Not one of these people—not even the policeman himself—had any evidence that the collie was mad. There are not two really rabid dogs seen at large in New York or in any other city in the course of a year. Yet, at the back of the human throat ever lurks that fool-cry of "Mad dog!"—ever ready to leap forth into shouted words at the faintest provocation.
One wonders, disgustedly, how many thousand luckless and totally harmless pet dogs in the course of a year are thus hunted down and shot or kicked or stoned to death in the sacred name of Humanity, just because some idiot mistakes a hanging tongue or an uncertainty of direction for signs of that semi-phantom malady known as "rabies."
A dog is lost. He wanders to and fro in bewilderment. Boys pelt or chase him. His tongue lolls and his eyes glaze with fear. Then, ever, rises the yell of "Mad Dog!" And a friendly, lovable pet is joyfully done to death.
Lad crossed Broadway, threading his way through the trolley-and-taxi procession, and galloped down the hill toward Riverside Park. Close always at his heels followed the shouting crowd. Twice, by sprinting, the patrolman gained the front rank of the hunt, and twice he fired—both bullets going wide. Across West End Avenue and across Riverside Drive went Lad, hard-pressed and fleeing at top speed. The cross-street ran directly down to a pier that jutted a hundred feet out into the Hudson River.
Along this pier flew Lad, not in panic terror, but none the less resolved that these howling New Yorkers should not catch him and prevent his going home.
Onto the pier the clattering hue-and-cry followed. A dock watchman, as Lad flashed by, hurled a heavy joist of wood at the dog. It whizzed past the flying hind legs, scoring the barest of misses.
And now Lad was at the pier end. Behind him the crowd raced; sure it had the dangerous brute cornered at last.
On the string-piece the collie paused for the briefest of moments glancing to north and to south. Everywhere the wide river stretched away, unbridged. It must be crossed if he would continue his homeward course, and there was but one way for him to cross it.
The watchman, hard at his heels, swung upward the club he carried. Down came the club withmurderous force—upon the stringpiece where Lad had been standing.
Lad was no longer there. One great bound had carried him over the edge and into the black water below.
Down he plunged into the river and far, far under it, fighting his way gaspingly to the surface. The water that gushed into his mouth and nostrils was salty and foul, not at all like the water of the lake at the edge of The Place. It sickened him. And the February chill of the river cut into him like a million ice-needles.
To the surface he came, and struck out valorously for the opposite shore much more than a mile away. As his beautiful head appeared, a yell went up from the clustering riff-raff at the pier end. Bits of wood and coal began to shower the water all around him. A pistol shot plopped into the river a bare six inches away from him.
But the light was bad and the stream was a tossing mass of blackness and of light-blurs, and presently the dog swam, unscathed, beyond the range of missiles.
Now a swim of a mile or of two miles was no special exploit for Lad—even in ice-cold water, but this water was not like any he had swum in. The tide was at the turn for one thing, and while, in a way, this helped him, yet the myriad eddies and cross-currents engendered by it turned and jostled and buffeted him in a most perplexing way. Andthere were spars and barrels and other obstacles that were forever looming up just in front of him or else banging against his heaving sides.
Once a revenue cutter passed not thirty feet ahead of him. Its wake caught the dog and sucked him under and spun his body around and around before he could fight clear of it.
His lungs were bursting. He was worn out. He felt as sore as if he had been kicked for an hour. The bullet-graze along his flank was hurting him as the salt water bit into it, and the muzzle half-blinded, half-smothered him.
But, because of his hero heart rather than through his splendid strength and wisdom, he kept on.
For an hour or more he swam until at last his body and brain were numb, and only the mechanical action of his wrenched muscles held him in motion. Twice tugs narrowly escaped running him down, and in the wake of each he waged a fearful fight for life.
After a century of effort his groping forepaws felt the impact of a submerged rock, then of another, and with his last vestige of strength Lad crawled feebly ashore on a narrow sandspit at the base of the elephant-gray Palisades. There, he collapsed and lay shivering, panting, struggling for breath.
Long he lay there, letting Nature bring backsome of his wind and his motive-power, his shaggy body one huge pulsing ache.
When he was able to move, he took up his journey. Sometimes swimming, sometimes on ground, he skirted the Palisades-foot to northward, until he found one of the several precipice-paths that Sunday picnickers love to climb. Up this he made his tottering way, slowly; conserving his strength as best he could.
On the summit he lay down again to rest. Behind him, across the stretch of black and lamp-flecked water, rose the inky skyline of the city with a lurid furnace-glow between its crevices that smote the sky. Ahead was a plateau with a downward slope beyond it.
Once more, getting to his feet, Lad stood and sniffed, turning his head from side to side, muzzled nose aloft. Then, his bearings taken, he set off again, but this time his jog-trot was slower and his light step was growing heavier. The terrible strain of his swim was passing from his mighty sinews, but it was passing slowly because he was so tired and empty and in such pain of body and mind. He saved his energies until he should have more of them to save.
Across the plateau, down the slope, and then across the interminable salt meadows to westward he traveled; sometimes on road or path, sometimes across field or hill, but always in an unswerving straight line.
It was a little before midnight that he breasted the first rise of Jersey hills above Hackensack. Through a lightless one-street village he went, head low, stride lumbering, the muzzle weighing a ton and composed of molten iron and hornet stings.
It was the muzzle—now his first fatigue had slackened—that galled him worst. Its torture was beginning to do queer things to his nerves and brain. Even a stolid, nerveless dog hates a muzzle. More than one sensitive dog has been driven crazy by it.
Thirst—intolerable thirst—was torturing Lad. He could not drink at the pools and brooks he crossed. So tight-jammed was the steel jaw-hinge now that he could not even open his mouth to pant, which is the cruelest deprivation a dog can suffer.
Out of the shadows of a ramshackle hovel's front yard dived a monstrous shape that hurled itself ferociously on the passing collie.
A mongrel watchdog—part mastiff, part hound, part anything you choose—had been dozing on his squatter-owner's doorstep when the pad-pad-pad of Lad's wearily-jogging feet had sounded on the road.
Other dogs, more than one of them, during the journey had run out to yap or growl at the wanderer, but as Lad had been big and had followed an unhesitant course they had not gone to the length of actual attack.
This mongrel, however, was less prudent. Or,perhaps, dog-fashion, he realized that the muzzle rendered Lad powerless and therefore saw every prospect of a safe and easy victory. At all events, he gave no warning bark or growl as he shot forward to the attack.
Lad—his eyes dim with fatigue and road dust, his ears dulled by water and by noise—did not hear nor see the foe. His first notice of the attack was a flying weight of seventy-odd pounds that crashed against his flank. A double set of fangs in the same instant, sank into his shoulder.
Under the onslaught Lad fell sprawlingly into the road on his left side, his enemy upon him.
As Lad went down the mongrel deftly shifted his unprofitable shoulder grip to a far more promisingly murderous hold on his fallen victim's throat.
