Lad: A Dog

by Albert Payson Terhune

  CHAPTER II

  "QUIET"

  To Lad the real world was bounded by The Place. Outside, there were acertain number of miles of land and there were an uncertain number ofpeople. But the miles were uninspiring, except for a cross-countrytramp with the Master. And the people were foolish and strange folkwho either stared at him--which always annoyed Lad--or else tried topat him; which he hated. But The Place was--The Place.

  Always, he had lived on The Place. He felt he owned it. It wasassuredly his to enjoy, to guard, to patrol from high road to lake. Itwas his world.

  The denizens of every world must have at least one deity to worship.Lad had one: the Master. Indeed, he had two: the Master and theMistress. And because the dog was strong of soul and chivalric,withal, and because the Mistress was altogether lovable, Lad placedher altar even above the Master's. Which was wholly as it should havebeen.

  There were other people at The Place--people to whom a dog must becourteous, as becomes a thoroughbred, and whose caresses he mustaccept. Very often, there were guests, too. And from puppyhood, Ladhad been taught the sacredness of the Guest Law. Civilly, he wouldendure the pettings of these visiting outlanders. Gravely, he wouldshake hands with them, on request. He would even permit them to pawhim or haul him about, if they were of the obnoxious, dog-maulingbreed. But the moment politeness would permit, he always withdrew,very quietly, from their reach and, if possible, from their sight aswell.

  Of all the dogs on The Place, big Lad alone had free run of the house,by day and by night.

  He slept in a "cave" under the piano. He even had access to the sacreddining-room, at mealtimes--where always he lay to the left of theMaster's chair.

  With the Master, he would willingly unbend for a romp at any or alltimes. At the Mistress' behest he would play with all the sillyabandon of a puppy; rolling on the ground at her feet, making asthough to seize and crush one of her little shoes in his mighty jaws;wriggling and waving his legs in air when she buried her hand in themasses of his chest-ruff; and otherwise comporting himself withcomplete loss of dignity.

  But to all except these two, he was calmly unapproachable. From hisearliest days he had never forgotten he was an aristocrat amonginferiors. And, calmly aloof, he moved among his subjects.

  Then, all at once, into the sweet routine of the House of Peace, cameHorror.

  It began on a blustery, sour October day. The Mistress had crossed thelake to the village, in her canoe, with Lad curled up in a furry heapin the prow. On the return trip, about fifty yards from shore, thecanoe struck sharply and obliquely against a half-submerged log that aFall freshet had swept down from the river above the lake. At thesame moment a flaw of wind caught the canoe's quarter. And, after themanner of such eccentric craft, the canvas shell proceeded to turnturtle.

  Into the ice-chill waters splashed its two occupants. Lad bobbed tothe top, and glanced around at the Mistress to learn if this were anew practical joke. But, instantly, he saw it was no joke at all, sofar as she was concerned.

  Swathed and cramped by the folds of her heavy outing skirt, theMistress was making no progress shoreward. And the dog flung himselfthrough the water toward her with a rush that left his shoulders andhalf his back above the surface. In a second he had reached her andhad caught her sweater-shoulder in his teeth.

  She had the presence of mind to lie out straight, as though she werefloating, and to fill her lungs with a swift intake of breath. Thedog's burden was thus made infinitely lighter than if she hadstruggled or had lain in a posture less easy for towing. Yet he madescant headway, until she wound one hand in his mane, and, still lyingmotionless and stiff, bade him loose his hold on her shoulder.

  In this way, by sustained effort that wrenched every giant muscle inthe collie's body, they came at last to land.

  Vastly rejoiced was Lad, and inordinately proud of himself. Andthe plaudits of the Master and the Mistress were music to him.Indefinably, he understood he had done a very wonderful thing andthat everybody on The Place was talking about him, and that all weretrying to pet him at once.

  This promiscuous handling he began to find unwelcome. And he retiredat last to his "cave" under the piano to escape from it. Matters soonquieted down; and the incident seemed at an end.

  Instead, it had just begun.

  For, within an hour, the Mistress--who, for days had been half-sickwith a cold--was stricken with a chill, and by night she was in thefirst stages of pneumonia.

  Then over The Place descended Gloom. A gloom Lad could not understanduntil he went upstairs at dinner-time to escort the Mistress, asusual, to the dining-room. But to his light scratch at her door therewas no reply. He scratched again and presently Master came out of theroom and ordered him down-stairs again.

