward the village, where her husband met her. The two proceeded together to the local motion picture theater. There, they laughed so loudly over the comedy on the screen that the manager had to warn them to be quieter. At once, the couple became noisily abusive. And they were ordered ignominiously from the theater. There could scarcely have been a better alibi to prove their absence of complicity in the kidnaping.

Meanwhile, the two brothers continued quietly on their journey toward Paterson. The baby slept. His bearer had laid him softly on the floor of the car. A few drops of paregoric, administered by Mrs. Schwartz as the child awoke for an instant on the way to the gate, insured sound slumber. The joggling of the car did not rouse the tiny sleeper; as he lay snugly between the feet of the man into whose care he had been given.

The first six miles of the easy journey were soon traversed. Then, with a pop and a dispiritedly swishing sound, a rear tire collapsed. Out into the road jumped both men. Their nerves were none too steady. And, already, in fancy they could hear all the police cars in New Jersey close at their heels. It behooved them to change tires in a hurry, and to finish their nerve-twisting trip.

The driver vaulted over the side nearest him and began to explore the under-seat regions for a jack. The other man picked up the baby and hurried to the rear of the runabout to detach the spare tire from its dusty rack. Manifestly, he could not unstrap the tire while he was carrying a baby in his arms. So he set down his burden at the roadside, near him.

Then, still obsessed by fear of pursuit, he hit on a safer scheme. Picking up the sleeper again, he carried the warm little bundle to the far side of the road, some thirty yards beyond, and deposited it there, behind a dwarf alder bush which screened it from any stray automobilist who might be passing. Thus, in case of pursuit, he and his brother would merely be changing tires; and would know nothing of any missing baby.

Failing to find a jack under the seat, the driver climbed over into the adjoining field in search of two or three big stones to serve the same purpose in holding up the axle. For several minutes the men worked fast and tensely; blind and deaf to anything except the need of haste.

Thus it was that neither of them saw a tawny-and-snow collie,—huge and shaggy except for a pair of absurdly tiny white forepaws,—come pacing majestically along the road from the direction in which they were heading. The car lamps played but faintly upon the advancing Lad; for the dimmers had been applied.

The big dog was taking his usual before-bedtime stroll. Of old, that evening stroll had been confined to the Place's grounds, a quarter-mile beyond. But, lately, his new obsession for finding treasures for the Mistress had lured him often and oftener to the highway.

Tonight, as for a day or so past, he had drawn blank in his quest. The road had been distressingly bare of anything worth carrying home. But, now, as he moved along, his near-sighted eyes were attracted by a dim blur of white, behind a bush, at the road-edge; just within the dim radiance of the car-lamps. Even sooner than he saw this, his keen nostrils had told him of human presence there. He shifted his course to investigate.

Standing over the compactly-fastened swathing of clothes, Laddie bent down and sniffed. It was a human. He knew that; in spite of the thick veil that covered the slumberer's face. But it was also a bundle. It was a bundle which might well be expected to delight the Mistress almost as much as had the parasol;—far more than had the defunct chicken.

Daintily, with infinite gentleness, Lad fixed his teeth in the loosest portion of the bundle that he could find; and lifted it. It was amazingly heavy, even for so powerful a dog. But difficulties had never yet swerved Lad from any set purpose. Bracing his strength, he turned homeward, carrying the burden between his mighty jaws.

And now, he was aware of some subtler feeling than mere desire to bring the Mistress one more gift. His great heart had ever gone out in loving tenderness toward everything helpless and little. He adored children. The roughest of them could take unpardonable liberties with him. He would let them maul and mistreat him to their heart's content; and he reveled in such usage; although to humans other than the Mistress and the Master, he was sternly resentful of any familiarity.

His senses told him this bundle contained a child;—a baby. It had been lying alone and defenseless beside the road. He had found it. And his heart warmed to the helpless little creature which was so heavy to carry.

Proudly, now, he strode along; his muscles tensed; moving as if on parade. The bundle swinging from his jaws was carried as lovingly as though it might break in sixty pieces at any careless step.

The spare tire was adjusted. The men glanced nervously up and down the road. No car or pedestrian was in sight. The driver scrambled to his place at the wheel. His brother crossed to the alder bush behind whose shelter he had left the baby. Back he came, on the run.

"'Tain't there!" he blithered. "'Tain't there! 'Tain't rolled nowheres, neither. It's been took! Lord! What're we goin' to—?"

He got no further. His brother had scrambled down from the seat; and pushed him aside, in a dash for the alder. But a few seconds of frantic search proved the baby was gone. The two men glared at each other in silent horror. Then by tacit impulse they got into the car.

"It couldn't 'a' walked off, could it?" gurgled the driver. "They can't walk, can they;—not at six months? Not far, anyhow?"

"It—it was took!" sputtered his brother between chattering teeth.

Another moment of scared silence. Then the driver rallied his awed faculties. Stepping on the self-starter, he brought the runabout into motion, and headed down the road.

"Where are you goin'?" queried the other. "No use a-keepin' on, this d'rection. It—"

"If it was took," answered the driver, truculently, "'twasn't took by no car. We'd 'a' heard a car or we'd 'a' saw it. If it had been took by two or three folks a-walkin', we'd 'a' heard 'em blat to each other when they seen the kid layin' there. That means it was took by one person, all alone. He didn't pass us, while we was workin'. Then, unless he's took to the fields, he's a-goin' the same way we are. An' we're due to overhaul him. There'll only just be one of him; and there's two of us. I ain't aimin' to lose my slice of that two thousand; without hittin' a single lick to get it. If he—SUFFERIN' PINK SNAKES!"