A cat has five sets of deadly weapons—its four feet and its jaws. So has every animal on earth—human and otherwise—except a dog. A dog is terrible by reason of its teeth. Encase the mouth in a muzzle and a dog is as helpless for offensive warfare as is a newborn baby.
And Lad was thus pitiably impotent to return his foe's attack. Exhausted, flung prone to earth, his mighty jaws muzzled, he seemed as good as dead.
But a collie down is not a collie beaten. The wolf-strain provides against that. Even as he fell Lad instinctively gathered his legs under him as he had done when he tumbled from the car.
And, almost at once, he was on his feet again, snarling horribly and lunging to break the mongrel's throat-grip. His weariness was forgotten and his wondrous reserve strength leaped into play. Which was all the good it did him; for he knew as well as the mongrel that he was powerless to use his teeth.
The throat of a collie—except in one small vulnerable spot—is armored by a veritable mattress of hair. Into this hair the mongrel had driven his teeth. The hair filled his mouth, but his grinding jaws encountered little else to close on.
A lurching jerk of Lad's strong frame tore loose the savagely inefficient hold. The mongrel sprang at him for a fresh grip. Lad reared to meet him, opposing his mighty chest to the charge and snapping powerlessly with his close-locked mouth.
The force of Lad's rearing leap sent the mongrel spinning back by sheer weight, but at once he drove in again to the assault. This time he did not give his muzzled antagonist a chance to rear, but sprang at Lad's flank. Lad wheeled to meet the rush and, opposing his shoulder to it, broke its force.
Seeing himself so helpless, this was of course the time for Lad to take to his heels and try to outrun the enemy he could not outfight. To stand his ground was to be torn, eventually, to death. Being anything but a fool Lad knew that; yet he ignored the chance of safety and continued to fight the worse-than-hopeless battle.
Twice and thrice his wit and his uncanny swiftness enabled him to block the big mongrel's rushes. The fourth time, as he sought to rear, his hind foot slipped on a skim of puddle-ice.
Down went Lad in a heap, and the mongrel struck.
Before the collie could regain his feet the mongrel's teeth had found a hold on the side of Lad's throat. Pinning down the muzzled dog, the mongrel proceeded to improve his hold by grinding his way toward the jugular. Now his teeth encountered something more solid than mere hair. They met upon a thin leather strap.
Fiercely the mongrel gnawed at this solid obstacle, his rage-hot brain possibly mistaking it for flesh. Lad writhed to free himself and to regain his feet, but seventy-five pounds of fighting weight were holding his neck to the ground.
Of a sudden, the mongrel growled in savage triumph. The strap was bitten through!
Clinging to the broken end of the leather the victor gave one final tug. The pull drove the steel bars excruciatingly deep into Lad's bruised nose for a moment. Then, by magic, the torture-implement was no longer on his head but was dangling by one strap between the muzzled mongrel's jaws.
With a motion so swift that the eye could not follow it, Lad was on his feet and plunging deliriously into the fray. Through a miracle, hisjaws were free; his torment was over. The joy of deliverance sent a glow of Berserk vigor sweeping through him.
The mongrel dropped the muzzle and came eagerly to the battle. To his dismay he found himself fighting not a helpless dog, but a maniac wolf. Lad sought no permanent hold. With dizzying quickness his head and body moved—and kept moving, and every motion meant a deep slash or a ragged tear in his enemy's short-coated hide.
With ridiculous ease the collie eluded the mongrel's awkward counter-attacks, and ever kept boring in. To the quivering bone his short front teeth sank. Deep and bloodily his curved tusks slashed—as the wolf and the collie alone can slash.
The mongrel, swept off his feet, rolled howling into the road; and Lad tore grimly at the exposed under-body.
Up went a window in the hovel. A man's voice shouted. A woman in a house across the way screamed. Lad glanced up to note this new diversion. The stricken mongrel yelping in terror and agony seized the second respite to scamper back to the doorstep, howling at every jump.
Lad did not pursue him, but jogged along on his journey without one backward look.
At a rivulet, a mile beyond, he stopped to drink. And he drank for ten minutes. Then he went on. Unmuzzled and with his thirst slaked, he forgot his pain, his fatigue, his muddy and blood-cakedand abraded coat, and the memory of his nightmare day.
He was going home!
At gray dawn the Mistress and the Master turned in at the gateway of The Place. All night they had sought Lad; from one end of Manhattan Island to the other—from Police Headquarters to dog pound—they had driven. And now the Master was bringing his tired and heartsore wife home to rest, while he himself should return to town and to the search.
The car chugged dispiritedly down the driveway to the house, but before it had traversed half the distance the dawn-hush was shattered by a thundrous bark of challenge to the invaders.
Lad, from his post of guard on the veranda, ran stiffly forward to bar the way. Then as he ran his eyes and nose suddenly told him these mysterious newcomers were his gods.
The Mistress, with a gasp of rapturous unbelief, was jumping down from the car before it came to a halt. On her knees, she caught Lad's muddy and bloody head tight in her arms.
"Oh, Lad;" she sobbed incoherently. "Laddie!Laddie!"
Whereat, by another miracle, Lad's stiffness and hurts and weariness were gone. He strove to lick the dear face bending so tearfully above him. Then, with an abandon of puppylike joy, he rolled on the ground waving all four soiled little feet inthe air and playfully pretending to snap at the loving hands that caressed him.
Which was ridiculous conduct for a stately and full-grown collie. But Lad didn't care, because it made the Mistress stop crying and laugh. And that was what Lad most wanted her to do.
The Place was nine miles north of the county-seat city of Paterson. And yearly, near Paterson, was held the great North Jersey Livestock Fair—a fair whose awards established for the next twelve-month the local rank of purebred cattle and sheep and pigs for thirty miles in either direction.
From the Ramapo hill pastures, south of Suffern, two days before the fair, descended a flock of twenty prize sheep—the playthings of a man to whom the title of Wall Street Farmer had a lure of its own—a lure that cost him something like $30,000 a year; and which made him a scourge to all his few friends.
Among these luckless friends chanced to be the Mistress and the Master of The Place. And the Gentleman Farmer had decided to break his sheep's fair-ward journey by a twenty-four-hour stop at The Place.
The Master, duly apprised of the sorry honor planned for his home, set aside a disused horse-paddock for the woolly visitors' use. Into this theirshepherd drove his dusty and bleating charges on their arrival.
The shepherd was a somber Scot. Nature had begun the work of somberness in his Highland heart. The duty of working for the Wall Street Farmer had added tenfold to the natural tendency. His name was McGillicuddy, and he looked it.
Now, in northern New Jersey a live sheep is well nigh as rare as a pterodactyl. This flock of twenty had cost their owner their weight in merino wool. A dog—especially a collie—that does not know sheep, is prone to consider them his lawful prey, in other words, the sight of a sheep has turned many an otherwise law-abiding dog into a killer.