  Then from the Master's voice and look, Lad understood that somethingwas terribly amiss. Also, as she did not appear at dinner and as hewas for the first time in his life forbidden to go into her room, heknew the Mistress was the victim of whatever mishap had befallen.

  A strange man, with a black bag, came to the house early in theevening; and he and the Master were closeted for an interminable timein the Mistress' room. Lad had crept dejectedly upstairs behind them;and sought to crowd into the room at their heels. The Master orderedhim back and shut the door in his face.

  Lad lay down on the threshold, his nose to the crack at the bottom ofthe door, and waited. He heard the murmur of speech.

  Once he caught the Mistress' voice--changed and muffled and with apuzzling new note in it--but undeniably the Mistress'. And his tailthumped hopefully on the hall floor. But no one came to let himin. And, after the mandate to keep out, he dared not scratch foradmittance.

  The doctor almost stumbled across the couchant body of the dog as heleft the room with the Master. Being a dog-owner himself, the doctorunderstood and his narrow escape from a fall over the living obstacledid not irritate him. But it reminded him of something.

  "Those other dogs of yours outside there," he said to the Master, asthey went down the stairs, "raised a fearful racket when my car camedown the drive, just now. Better send them all away somewhere till sheis better. The house must be kept perfectly quiet."

  The Master looked back, up the stairway; at its top, pressed closeagainst the Mistress' door, crouched Lad. Something in the dog'sheartbroken attitude touched him.

  "I'll send them over to the boarding-kennels in the morning," heanswered. "All except Lad. He and I are going to see this through,together. He'll be quiet, if I tell him to."

  All through the endless night, while the October wind howled andyelled around the house, Lad lay outside the sick-room door, his nosebetween his absurdly small white paws, his sorrowful eyes wide open,his ears alert for the faintest sound from the room beyond.

  Sometimes, when the wind screamed its loudest, Lad would lift hishead--his ruff a-bristle, his teeth glinting from under his upcurledlip. And he would growl a throaty menace. It was as though he heard,in the tempest's racket, the strife of evil gale-spirits to burst inthrough the rattling windows and attack the stricken Mistress.Perhaps--well, perhaps there are things visible and audible todogs; to which humans were deaf and blind. Or perhaps they are not.

  Lad was there when day broke and when the Master, heavy-eyed fromsleeplessness, came out. He was there when the other dogs were herdedinto the car and carried away to the boarding-kennels.

  Lad was there when the car came back from the station, bringing to ThePlace an angular, wooden-faced woman with yellow hair and a yellowersuitcase--a horrible woman who vaguely smelt of disinfectants and ofrigid Efficiency, and who presently approached the sick-room, clad andcapped in stiff white. Lad hated her.

  He was there when the doctor came for his morning visit to theinvalid. And again he tried to edge his own way into the room, only tobe rebuffed once more.

  "This is the third time I've nearly broken my neck over that miserabledog," chidingly announced the nurse, later in the day, as she came outof the room and chanced to meet the Master on the landi
ng. "Do pleasedrive him away. _I've_ tried to do it, but he only snarls at me. Andin a dangerous case like this----"

  "Leave him alone," briefly ordered the Master.

  But when the nurse, sniffing, passed on, he called Lad over tohim. Reluctantly, the dog quitted the door and obeyed the summons.

  "Quiet!" ordered the Master, speaking very slowly and distinctly. "Youmust keep quiet. _Quiet!_ Understand?"

  Lad understood. Lad always understood. He must not bark. He must movesilently. He must make no unnecessary sound. But, at least, the Masterhad not forbidden him to snarl softly and loathingly at thatdetestable white-clad woman every time she stepped over him.

  So there was one grain of comfort.

  Gently, the Master called him downstairs and across the living-room,and put him out of the house. For, after all, a shaggy eighty-pounddog is an inconvenience stretched across a sick-room doorsill.

  Three minutes later, Lad had made his way through an open window intothe cellar and thence upstairs; and was stretched out, head betweenpaws, at the threshold of the Mistress' room.

  On his thrice-a-day visits, the doctor was forced to step over him,and was man enough to forbear to curse. Twenty times a day, the nursestumbled over his massive, inert body, and fumed in impotent rage. TheMaster, too, came back and forth from the sick-room, with now and thena kindly word for the suffering collie, and again and again put himout of the house.

  But always Lad managed, by hook or crook, to be back on guard within aminute or two. And never once did the door of the Mistress' room openthat he did not make a strenuous attempt to enter.

