CHAPTER X. The Intruders
It began with a gap in a line fence. The gap should never have beenthere. For, on the far side of it roamed creatures whose chief zest inlife is the finding of such gaps and in breaking through for forage.
The Place's acreage ended, to northward, in the center of an oak grovewhose northern half was owned by one Titus Romaine; a crabbed littlefarmer of the old school. Into his half of the grove, in autumn whenmast lay thick and rich amid the tawny dead leaves, Romaine was wont toturn his herd of swine.
To Lad, the giant collie, this was always a trying season. For longerthan he could remember, Lad had been the official watchdog of thePlace. And his chief duties were to keep two-footed and four-footedstrays from trespassing thereon.
To an inch, he knew the boundaries of the Master's land. And he knewthat no human intruder was to be molested; so long as such intruder hadthe sense to walk straight down the driveway to the house. But woe tothe tramp or other trespasser who chanced to come cross lots or towander in any way off the drive! Woe also to such occasional cattle orother livestock as drifted in from the road or by way of a casualfence-gap!
Human invaders were to be met in drastic fashion. Quadruped trespasserswere to be rounded up and swept at a gallop up the drive and out intothe highroad. With cattle or with stray horses this was an easy job;and it contained, withal, much fun;--at least, for Lad.
But, pigs were different.
Experience and instinct had taught Lad what few humans realize. Namely,that of all created beasts, the pig is the worst and meanest and mostvicious; and hardest to drive. When a horse or a cow, or a drove ofthem, wandered into the confines of the Place, it was simple and joyousto head them off, turn them, set them into a gallop and send them ontheir journey at top speed. It took little skill and less trouble to dothis. Besides, it was gorgeous sport. But pigs--!
When a porker wriggled and hunched and nosed a space in the line fence,and slithered greasily through, Lad's work was cut out for him. Itlooked simple enough. But it was not simple. Nor was it safe.
In the first instance, pigs were hard to start running. Oftener thannot they would stand, braced, and glare at the oncoming collie from outtheir evil little red-rimmed eyes; the snouts above the hideous maskedtushes quivering avidly. That meant Lad must circle them, at whirlwindspeed; barking a thunderous fanfare to confuse them; and watching hischance to flash in and nip ear or flank; or otherwise get the brutes torunning.
And, even on the run, they had an ugly way of wheeling, at closequarters, to face the pursuer. The razor tushes and the prongedforefeet were always ready, at such times, to wreak death on the dog,unless he should have the wit and the skill and the speed to change, ina breath, the direction of his dash. No, pigs were not pleasanttrespassers. There was no fun in routing them. And there was realdanger.
Except by dint of swiftness and of brain; an eighty-pound collie has nochance against a six-hundred-pound pig. The pig's hide, for one thing,is too thick to pierce with an average slash or nip: And the pig is tooclose to earth and too well-balanced by build and weight, to beoverturned: And the tushes and forefeet can move with deceptivequickness. Also, back of the red-rimmed little eyes flickers the redderspirit of murder.
Locomotive engineers say a cow on a track is far less perilous to anoncoming train than is a pig. The former can be lifted, by the impact,and flung to one side. A pig, oftener than not, derails the engine.Standing with the bulk of its weight close to the ground, it iswell-nigh as bad an obstacle to trains as would be a boulder of thesame size. Lad had never met any engineers. But he had identicallytheir opinion of pigs.
In all his long life, the great collie had never known fear. At least,he never had yielded to it. Wherefore, in the autumns, he had attackedwith gay zest such of Titus Romaine's swine as had found their waythrough the fence.
But, nowadays, there was little enough of gay zest about anythingLaddie did. For he was old;--very, very old. He had passed thefourteenth milestone. In other words, he was as old for a dog as is anoctogenarian for a man.
Almost imperceptibly, but to his indignant annoyance, age had creptupon the big dog; gradually blurring his long clean lines; silveringhis muzzle and eyebrows; flecking his burnished mahogany coat withstipples of silver; spreading to greater size the absurdly small whiteforepaws which were his one gross vanity; dulling a little thepreternaturally keen hearing and narrowing the vision.