To avoid so black a smirch on The Place's hospitality, the Master had loaded all his collies, except Lad, into the car, and had shipped them off, that morning, for a three-day sojourn at the boarding kennels, ten miles away.
"Does the Old Dog go, too, sir?" asked The Place's foreman, with a questioning nod at Lad, after he had lifted the others into the tonneau.
Lad was viewing the proceedings from the top of the veranda steps. The Master looked at him, then at the car, and answered:
"No. Lad has more right here than any measly imported sheep. He won't bother them if I tell him not to. Let him stay."
The sheep, convoyed by the misanthropic McGillicuddy, filed down the drive, from the highroad, an hour later, and were marshaled into the corral.
As the jostling procession, followed by its dour shepherd, turned in at the gate of The Place, Lad rose from his rug on the veranda. His nostrils itching with the unfamiliar odor, his soft eyes outraged by the bizarre sight, he set forth to drive the intruders out into the main road.
Head lowered, he ran, uttering no sound. This seemed to him an emergency which called for drastic measures rather than for monitory barking. For all he knew, these twenty fat, woolly, white things might be fighters who would attack him in a body, and who might even menace the safety of his gods; and the glum McGillicuddy did not impress him at all favorably. Hence the silent charge at the foe—a charge launched with the speed and terrible menace of a thunderbolt.
McGillicuddy sprang swiftly to the front of his flock, staff upwhirled; but before the staff could descend on the furry defender of The Place, a sweet voice called imperiously to the dog.
The Mistress had come out upon the veranda and had seen Lad dash to the attack.
"Lad!" she cried. "Lad!"
The great dog halted midway in his rush.
"Down!" called the Mistress. "Leave them alone! Do you hear, Lad?Leave them alone!Come back here!"
Lad heard, and Lad obeyed. Lad always obeyed.If these twenty malodorous strangers and their staff-brandishing guide were friends of the Mistress he must not drive them away. The order "Leave them alone!" was one that could not be disregarded.
Trembling with anger, yet with no thought of rebelling, Lad turned and trotted back to the veranda. He thrust his cold nose into the Mistress' warm little hand and looked up eagerly into her face, seeking a repeal of the command to keep away from the sheep and their driver.
But the Mistress only patted his silken head and whispered:
"We don't like it any more than you do, Laddie; but we mustn't let anyone know we don't. Leave them alone!"
Past the veranda filed the twenty priceless sheep, and on to the paddock.
"I suppose they'll carry off all the prizes at the fair, won't they?" asked the Mistress civilly, as McGillicuddy plodded past her at the tail of the procession.
"Aiblins, aye," grunted McGillicuddy, with the exquisite courtesy of a member of his race and class who feels he is being patronized. "Aiblins, aye. Aiblins, na'. Aiblins—ugh-uh."
Having thus safeguarded his statement against assault from any side at all, the Scot moved on. Lad strolled down toward the paddock to superintend the task of locking up the sheep. The Mistress did not detain him. She felt calmly certain her order of "Leave them alone!" had rendered the twenty visitors inviolate from him.
Lad walked slowly around the paddock, his gaze on the sheep. These were the first sheep he had ever seen. Yet his ancestors, for a thousand years or more, had herded and guarded flocks on the moors.
Atavism is mysteriously powerful in dogs, and it takes strange forms. A collie, too, has a queer strain of wolf in him—not only in body but in brain, and the wolf was the sheep's official murderer, as far back as the days when a humpbacked Greek slave, named Æsop, used to beguile his sleepless nights with writing fables.
Round and round the paddock prowled Lad; his eyes alight with a myriad half-memories; his sensitive nostrils quivering at the scents that enveloped them.
McGillicuddy, from time to time, eyed the dog obliquely, and with a scowl. These sheep were not the pride of his heart. His conscientious heart possessed no pride—pride being one of the seven deadly sins, and the sheep not being his own; but the flock represented his livelihood—his comfortably overpaid job with the Wall Street Farmer. He was responsible for their welfare.
And McGillicuddy did not at all like the way this beautiful collie eyed the prize merinos, nor was the Scot satisfied with the strength of the corral. Itswire fencing was rusty and sagging from long disuse, its gate hung crookedly and had a crazy hasp.
A sheep is one of the least intelligent creatures on earth. Should the flock's leader decide at any time during the night to press his heavy bulk against the gate or against some of the rustier wire strands, there would presently be a gap through which the entire twenty could amble forth. Once outside——
Again McGillicuddy glowered dourly at Lad. The collie returned the look with interest; a well-bred dog being as skilled in reading human faces as is any professional dead beat. Lad saw the dislike in McGillicuddy's heavy-thatched eyes; cordially he yearned to prove his own distaste for the shepherd, but the Mistress' command had immuned this sour stranger.
So Lad merely turned his back on the man, sat down, flattened his furry ears close against his head, thrust his pointed nose skyward, and sniffed. McGillicuddy was too much an animal man not to read the insult in the dog's posture and action, and the shepherd's fist tightened longingly round his staff.
Half an hour later the Wall Street Farmer himself arrived at The Place. He came in a runabout. On the seat beside him sat his pasty-faced, four-year-old son. At his feet was something which, at first glance, might have been either a quadruped or a rag bag.
The Mistress and the Master, with dutiful hypocrisy, came smilingly out on the veranda to welcome the guests. Lad, who had returned from the impromptu sheep-fold, stood beside them. At sight and scent of this new batch of visitors the collie doubtless felt what old-fashioned novelists used to describe as "mingled emotions."
There was a child in the car. And though there had been few children in Lad's life, yet he loved them, loved them as a big-hearted and big-bodied dog always loves the helpless. Wherefore, at sight of the child, Lad rejoiced.
But the animal crouching at the Wall Street Farmer's feet was quite a different form of guest. Lad recognized the thing as a dog—yet no such dog as ever he had seen. An unwholesome-looking dog. Even as the little boy was an unwholesome-looking child.
"Well!" sonorously proclaimed the Wall Street Farmer as he scrambled out of the runabout and bore down upon his hosts, "here I am! The sheep got here all safe? Good! I knew they would. McGillicuddy's a genius; nothing he can't do with sheep. You remember Mortimer?" lifting the lanky youngster from the seat. "He teased so to come along, his mother said I'd better bring him. I knew you'd be glad. Shake hands with them, Morty, darling."
"I wun't!" snarled Morty darling, hanging back.
Then he caught sight of Lad. The collie camestraight up to the child, grinning from ear to ear, and wrinkling his nose so delightedly that every white front tooth showed. Morty flung himself forward to greet the huge dog, but the Wall Street Farmer, with a shout of warning, caught the boy in his arms and bravely interposed his own fat body between Mortimer and Lad.
"What does the beast mean by snarling at my son?" fiercely demanded the Wall Street Farmer. "You people have no right to leave such a savage dog at large."
"He's not snarling," the Mistress indignantly declared, "he's smiling. That's Lad's way. Why, he'd let himself be cut up into squares sooner than hurt a child."