  Servants, nurse, doctor, and Master repeatedly forgot he was there,and stubbed their toes across his body. Sometimes their feet droveagonizingly into his tender flesh. But never a whimper or growl didthe pain wring from him. "_Quiet!_" had been the command, and he wasobeying.

  And so it went on, through the awful days and the infinitely worsenights. Except when he was ordered away by the Master, Lad would notstir from his place at the door. And not even the Master's authoritycould keep him away from it for five minutes a day.

  The dog ate nothing, drank practically nothing, took no exercise;moved not one inch, of his own will, from the doorway. In vain did theglories of Autumn woods call to him. The rabbits would be thick, outyonder in the forest, just now. So would the squirrels--against whichLad had long since sworn a blood-feud (and one of which it had everbeen his futile life ambition to catch).

  For him, these things no longer existed. Nothing existed; except hismortal hatred of the unseen Something in that forbidden room--theSomething that was seeking to take the Mistress away with It. Heyearned unspeakably to be in that room to guard her from her namelessPeril. And they would not let him in--these humans.

  Wherefore he lay there, crushing his body close against the doorand--waiting.

  And, inside the room, Death and the Napoleonic man with the black bagfought their "no-quarter" duel for the life of the still, little whitefigure in the great white bed.

  One night, the doctor did not go home at all. Toward dawn the Masterlurched out of the room and sat down for a moment on the stairs, hisface in his hands. Then and then only, during all that time ofwatching, did Lad leave the doorsill of his own accord.

  Shaky with famine and weariness, he got to his feet, moaning softly,and crept over to the Master; he lay down beside him, his huge headathwart the man's knees; his muzzle reaching timidly toward thetight-clenched hands.

  Presently the Master went back into the sickroom. And Lad was leftalone in the darkness--to wonder and to listen and to wait. With atired sigh he returned to the door and once more took up his heartsickvigil.

  Then--on a golden morning, days later, the doctor came and went withthe look of a Conqueror. Even the wooden-faced nurse forgot to gruntin disgust when she stumbled across the dog's body. She almostsmiled. And presently the Master came out through the doorway. Hestopped at sight of Lad, and turned back into the room. Lad couldhear him speak. And he heard a dear, _dear_ voice make answer; veryweakly, but no longer in that muffled and foreign tone which had sofrightened him. Then came a sentence the dog could understand.

  "Come in, old friend," said the Master, opening the door and standingaside for Lad to enter.

  At a bound, the collie was in the room. There lay the Mistress. Shewas very thin, very white, very feeble. But she was there. The dreadSomething had lost the battle.

  Lad wanted to break forth into a peal of ecstatic barking that wouldhave deafened every one in the room. The Master read the wish andinterposed,

  "_Quiet!_"

  Lad heard. He controlled the yearning. But it cost him a world ofwill-power to do it. As sedately as he could force himself to move, hecrossed to the bed.

  The Mistress was smiling at him. One hand was stretched weakly forthto stroke him. And she was saying almost in a whisper, "Lad! Laddie!"

  That was all. But her hand was petting him in the dear way he loved sowell. And the Master was telling her all over again how the dog hadwatched outside her door. Lad listened--not to the man's praise, butto the woman's caressing whisper--and he quivered from head totail. He fought furiously with himself once again, to choke back therapturous barking that clamored for utterance. He knew this was notime for noise. Even without the word of warning, he would have knownit. For the Mistress was whispering. Even the Master was speakingscarce louder.

  But one thing Lad realized: the black danger was past. The Mistresswas alive! And the whole house was smiling. That was enough. And theyearning to show, in noise, his own wild relief, was all butirresistible. Then the Master said:

  "Run on, Lad. You can come back by-and-by."

  And the dog gravely made his way out of the room and out of the house.

  The minute he was out-of-doors, he proceeded to go crazy. Nothing butsheer mania could excuse his actions during the rest of that day. Theywere unworthy of a mongrel puppy. And never before in all hisblameless, stately life had Lad so grossly misbehaved as he nowproceeded to do. The Mistress was alive. The Horror was past. Reactionset in with a rush. As I have said, Lad went crazy.

  Peter Grimm, the Mistress's cynical and temperamental gray cat, waspicking its dainty way across the lawn as Lad emerged from the house.

  Ordinarily, Lad regarded Peter Grimm with a cold tolerance. But now,he dashed at the cat with a semblance of stark wrath. Like a furrywhirlwind he bore down upon the amazed feline. The cat, in direoffense, scratched his nose with a quite unnecessary virulence andfled up a tree, spitting and yowling, tail fluffed out as thick as aman's wrist.