In his sudden dismay, he drove down both feet on the pedals. The indignant car stalled. Through the blackness ahead, the white ray from the lamps had picked up a weird object. And the two brethren stared at it, slack-jawed.

Walking sedately on, in front of the stalled runabout, and in the exact centre of the dusty road, moved an animal. Huge and formless it bulked, as it receded into the fainter glow of light. It might have been anything from a lion to a bear; in that uncertain glimmer. But, the lamps' rays played strongly enough on one detail of the apparition to identify it, past doubt, to both the dumfounded onlookers. They saw, clearly enough, a white bundle suspended from the monster's jaws;—unquestionably the bundle which had been laid behind the alder.

For perhaps ten seconds the men sat moveless, gaping goggle-eyed. Then, the driver murmured in a faraway voice:

"Did you—did you—was you fool enough to think you seen anything? Was you, Eitel?"

"I-I sure seen SUTHIN', Roodie," quavered Eitel. "Suthin' with—with the kid in its mouth. It—"

"That's good enough for me!" announced the heroic Roodie, stamping again on the self-starter.

"If we both seen it, then it was THERE. And I'm goin' after it."

In another brace of seconds the lights once, more picked up the dark animal with its white bundle. Eitel shrank back in his seat. But Roodie put on another notch of gas. And, coming closer, both recognized the strange bundle-carrier as a dark-hued collie dog.

The identification did little to ease their feeling of incredulous mystification. But it banished their superstitious dread. Both of them were used to dogs. And though neither could guess how this particular dog happened to be stealing the twice-stolen baby, yet neither had the remotest fear of tackling the beast and rescuing its human plunder.

Roodie brought the abused runabout to another jerky stop within a few inches of the unconcerned collie. And he and Eitel swarmed earthward from opposite sides of the machine. In a trice, Roodie had struck Lad over the head; while Eitel grabbed at the bundle to drag it away from the dog.

Now, the weight of years was beginning to tell on Laddie. But that weight had not robbed him of the ability to call, at will, upon much of his oldtime strength and bewildering swiftness. Nor had it in any way dampened his hero-spirit or dulled his uncannily wise brain.

He had been plodding peacefully along, bearing home a wonderful gift—a gift oftener confided to the care of storks than of collies—when he had been attacked from two sides in most unprovoked fashion. He had been struck! His blood surged hot.

There was no Law governing such a case. So, as usual in new crises, Lad proceeded to make his own Law and to put it into effect.

A deft turn of the head eluded Eitel's snatching hand. With the lightness of a feather, Lad deposited the bundle in the soft dust of the road. In practically, the same gesture, the dog's curving eye-tooth slashed Eitel's outstretched wrist to the bone.

Then, staggering under a second head-blow from Roodie, the collie wheeled with lightning-swift fury upon this more hostile of his two assailants.

Hurling himself at the man's throat, in silent ferocity, he well-nigh turned the nocturnal battle into a killing. But Roodie's left arm, by instinct, flew up to guard his threatened jugular.

Through coat and shirt and skin and flesh,—as in the case of Lady's slayer,—the great dog's teeth clove their way; their rending snap checked only by the bone of the forearm. The impetus of his eighty-pound body sent the man clean off his balance. And together the two crashed backward to the ground.

Lad was not of the bulldog breed which seeks and gains a hold and then hangs on to it with locked jaws. A collie fights with brain as much as with teeth. By the time he and Roodie struck the earth, Lad tore free from the unloving embrace and whizzed about to face the second of his foes.

Eitel had taken advantage of the moment's respite to seize with his uninjured hand his slashed wrist. Then, on second thought, he released the wounded wrist and bent over the baby; with a view to picking him up and regaining the comparative safety of the car's floor. But his well-devised maneuver was not carried out.

For, as he leaned over the bundle, extending his hands to pick it up, Lad's teeth drove fiercely into the section of Eitel's plump anatomy which chanced to be presented to him by the stooping down of the kidnaper. Deep clove his sharp fangs. Nor did Eitel Schwartz sit down again with any degree of comfort for many a long day.

With resounding howls of pain, Eitel thrashed up and down the road; endeavoring to shake off this rear attack. The noise awakened the baby; who added his wails to the din. Roodie got dizzily to his feet; his left forearm useless and anguished from the tearing of its muscles:

"Shut up!" he bellowed. "You want to bring the whole county down on us? We—"

He ceased speaking; and lurched at full speed to the car and to the top of its single seat. For, at sound of his voice, Lad had loosed his grip on the screeching Eitel and whirled about on this earlier adversary.

The man reached the car-seat and slammed the door behind him, perhaps a sixth of a second too soon for Lad to reach him.

Eitel, warned by his brother's bawled command, made a rush for the other side of the machine and clambered up. He was a trifle less fortunate than had been Roodie, in making this ascent. For Lad's flashing jaws grazed his ankle and carried away in that snap a sample of Eitel's best town-going trousers.

Thus, on the seat of the car, swaying, and clutching at each other, crouched the two sore-wounded brethren; while Lad ravened about the vehicle, springing upward now and, again in futile effort to clear the top of the closed door.