Still doubtful, the Wall Street Farmer cautiously set down his son on the veranda. Morty flung himself bodily upon Lad; hauling and mauling the stately collie this way and that.
Had any grown person, save only the Mistress or the Master, attempted such treatment, the curving white eyeteeth would have buried themselves very promptly in the offender.
Indeed, the Master now gazed, with some nervousness, at the performance; but the Mistress was not worried as to her adored pet's behavior; and the Mistress, as ever, was right.
For Lad endured the mauling—not patiently, but blissfully. He fairly writhed with delight at the painful tugging of hair and ears; and moistly hestrove to kiss the wizened little face that was on a level with his own. Morty repaid this attention by slapping Lad across the mouth. Lad only wagged his plumy tail the more ecstatically and snuggled closer to the preposterous baby.
Meantime, the Wall Street Farmer, in clarion tones, was calling attention to the second of the two treasures he had brought along.
"Melisande!" he cried.
At the summons, the fuzzy monstrosity in the car ceased peering snappishly over the doortop at Lad, and condescended to turn toward its owner. It looked like something between an Old English sheep-dog and a dachshund; straw-colored fur enveloped the scrawny body; a miserable apology for a bushy tail hung limply between crooked hind legs; evil little eyes peered forth from beneath a scarecrow stubble of head fringe; it was not a pretty dog, this canine the Wall Street Farmer had just addressed by the poetic title of "Melisande."
"What in blazes is he?" asked the Master.
"She is a Prussian sheep-dog," proudly replied the Wall Street Farmer. "She is the first of her breed ever imported to America. Cost me a clean $1100 to buy her from a Chicago man who brought her over. I'm going to exhibit her at the Garden Show next winter. What do you think of her, old man?"
"I'd hate to tell you," said the Master, "but I'll gladly tell you what I think of that Chicago man.He's the original genius who sold all the land between New York and Jersey City for a thousand dollars an acre and issued the series of ten-dollar season admission tickets to Central Park."
Being the Wall Street Farmer's host the Master said this in the recesses of his own heart. Aloud, he blithered some complimentary lie and watched the visitor lift the scraggy nondescript out of the car.
The moment she was on the ground, Melisande made a wild dash at Lad. Snarling, she snapped ferociously at his throat. Lad merely turned his shaggy shoulder to meet the onslaught. And Melisande found herself gripping nothing but a mouthful of his soft hair. He made no move to resent the attack. And the Wall Street Farmer, shouting unobeyed mandates to his pet, dragged away the pugnacious Melisande by the scruff of the neck.
The $1100 Prussian sheep-dog next caught a glimpse of one of the half-grown peacock chicks—the joy of the Mistress' summer—strutting across the lawn. Melisande, with a yap of glee, rushed off in pursuit.
The chick had no fear. The dogs of The Place had always been trained to give the fowls a wide berth; so the pretty little peacock fell a pitifully easy prey to the first snap of Melisande's jaws.
Lad growled, deep down in his throat, at this gross lawlessness. The Mistress bit her lip to keepher self-control at the slaughter of her pet. The Master hastily said something that was lost in the louder volume of the Wall Street Farmer's bellow as he sought to call back his $1100 treasure from further slaying.
"Well, well, well!" the guest exclaimed as at last he returned to the veranda, dragging Melisande along in his wake. "I'm sorry this happened, but you must overlook it. You see, Melisande is so high spirited she is hard to control. That's the way with thoroughbred dogs. Don't you find it so?"
The Master, thus appealed to, glanced at his wife. She was momentarily out of ear-shot, having gone to pick up the killed peacock and stroke its rumpled plumage. So the Master allowed himself the luxury of plainer speech than if she had been there to be grieved over the breach of hospitality.
"A thoroughbred dog," he said oracularly, "is either the best dog on earth, or else he is the worst. If he is the best he learns to mind, and to behave himself in every way like a thoroughbred. He learns it without being beaten or sworn at. If he is the worst—then it's wisest for his owner to hunt up some Easy Mark and sell the cur to him for $1100. You'll notice I said his 'owner'—not his 'master.' There's all the difference in the world between those two terms. Anybody, with price to buy a dog, can be an 'owner,' but all the cash coined won't make a man a dog's 'master'—unless he's that sort of man. Think it over."
The Wall Street Farmer glared apoplectically at his host, who was already sorry that the sneer at Lad and the killing of his wife's pet had made him speak so to a guest—even to a self-invited and undesired guest. Then the Wall Street Man, with a grunt, put a leash on Melisande and gruffly asked that she be fastened to one of the vacant kennels.
The Mistress came back to the group as the $1100 beast was led away, kennelward, by the gardener. Recovering her self-possession, the Mistress said to her guest:
"I never heard of a Prussian sheep-dog before. Is she trained to herd your sheep?"
"No," replied the Wall Street Farmer, his rancor forgotten in the prospect of exploiting his wondrous dog, "not yet. In fact, she hates the sheep. She's young, so we haven't tried to train her for shepherding. Two or three times we have taken her into the pasture—always on leash—but she flies at the sheep and goes almost crazy with anger. McGillicuddy says it's bad for the sheep to be scared by her. So we keep her away from them. But by next season——"
He got no further. A sound of lamentation—prolonged and leather-lunged lamentation—smote upon the air.
"Morty!" ejaculated the visitor in panic. "It's Morty! Quick!"
Following the easily traceable direction of the squalling, he ran up the veranda steps and into thehouse—closely followed by the Mistress and the Master.
The engaging Mortimer was of the stuff whereof explorers are made. No pent-up Utica—nor veranda—contracted his powers. Bored by the stupid talk of grown folk, wearying of Lad's friendly advances, he had slipped through the open house door into the living-room.
There, for the day was cool, a jolly wood fire blazed on the hearth. In front of the fireplace was an enormous and cavernous couch. In the precise center of the couch was curled something that looked like a ball of the grayish fluff a maid sweeps under the bed.
As Mortimer came into the room the infatuated Lad at his heels, the fluffy ball lazily uncurled and stretched—thereby revealing itself as no ball, but a superfurry gray kitten—the Mistress' temperamental new Persian kitten rejoicing in the dreamily Oriental name of Tipperary.
With a squeal of glad discovery, Mortimer grabbed Tipperary with both hands, essaying to pull her fox-brush tail. Now, no sane person needs to be told the basic difference between the heart of a cat and the heart of a dog. Nor will any student of Persian kittens be surprised to hear that Tipperary's reception of the ruffianly baby's advances was totally different from Lad's.
A lightning stroke of one of her shapeless fore-paws, and Tipperary was free. Morty stood blinking in amaze at four geometrically regular red marks on the back of his own pudgy hand. Tipperary had not done her persecutor the honor to run away. She merely moved to the far end of the couch and lay down there to renew her nap.