  Seeing that Peter Grimm had resorted to unsportsmanly tactics byscrambling whither he could not follow, Lad remembered the need forsilence and forbore to bark threats at his escaped victim. Instead,he galloped to the rear of the house where stood the dairy.

  The dairy door was on the latch. With his head Lad butted it open andran into the stone-floored room. A line of full milk-pans were rangedside by side on a shelf. Rising on his hind-legs and bracing hisforepaws on the shelf, Lad seized edges of the deep pans, one afteranother, between his teeth, and, with a succession of sharp jerksbrought them one and all clattering to the floor.

  Scampering out of the dairy, ankle deep in a river of spilt milk, andpaying no heed to the cries of the scandalized cook, he charged forthin the open again. His eye fell on a red cow, tethered by a long chainin a pasture-patch beyond the stables.

  She was an old acquaintance of his, this cow. She had been on ThePlace since before he was born. Yet, to-day Lad's spear knew nobrother. He tore across the lawn and past the stables, straight atthe astonished bovine. In terror, the cow threw up her tail and soughtto lumber away at top speed. Being controlled by her tether she couldrun only in a wide circle. And around and around this circle Lad drovethe bellowing brute as fast as he could make her run, until thegardener came panting to her relief.

  But neither the gardener nor any other living creature could stayLad's rampage that day. He fled merrily up to the Lodge a
t the gate,burst into its kitchen and through to the refrigerator. There, in apan, he found a raw leg of mutton. Seizing this twelve-pound morsel inhis teeth and dodging the indignant housewife, he careered out intothe highway with his prize, dug a hole in the roadside ditch and wasgleefully preparing to bury the mutton therein, when its outragedowner rescued it.

  A farmer was jogging along the road behind a half-dozing horse. Apainful nip on the rear hind-leg turned the nag's drowsy jog into areally industrious effort at a runaway. Already, Lad had sprung clearof the front wheel. As the wagon bumped past him, he leaped upward;deftly caught a hanging corner of the lap-robe and hauled it free ofthe seat.

  Robe in mouth, he capered off into a field; playfully keeping just outof the reach of the pursuing agrarian; and at last he deposited thestolen treasure in the heart of a bramble-patch a full half-mile fromthe road.

  Lad made his way back to The Place by a wide detour that brought himthrough the grounds of a neighbor of the Master's.

  This neighbor owned a dog--a mean-eyed, rangy and mangy pest of abrute that Lad would ordinarily have scorned to notice. But, mostdecidedly, he noticed the dog now. He routed it out of its kennel andbestowed upon it a thrashing that brought its possessor's entirefamily shrieking to the scene of conflict.

  Courteously refusing to carry the matter further, in face of ahalf-dozen shouting humans, Lad cantered homeward.

  From the clothes-line, on the drying-ground at The Place, fluttered alarge white object. It was palpably a nurse's uniform--palpably _the_nurse's uniform. And Lad greeted its presence there with a grin ofpure bliss.

  In less than two seconds the uniform was off the line, with three hugerents marring its stiff surface. In less than thirty seconds, it wasreposing in the rich black mud on the verge of the lake, and Lad wasrolling playfully on it.

  Then he chanced to remember his long-neglected enemies, the squirrels,and his equally-neglected prey, the rabbits. And he loped off to theforest to wage gay warfare upon them. He was gloriously, idiotically,criminally happy. And, for the time, he was a fool.

  All day long, complaints came pouring in to the Master. Lad haddestroyed the whole "set" of cream. Lad had chased the red cow till itwould be a miracle if she didn't fall sick of it. Lad had scared poordear little Peter Grimm so badly that the cat seemed likely to spendall the rest of its nine lives squalling in the tree-top and crosslyrefusing to come down.

  Lad had spoiled a Sunday leg of mutton, up at the Lodge. Lad had madea perfectly respectable horse run madly away for nearly twenty-fivefeet, and had given the horse's owner a blasphemous half-mile run overa plowed field after a cherished and ravished lap-robe. Lad hadwell-nigh killed a neighbor's particularly killable dog. Lad hadwantonly destroyed the nurse's very newest and most expensiveuniform. All day it was Lad--Lad--Lad!