A mad fury fired the brain of Mortimer; a fury goaded by the pain of his scratches. Screaming in rage he seized the cat by the nape of the neck—to be safe from teeth and whizzing claws—and stamped across toward the high-burning fire with her. His arm was drawn back to fling the squirming and offending kitten into the scarlet heart of the flames. And then Lad intervened.
Now Lad was not in the very least interested in Tipperary; treating the temperamental Persian always with marked coldness. It is even doubtful if he realized Morty's intent.
But one thing he did realize—that a silly baby was toddling straight toward the fire. As many another wise dog has gone, before and since, Lad quietly stepped between Morty and the hearth. He stood, broadside to the fire and to the child—a shaggy wall between the peril and the baby.
But so quickly had anger carried Mortimer toward the hearth that the dog had not been able to block his progress until only a bare eighteen inches separated the youngster from the blaze.
Thus Lad found the heat from the burning logs all but intolerable. It bit through his thick coat andinto the tender flesh beneath. Like a rock he stood there.
Mortimer, his gentle plan of kitten killing foiled, redoubled his screeches. Lad's back was higher than the child's eyes. Yet Morty sought to hurl the kitten over this stolid barrier into the fire.
Tipperary fell short; landing on the dog's shoulders, digging her needle claws viciously therein, and thence leaping to the floor, from which she sprang to the top of the bookshelves, spitting back blasphemously at her tormentor.
Morty's interest in the fire had been purely as a piece of immolation for the cat, but finding his path to it barred, he straightway resolved to go thither himself.
He started to move round to it, in front of Lad. The dog took a forward step that again barred the way. Morty went insane with wrath at this new interference with his sweet plans. His howls swelled to a sustained roar, that reached the ears of the grown-ups on the lawn.
He flew at Lad, beating the dog with all the puny force of his fists, sinking his milk teeth into the collie's back, wrenching and tearing at the thick fur, stamping with his booted heels upon the absurdly tiny white forepaws, kicking the short ribs and the tender stomach.
Never for an instant did the child slacken his howls as he punished the dog that was saving him from death. Rather, he increased their volumefrom moment to moment. Lad did not stir. The kicking and beating and gouging and hair-pulling were not pleasant, but they were wholly bearable. The heat was not. The smell of singed hair began to fill the room, but Lad stood firm.
And then in rushed the relief expedition, the Wall Street Farmer at its head.
At once concluding that Lad had bitten his son's bleeding hand, the irate father swung aloft a chair and strode to the rescue.
Lad saw him coming.
With the lightning swiftness of his kind he whirled to one side as the mass of wood descended. The chair missed him by a fraction of an inch and splintered into pieces. It was a Chippendale, and had belonged to the Mistress' great grandparents.
For the first time in all his blameless life Lad broke the sacred Guest Law by growling at a vouched-for visitor. But surely this fat bellower was no guest! Lad looked at his gods for information.
"Down, Lad!" said the Master very gently, his voice not quite steady.
Lad, perplexed but obedient, dropped to the floor.
"The brute tried to kill my boy!" stormed the Wall Street Farmer right dramatically as he caught the howling Morty up in his arms to study the extent of the wound.
"He's my guest!He's my guest!HE'S MY GUEST!the Master was saying over and over to himself. "Lord, help me to keep on remembering he's my GUEST!"
The Mistress came forward.
"Lad would sooner die than hurt a child," she declared, trying not to think of the wrecked heirloom chair. "He loves children. Here, let me see Morty's hand. Why, those are claw-marks! Cat scratches!"
"Ve nassy cat scwatched me!" bawled Morty. "Kill her, daddy! I twied to. I twied to frow her in ve fire. But ve mizz'ble dog wouldn't let me! Kill her, daddy! Kill ve dog too!"
The Master's mouth flew wide open.
"Won't you go down to the paddock, dear," hastily interposed the Mistress, "and see if the sheep are all right? Take Lad along with you."
Lad, alone of all The Place's dogs, had the run of the house, night and day, of the sacred dining-room. During the rest of that day he did not avail himself of his high privilege. He kept out of the way—perplexed, woe-begone, his burns still paining him despite the Master's ministrations.
After talking long and loudly all evening of his sheep's peerless quality and of their certain victory over all comers in the fair the Wall Street Farmer consented at last to go to bed. And silence settled over The Place.
In the black hour before dawn, that same silence was split in a score of places—split into a mosthorrible cacophony of sound that sent sleep scampering to the winds.
It was the mingling of yells and bleats and barks and the scurry of many feet. It burst out all at once in full force, lasting for some seconds with increasing clangor; then died to stillness.
By that time every human on The Place was out of bed. In more or less rudimentary attire the house's inhabitants trooped down into the lower hall. There the Wall Street Farmer was raving noisily and was yanking at a door bolt whose secret he could not fathom.
"It's my sheep!" he shouted. "That accursed dog of yours has gotten at them. He's slaughtering them. I heard the poor things bleating and I heard him snarling among them. They cost me——"
"If you're speaking of Lad," blazed the Master, "he's——"
"Here are the flashlights," interposed the Mistress. "Let me open that door for you. I understand the bolt."
Out into the dark they went, all but colliding with McGillicuddy. The Scot, awakened like the rest, had gone to the paddock. He had now come back to report the paddock empty and all the sheep gone.
"It's the collie tike!" sputtered McGillicuddy. "I'll tak' oath to it. I ken it's him. I suspeecionedhim a' long, from how he garred at oor sheep the day. He——"
"I said so!" roared the Wall Street Farmer. "The murderous brute! First, he tries to kill Morty. And now he slaughters my sheep. You——"
The Master started to speak. But a white little hand, in the darkness, was laid gently across his mouth.
"You told me he always slept under the piano in your music room!" accused the guest as the four made their way paddock-ward, lighting a path with the electric flashlights. "Well, I looked there just now. He isn't under the piano. He—— He——"
"Lad!" called the Master; then at the top of his lungs. "Lad!"
A distant growl, a snarl, a yelp, a scramble—and presently Lad appeared in the farthest radius of the flashlight flare.
For only a moment he stood there. Then he wheeled about and vanished in the dark. Nor had the Master the voice to call him back. The momentary glimpse of the great collie, in the merciless gleam of the lights, had stricken the whole party into an instant's speechlessness.
Vividly distinct against the darkness they had seen Lad. His well-groomed coat was rumpled. His eyes were fire-balls. And—his jaws were red with blood. Then he had vanished.
A groan from the Master—a groan of heartbreak—was the first sound from the four. The dog he loved was a killer.
"It isn't true! It isn't true!" stoutly declared the Mistress.
The Wall Street Farmer and McGullicuddy had already broken into a run. The shepherd had found the tracks of many little hoofs on the dewy ground. And he was following the trail. The guest, swearing and panting, was behind him. The Mistress and the Master brought up the rear.
At every step they peered fearfully around them for what they dreaded to see—the mangled body of some slain sheep. But they saw none. And they followed the trail.
In a quarter mile they came to its end.
All four flashlights played simultaneously upon a tiny hillock that rose from the meadow at the forest edge. The hillock was usually green. Now it was white.
Around its short slopes was huddled a flock of sheep, as close-ringed as though by a fence. At the hillock's summit sat Lad. He was sitting there in a queer attitude, one of his snowy forepaws pinning something to the ground—something that could not be clearly distinguished through the huddle but which, evidently, was no sheep.
The Wall Street Farmer broke the tense silence with a gobbled exclamation.
"Whisht!" half reverently interrupted the shepherd, who had been circling the hillock on censusduty. "There's na a sheep gone, nor—so far's I can see—a sheep hurted. The fu' twenty is there."
The Master's flashlight found a gap through which its rays could reach the hillock crest. The light revealed, under Lad's gently pinioning forepaw, the crouching and badly scared Melisande—the $1100 Prussian sheep dog.
McGullicuddy, with a grunt, was off on another and longer tour of inspection. Presently he came back. He was breathing hard.
Even before McGillicuddy made his report the Master had guessed at the main points of the mystery's solution.
Melisande, weary of captivity, had gnawed through her leash. Seeking sport, she had gone to the paddock. There she had easily worried loose the crazy gate latch. Just as she was wriggling through, Lad appeared from the veranda.
He had tried to drive back the would-be killer from her prey. Lad was a veteran of several battles. But, apart from her sex, Melisande was no opponent for him. And he had treated her accordingly. Melisande had snapped at him, cutting him deeply in the underjaw. During the scrimmage the panic-urged sheep had bolted out of the paddock and had scattered.
Remember, please, that Lad, ten hours earlier, had never in his life seen a sheep. But remember, too, that a million of his ancestors had won their right to a livelihood by their almost supernaturalskill at herding flocks. Let this explain what actually happened—the throwback of a great collie's instinct.
Driving the scared and subdued Melisande before him—and ever hampered by her unwelcome presence—Lad proceeded to round up the scattered sheep. He was in the midst of the process when the Master called him. Merely galloping back for an instant, and finding the summons was not repeated, he returned to his atavistic task.
In less than five minutes the twenty scampering runaways were "ringed" on the hillock. And, still keeping the Prussian sheep dog out of mischief, Lad established himself in the ring's center.
Further than that, and the keeping of the ring intact, his primal instincts did not serve him. Having rounded up his flock Lad had not the remotest idea what to do with them. So he merely held them there until the noisily gabbling humans should decide to take the matter out of his care.
McGillicuddy examined every sheep separately and found not a scratch or a stain on any of them. Then he told in effect what has here been set down as to Lad's exploit.
As he finished his recital McGillicuddy looked shamefacedly around him as though gathering courage for an irksome task. A sickly yellow dawn was crawling over the eastern mountains, throwing a ghostly glow on the shepherd's dour and craggy visage. Drawing a long breath of resolve he advanced upon Lad. Dropping on one knee, his eyes on a level with the unconcernedly observant collie's, McGillicuddy intoned:
"Laddie, ye're a braw, braw dog. Ou, a canny dog! A sonsie dog, Laddie! I hae na met yer match this side o' Kirkcaldy Brae. Gin ye'll tak' an auld fule's apology for wrangin' ye, an' an auld fule's hand in gude fellowship, 'twill pleasure me, Laddie. Winna ye let bygones be bygones, an' shake?"
Yes, the speech was ridiculous, but no one felt like laughing, not even the Wall Street Farmer. The shepherd was gravely sincere and he knew that Lad would understand his burring words.
And Lad did understand. Solemnly he sat up. Solemnly he laid one white forepaw in the gnarled palm the kneeling shepherd outstretched to him. His eyes glinted in wise friendliness as they met the admiring gaze of the old man. Two born shepherds were face to face. Deep was calling unto deep.
Presently McGillicuddy broke the spell by rising abruptly to his feet. Gruffly he turned to the Master.
"There's na wit, sir," he growled, "in speirin' will ye sell him. But—but I compliment ye on him, nanetheless."
"That's right; McGillicuddy's right!" boomed the Wall Street Farmer, catching but part of his shepherd's mumbled words. "Good idea! He is afine dog. I see that now. I was prejudiced. I freely admit it. A remarkable dog. What'll you take for him? Or—better yet, how would you like to swap, even, for Melisande?"
The Master's mouth again flew ajar, and many sizzling words jostled each other in his throat. Before any of these could shame his hospitality by escaping, the Mistress hurriedly interposed:
"Dear, we left all the house doors wide open. Would you mind hurrying back ahead of us and seeing that everything is safe? And—will you take Lad with you?"
The Place was in the North Jersey hinterland, backed by miles of hill and forest, facing the lake that divided it from the village and the railroad and the other new-made smears which had been daubed upon Mother Nature's smiling face in the holy name of Civilization. The lonely situation of The Place made Lad's self-appointed guardianship of its acres no sinecure at all. The dread of his name spread far—carried by hobo and by less harmless intruder.
Ten miles to northward of The Place, among the mountains of this same North Jersey hinterland, a man named Glure had bought a rambling old wilderness farm. By dint of much money, more zeal and most dearth of taste, he had caused the wilderness to blossom like the Fifth Proposition of Euclid. He had turned bosky wildwood into chaste picnic-grove plaisaunces, lush meadows into sunken gardens, a roomy colonial farmstead into something between a feudal castle and a roadhouse. And, looking on his work, he had seen that it was good.
This Beautifier of the Wilderness was a financial giantlet, who had lately chosen to amuse himself, after work-hours, by what he called "farming." Hence the purchase and renovation of the five hundred-acre tract, the building of model farms, the acquisition of priceless livestock, and the hiring of a battalion of skilled employees. Hence, too, his dearly loved and self-given title of "Wall Street Farmer." His name, I repeat, was Glure.
Having established himself in the region, the Wall Street Farmer undertook most earnestly to reproduce the story-book glories of the life supposedly led by mid-Victorian country gentlemen. Not only in respect to keeping open-house and in alternately patronizing and bullying the peasantry, but in filling his gun-room shelves with cups and other trophies won by his livestock.
To his "open house" few of the neighboring families came. The local peasantry—Jersey mountaineers of Revolutionary stock, who had not the faintest idea they were "peasantry" and who, indeed, had never heard of the word—alternately grinned and swore at the Wall Street Farmer's treatment of them, and mulcted him of huge sums for small services. But Glure's keenest disappointment—a disappointment that crept gradually up toward the monomania point—was the annoyingly continual emptiness of his trophy-shelves.
When, for instance, he sent to the Paterson Livestock Show a score of his pricelessly imported merino sheep, under his more pricelessly imported Scotch shepherd, Mr. McGillicuddy—the sheep came ambling back to Glure Towers Farm bearing no worthier guerdon than a single third-prize yellow silk rosette and a "Commended" ribbon. First and second prizes, as well as the challenge cup had gone to flocks owned by vastly inferior folk—small farmers who had no money wherewith to import the pick of the Scottish moors—farmers who had bred and developed their own sheep, with no better aid than personal care and personal judgment.