  Lad, it seemed, was a storm-center, whence radiated complaints thatran the whole gamut from tears to lurid profanity; and, to each andevery complainant, the Master made the same answer:

  "Leave him alone. We're just out of hell--Lad and I! He's doing thethings I'd do myself, if I had the nerve."

  Which, of course, was a manifestly asinine way for a grown man totalk.

  Long after dusk, Lad pattered meekly home, very tired and quitesane. His spell of imbecility had worn itself out. He was once morehis calmly dignified self, though not a little ashamed of his babyishpranks, and mildly wondering how he had come to behave so.

  Still, he could not grieve over what he had done. He could not grieveover anything just yet. The Mistress was alive! And while thecraziness had passed, the happiness had not. Tired, drowsily at peacewith all the world, he curled up under the piano and went to sleep.

  He slept so soundly that the locking of the house for the night didnot rouse him. But something else did. Something that occurred longafter everyone on The Place was sound asleep. Lad was joyouslypursuing, through the forest aisles of dreamland, a whole army ofsquirrels that had not sense enough to climb trees--when in a moment,he was wide awake and on guard. Far off, very far off, he heard a manwalking.

  Now, to a trained dog there is as much difference in the sound ofhuman footfalls as, to humans, there is a difference in the aspect ofhuman faces. A belated countryman walking along the highway, afurlong distant, would not have awakened Lad from sleep. Also, he knewand could classify, at any distance, the footsteps of everyone wholived on The Place. But the steps that had brought him wide awake andon the alert to-night, did not belong to one of The Place's people;nor were they the steps of anybody who had a right to be on thepremises.

  Someone had climbed the fence, at a distance from the drive, and wascrossing the grounds, obliquely, toward the house. It was a man, andhe was still nearly two hundred yards away. Moreover, he was walkingstealthily; and pausing every now and then as if to reconnoiter.

  No human, at that distance, could have heard the steps. No dog couldhave helped hearing them. Had the other dogs been at home instead ofat the boarding-kennels, The Place would by this time have beenre-echoing with barks. Both scent and sound would have given themample warning of the stranger's presence.

  To Lad, on the lower floor of the house, where every window wasshut, the aid of scent was denied. Yet his sense of hearing wasenough. Plainly, he heard the softly advancing steps--heard and readthem. He read them for an intruder's--read them for the steps of a manwho was afraid to be heard or seen, and who was employing all thecaution in his power.

  A booming, trumpeting bark of warning sprang into Lad's throat--anddied there. The sharp command "_Quiet!_" was still in force. Even inhis madness, that day, he had uttered no sound. He strangled back thetumultuous bark and listened in silence. He had risen to his feet andhad come out from under the piano. In the middle of the living-room hestood, head lowered, ears pricked. His ruff was abristle. A ridge ofhair rose grotesquely from the shaggy mass of coat along hisspine. His lips had slipped back from his teeth. And so he stood andwaited.

  The shuffling, soft steps were nearer now. Down through the trees theycame, and then onto the springy grass of the lawn. Now they crunchedlightly on the gravel of the drive. Lad moved forward a little andagain stood at attention.

  The man was climbing to the veranda. The vines rustled ever soslightly as he brushed past them. His footfall sounded lightly on theveranda itself.

  Next there was a faint clicking noise at the old-fashioned lock of oneof the bay windows. Presently, by half inches, the window began torise. Before it had risen an inch, Lad knew the trespasser was anegro. Also that it was no one with whose scent he was familiar.

  Another pause, followed by the very faintest scratching, as the negroran a knife-blade along the crack of the inner wooden blinds in searchof the catch.

  The blinds parted slowly. Over the window-sill the man threw aleg. Then he stepped down, noiselessly into the room.

  He stood there a second, evidently listening.

  And, before he could stir or breathe, something in the darkness hurleditself upon him.

  Without so much as a growl of warning, eighty pounds of muscular,hairy energy smote the negro full in the chest. A set of hot-breathingjaws flashed for his jugular vein, missed it by a half-inch, and thegraze left a red-hot searing pain along the negro's throat. In themerest fraction of a moment, the murderously snapping jaws sank intothe thief's shoulder. It is collie custom to fight with a runningaccompaniment of snarling growls. But Lad did not give voice. Intotal silence he made his onslaught. In silence, he sought and gainedhis hold.

  The negro was less considerate of the Mistress' comfort. With ascreech that would have waked every mummy in Egypt, he reeled back,under that first unseen impact, lost his balance and crashed to thehardwood floor, overturning a table and a lamp in his fall. Certainthat a devil had attacked him there in the black darkness, the mangave forth yell after yell of mortal terror. Frantically, he strove topush away his assailant and his clammy hand encountered a mass of fur.