At the Hohokus Fair, too, the Country Gentleman's imported Holstein bull, Tenebris, had had to content himself with a measly red rosette in token of second prize, while the silver cup went to a bull owned by an elderly North Jerseyman of low manners, who had bred his own entry and had bred the latter's ancestors for forty years back.
It was discouraging, it was mystifying. There actually seemed to be a vulgar conspiracy among the down-at-heel rural judges—a conspiracy to boost second-rate stock and to turn a blind eye to the virtues of overpriced transatlantic importations.
It was the same in the poultry shows and in hog exhibits. It was the same at the County Fair horse-trots. At one of these trots the Wall Street Farmer, in person, drove his $9000 English colt. And a rangy Hackensack gelding won all three heats. In none of the three did Glure's colt get within hailingdistance of the wire before at least two other trotters had clattered under it.
(Glure's English head-groom was called on the carpet to explain why a colt that could do a neat 2.13 in training was beaten out in a 2.17 trot. The groom lost his temper and his place. For he grunted, in reply, "The colt was all there. It was the driving did it.")
The gun-room's glassed shelves in time were gay with ribbon. But only two of the three primary colors were represented there—blue being conspicuously absent. As for cups—the burglar who should break into Glure Towers in search of such booty would find himself the worse off by a wageless night's work.
Then it was that the Wall Street Farmer had his Inspiration. Which brings us by easy degrees to the Hampton Dog Show.
Even as the Fiery Cross among the Highland crags once flashed signal of War, so, when the World War swirl sucked nation after nation into its eddy, the Red Cross flamed from one end of America to the other, as the common rallying point for those who, for a time, must do their fighting on the hither side of the gray seas. The country bristled with a thousand money-getting functions of a thousand different kinds; with one objective—the Red Cross.
So it happened at last that North Jersey was posted, on state road and byway, with flaring placards announcing a Mammoth Outdoor Specialty Dog show, to be held under the auspices of the Hampton Branch of the American National Red Cross, on Labor Day.
Mr. Hamilcar Q. Glure, the announcement continued, had kindly donated the use of his beautiful grounds for the Event, and had subscribed three hundred dollars towards its running expenses and prizes.
Not only were the usual dog classes to be judged, but an added interest was to be supplied by the awarding of no less than fifteen Specialty Trophies.
Mr. Glure, having offered his grounds and the initial three hundred dollars, graciously turned over the details of the Show to a committee, whose duty it was to suggest popular Specialties and to solicit money for the cups.
Thus, one morning, an official letter was received at The Place, asking the Master to enter all his available dogs for the Show—at one dollar apiece for each class—and to contribute, if he should so desire, the sum of fifteen dollars, besides, for the purchase of a Specialty Cup.
The Mistress was far more excited over the coming event than was the Master. And it was she who suggested the nature of the Specialty for which the fifteen-dollar cup should be offered.
The next outgoing mail bore the Master's checkfor a cup. "To be awarded to the oldest and best-cared-for dog, of any breed, in the Show."
It was like the Mistress to think of that, and to reward the dog-owner whose pet's old age had been made happiest. Hers was destined to be the most popular Specialty of the entire Show.
The Master, at first, was disposed to refuse the invitation to take any of his collies to Hampton. The dogs were, for the most part, out of coat. The weather was warm. At these amateur shows—as at too many professional exhibits—there was always danger of some sick dog spreading epidemic. Moreover, the living-room trophy-shelf at The Place was already comfortably filled with cups; won at similar contests. Then, too, the Master had somehow acquired a most causeless and cordial dislike for the Wall Street Farmer.
"I believe I'll send an extra ten dollars," he told the Mistress, "and save the dogs a day of torment. What do you think?"
By way of answer, the Mistress sat down on the floor where Lad was sprawled, asleep. She ran her fingers through his forest of ruff. The great dog's brush pounded drowsily against the floor at the loved touch; and he raised his head for further caress.
"Laddie's winter coat is coming in beautifully," she said at last. "I don't suppose there'll be another dog there with such a coat. Besides, it's to be outdoors, you see. So he won't catch any sickness.If it were a four-day show—if it were anything longer than a one-day show—he shouldn't go a step. But, you see, I'd be right there with him all the time. And I'd take him into the ring myself, as I did at Madison Square Garden. And he won't be unhappy or lonely or—or anything. And I always love to have people see how splendid he is. And those Specialty Trophies are pretty, sometimes. So—so we'll do just whatever you say about it."
Which, naturally, settled the matter, once and for all.
When a printed copy of the Specialty Lists arrived, a week later, the Mistress and the Master scanned eagerly its pages.
There were cups offered for the best tri-color collie, for the best mother-and-litter, for the collie with the finest under-and-outer coat, for the best collie exhibited by a woman, for the collie whose get had won most prizes in other shows. At the very bottom of the section, and in type six points larger than any other announcement on the whole schedule, were the words:
"Presented, by the Hon. Hugh Lester Maury of New York City—18-KARAT GOLD SPECIALTY CUP, FOR COLLIES (conditions announced later)."
"A gold cup!" sighed the Mistress, yielding to Delusions of Grandeur, "Agoldcup! I never heard of such a thing, at a dog show. And—and won't it look perfectly gorgeous in the very centerof our Trophy Shelf, there—with the other cups radiating from it on each side? And——"
"Hold on!" laughed the Master, trying to mask his own thrill, man-fashion, by wetblanketing his wife's enthusiasm. "Hold on! We haven't got it, yet. I'll enter Lad for it, of course. But so will every other collie-owner who reads that. Besides, even if Lad should win it, we'd have to buy a microscope to see the thing. It will probably be about half the size of a thimble. Gold cups cost gold money, you know. And I don't suppose this 'Hon. Hugh Lester Maury of New York City' is squandering more than ten or fifteen dollars at most on a country dog show. Even for the Red Cross. I suppose he's some Wall Street chum that Glure has wheedled into giving a Specialty. He's a novelty to me. I never heard of him before. Did you?"
"No," admitted the Mistress. "But I feel I'm beginning to love him. Oh, Laddie," she confided to the dog, "I'm going to give you a bath in naphtha soap every day till then; and brush you, two hours every morning; and feed you on liver and——"
"'Conditions announced later,'" quoted the Master, studying the big-type offer once more. "I wonder what that means. Of course, in a Specialty Show, anything goes. But——"
"I don't care what the conditions are," interrupted the Mistress, refusing to be disheartened. "Lad can come up to them. Why, there isn't agreater dog in America than Lad. And you know it."
"I know it," assented the pessimistic Master. "But will the Judge? You might tell him so."
"Lad will tell him," promised the Mistress. "Don't worry."
On Labor Day morning a thousand cars, from a radius of fifty miles, were converging upon the much-advertised village of Hampton; whence, by climbing a tortuous first-speed hill, they presently chugged into the still-more-advertised estate of Hamilcar Q. Glure, Wall Street Farmer.
There, the sylvan stillness was shattered by barks in every key, from Pekingese falsetto to St. Bernard bass-thunder. An open stretch of shaded sward—backed by a stable that looked more like a dissolute cathedral—had been given over to ten double rows of "benches," for the anchorage of the Show's three hundred exhibits. Above the central show-ring a banner was strung between two tree tops. It bore a blazing red cross at either end. In its center was the legend:
"WELCOME TO GLURE TOWERS!"
"WELCOME TO GLURE TOWERS!"
The Wall Street Farmer, as I have hinted, was a man of much taste—of a sort.
Lad had enjoyed the ten-mile spin through the cool morning air, in the tonneau of The Place'sonly car—albeit the course of baths and combings of the past week had long since made him morbidly aware that a detested dog show was somewhere at hand. Now, even before the car entered the fearsome feudal gateway of Glure Towers, the collie's ears and nose told him the hour of ordeal was at hand.
His zest in the ride vanished. He looked reproachfully at the Mistress and tried to bury his head under her circling arm. Lad loathed dog shows; as does every dog of high-strung nerves and higher intelligence. The Mistress, after one experience, had refrained from breaking his heart by taking him to those horrors known as "two-or-more-day Shows." But, as she herself took such childish delight in the local one-day contests, she had schooled herself to believe Lad must enjoy them, too.
Lad, as a matter of fact, preferred these milder ordeals, merely as a man might prefer one day of jail or toothache to two or more days of the same misery. But—even as he knew many lesser things—he knew the adored Mistress and Master reveled in such atrocities as dog shows; and that he, for some reason, was part of his two gods' pleasure in them. Therefore, he made the best of the nuisance. Which led his owners to a certainty that he had grown to like it.
Parking the car, the Mistress and Master led the unhappy dog to the clerk's desk; received hisnumber tag and card, and were shown where to bench him. They made Lad as nearly comfortable as possible, on a straw-littered raised stall; between a supercilious Merle and a fluffily disconsolate sable-and-white six-month puppy that howled ceaselessly in an agony of fright.
The Master paused for a moment in his quest of water for Lad, and stared open-mouthed at the Merle.
"Good Lord!" he mumbled, touching the Mistress' arm and pointing to the gray dog. "That's the most magnificent collie I ever set eyes on. It's farewell to poor old Laddie's hopes, if he is in any of the same classes with that marvel. Say goodby, right now, to your hopes of the Gold Cup; and to 'Winners' in the regular collie division."
"I won't say goodby to it," refused the Mistress. "I won't do anything of the sort. Lad's every bit as beautiful as that dog. Every single bit."
"But not from the show-judge's view," said the Master. "This Merle's a gem. Where in blazes did he drop from, I wonder? These 'no-point' out-of-town Specialty Shows don't attract the stars of the Kennel Club circuits. Yet, this is as perfect a dog as ever Grey Mist was. It's a pleasure to see such an animal. Or," he corrected himself, "it would be, if he wasn't pitted against dear old Lad. I'd rather be kicked than take Lad to a show to be beaten. Not for my sake or even for yours. But for his. Lad will be sure to know. He knowseverything. Laddie, old friend, I'm sorry. Dead-sorry."
He stooped down and patted Lad's satin head. Both Master and Mistress had always carried their fondness for Lad to an extent that perhaps was absurd. Certainly absurd to the man or woman who has never owned such a super-dog as Lad. As not one man or woman in a thousand has.
Together, the Mistress and the Master made their way along the collie section, trying to be interested in the line of barking or yelling entries.
"Twenty-one collies in all," summed up the Master, as they reached the end. "Some quality dogs among them, too. But not one of the lot, except the Merle, that I'd be afraid to have Lad judged against. The Merle's our Waterloo. Lad is due for his first defeat. Well, it'll be a fair one. That's one comfort."
"It doesn't comfortme, in the very least," returned the Mistress, adding:
"Look! There is the trophy table. Let's go over. Perhaps the Gold Cup is there. If it isn't too precious to leave out in the open."
The Gold Cup was there. It was plainly—or, rather, flamingly—visible. Indeed, it smote the eye from afar. It made the surrounding array of pretty silver cups and engraved medals look tawdrily insignificant. Its presence had, already, drawn a goodly number of admirers—folk at whom theguardian village constable, behind the table, stared with sour distrust.
The Gold Cup was a huge bowl of unchased metal, its softly glowing surface marred only by the script words:
"Maury Specialty Gold Cup. Awarded to——"
There could be no shadow of doubt as to the genuineness of the claim that the trophy was of eighteen-karat gold. Its value spoke for itself. The vessel was like a half melon in contour and was supported by four severely plain claws. Its rim flared outward in a wide curve.
"It's—it's all the world like an inverted derby hat!" exclaimed the Mistress, after one long dumb look at it. "And it's every bit as big as a derby hat. Did you ever see anything so ugly—and so Croesusful? Why, it must have cost—it must have cost——"
"Just sixteen hundred dollars, Ma'am," supplemented the constable, beginning to take pride in his office of guardian to such a treasure. "Sixteen hundred dollars, flat. I heard Mr. Glure sayin' so myself. Don't go handlin' it, please."
"Handling it?" repeated The Mistress. "I'd as soon think of handling the National Debt!"
The Superintendent of the Show strolled up and greeted the Mistress and the Master. The latter scarce heard the neighborly greeting. He was scowling at the precious trophy as at a personal foe.
"I see you've entered Lad for the Gold Cup," said the Superintendent. "Sixteen collies, in all, are entered for it. The conditions for the Gold Cup contest weren't printed till too late to mail them. So I'm handing out the slips this morning. Mr. Glure took charge of their printing. They didn't get here from the job shop till half an hour ago. And I don't mind telling you they're causing a lot of kicks. Here's one of the copies. Look it over, and see what Lad's up against."
"Who's the Hon. Hugh Lester Maury, of New York?" suddenly demanded the Master, rousing himself from his glum inspection of the Cup. "I mean the man who donated that—that Gold Hat?"
"Gold Hat!" echoed the Superintendent, with a chuckle of joy. "Gold Hat! Now you say so, I can't make it look like anything else. A derby, upside down, with four——"
"Who's Maury?" insisted the Master.
"He's the original Man of Mystery," returned the Superintendent, dropping his voice to exclude the constable. "I wanted to get in touch with him about the delayed set of conditions. I looked him up. That is, I tried to. He is advertised in the premium list, as a New Yorker. You'll remember that, but his name isn't in the New York City Directory or in the New York City telephone book or in the suburban telephone book. He can afford to give a sixteen hundred dollar-cup for charity, but it seems he isn't important enough to get hisname in any directory. Funny, isn't it? I asked Glure about him. That's all the good it did me."
"You don't mean——?" began the Mistress, excitedly.
"I don't mean anything," the Superintendent hurried to forestall her. "I'm paid to take charge of this Show. It's no affair of mine if——"