  The negro had heard that all the dogs on The Place had been sent awaybe
cause of the Mistress' illness. Hence his attempt at burglary. Hencealso, his panic fear when Lad had sprung on him.

  But with the feel of the thick warm fur, the man's superstitiousterror died. He knew he had roused the house; but there was stilltime to escape if he could rid himself of this silent, terriblecreature. He staggered to his feet. And, with the knife he stillclutched, he smote viciously at his assailant.

  Because Lad was a collie, Lad was not killed then and there. A bulldogor a bull-terrier, attacking a man, seeks for some convenienthold. Having secured that hold--be it good or bad--he locks his jawsand hangs on. You can well-nigh cut his head from his body before hewill let go. Thus, he is at the mercy of any armed man who can keepcool long enough to kill him.

  But a collie has a strain of wolf in his queer brain. He seeks a hold,it is true. But at an instant's notice, he is ready to shift that holdfor a better. He may bite or slash a dozen times in as many secondsand in as many parts of the body. He is everywhere at once--he isnowhere in particular. He is not a pleasant opponent.

  Lad did not wait for the negro's knife to find his heart. As the manlunged, the dog transferred his profitless shoulderhold to a grip onthe stabbing arm. The knife blade plowed an ugly furrow along hisside. And the dog's curved eye-tooth slashed the negro's arm fromelbow to wrist, clean through to the bone.

  The knife clattered to the floor. The negro wheeled and made a leapfor the open window; he had not cleared half the space when Ladbounded for the back of his neck. The dog's upper set of teeth rakedthe man's hard skull, carrying away a handful of wool and flesh; andhis weight threw the thief forward on hands and knees again. Twisting,the man found the dog's furry throat; and with both hands sought tostrangle him; at the same time backing out through the window. But itis not easy to strangle a collie. The piles of tumbled ruff-hair forma protection no other breed of dog can boast. Scarcely had the handsfound their grip when one of them was crushed between the dog'svise-like jaws.

  The negro flung off his enemy and turned to clear the veranda at asingle jump. But before he had half made the turn, Lad was at histhroat again, and the two crashed through the vines together and downonto the driveway below. The entire combat had not lasted for morethan thirty seconds.

  The Master, pistol and flashlight in hand, ran down to find theliving-room amuck with blood and with smashed furniture, and one ofthe windows open. He flashed the electric ray through the window. Onthe ground below, stunned by striking against a stone jardiniere inhis fall, the negro sprawled senseless upon his back. Above himwas Lad, his searching teeth at last having found their covetedthroat-hold. Steadily, the great dog was grinding his way throughtoward the jugular.

  There was a deal of noise and excitement and light after that. Thenegro was trussed up and the local constable was summoned bytelephone. Everybody seemed to be doing much loud talking.

  Lad took advantage of the turmoil to slip back into the house and tohis "cave" under the piano; where he proceeded to lick solicitouslythe flesh wound on his left side.

  He was very tired; and he was very unhappy and he was very muchworried. In spite of all his own precautions as to silence, the negrohad made a most ungodly lot of noise. The commandment "_Quiet!_" hadbeen fractured past repair. And, somehow, Lad felt blame for itall. It was really his fault--and he realized it now--that the man hadmade such a racket. Would the Master punish him? Perhaps. Humans havesuch odd ideas of Justice. He----

  Then it was that the Master found him; and called him forth from hisplace of refuge. Head adroop, tail low, Lad crept out to meet hisscolding. He looked very much like a puppy caught tearing a new rug.

  But suddenly, the Master and everyone else in the room was patting himand telling him how splendid he was. And the Master had found the deepscratch on his side and was dressing it, and stopping every minute orso, to praise him again. And then, as a crowning reward, he was takenupstairs for the Mistress to stroke and make much of.

  When at last he was sent downstairs again, Lad did not return tohis piano-lair. Instead, he went out-of-doors and away from ThePlace. And, when he thought he was far enough from the house, hesolemnly sat down and began to bark.

  It was good--_passing_ good--to be able to make a noise again. He hadnever before known how needful to canine happiness a bark reallyis. He had long and pressing arrears of barks in his system. Andthunderously he proceeded to divest himself of them for nearly half anhour.

  Then, feeling much, _much_ better, he ambled homeward, to take upnormal life again after a whole fortnight of martyrdom.