Yes, Lad was old. And he was a bit unwieldy from weight and from age.No longer could he lead Wolf and Bruce in the forest rabbit chases.Wherefore he stayed at home, for the most part and seldom strayed farfrom the Mistress and the Master whom he worshiped.
Moreover, he deputed the bulk of trespass-repelling to his fiery littleson, Wolf; and to the graver and sweeter Bruce;--"Bruce, the Beautiful."
Which brings us by needfully prosy degrees to a morning, when twomarauders came to the Place at the same time, if by different routes.They could not well have come at a more propitious time, forthemselves; nor at a worse time for those whose domain they visited.
Bruce and Wolf had trotted idly off to the forest, back of the Place,for a desultory ramble in quest of rabbits or squirrels. This they haddone because they were bored. For, the Mistress and the Master haddriven over for the morning mail; and Lad had gone with them, as usual.Had it been night, instead of morning, neither Wolf nor Bruce wouldhave stirred a step from the grounds. For both were trained watchdogs,But, thus early in the day, neither duty nor companionship held them athome. And the autumn woods promised a half-hour of mild sport.
The superintendent and his helpers were in the distant "upper field,"working around the roots of some young fruit trees. But for the maids,busy indoors, the Place was deserted of human or canine life.
Thus, luck was with the two intruders.
Through the fence-gap in the oak-grove, bored Titus Romaine's hugestand oldest and crankiest sow. She was in search of acorns and of anyother food that might lie handy to her line of march. In her owner'spart of the grove, there was too much competition, in the food-hunt,from other and equally greedy pigs of the herd. These she could fightoff and drive from the choicest acorn-hoards. But it was easier toforage without competition.
So through the gap she forced her grunting bulk; and on through thePlace's half of the oak-grove. Pausing now and then to root amid thestrewn leaves, she made her leisurely way toward the open lawn with itstwo-hundred-year-old shade-oaks, and its flower-borders which stillheld a few toothsome bulbs.
The second intruder entered the grounds in much more open fashion. Hewas a man in the late twenties; well-set up, neatly, even sprucely,dressed; and he walked with a slight swagger. He looked very much athome and very certain of his welcome.
A casual student of human nature would have guessed him to be atraveling salesman, finely equipped with nerve and with confidence inhis own goods. The average servant would have been vastly impressedwith his air of self assurance; and would have admitted him to thehouse, without question. (The long-memoried warden of Auburn Prisonwould have recognized him as Alf Dugan, one of the cleverest automobilethieves in the East.)
Mr. Dugan was an industrious young man; as well as ingenious. And hehad a streak of quick-witted audacity which made him an ornament to hischosen profession. His method of work was simple. Coming to a ruralneighborhood, he would stop at some local hotel, and, armed with cleverpatter and a sheaf of automobile insurance documents, would make therounds of the region's better-class homes.
At these he sold no automobile insurance; though he made seeminglyearnest efforts to do so. But he learned the precise location of eachgarage; the cars therein; and the easiest way to the highroad, and anypossible obstacles to a hasty flight thereto. Usually, he succeeded inpersuading his reluctant host to take him to the garage to look at thecars and to estimate the insurable value of each. While there, it waseasy to palm a key or to get a good look at the garage padlock forfuture skeleton-key reference; or to note what sort of car-locks wereused.
A night or two later, the garage was entered and the best car wasstolen. Dugan, like love, laughed at locksmiths.
Sometimes,--notably in places where dogs were kept,--he would make hisinitial visit and then, choosing a time when he had seen some of thehouse's occupants go for a walk with their dogs, would enter by broaddaylight, and take a chance at getting the car out, unobserved. If hewere interrupted before starting off in the machine, why, he was thatsame polite insurance aunt who had come back to revise his estimate onthe premium needed for the car; and was taking another look at it tomake certain. Once in the driver's seat and with the engine going, hehad no fear of capture. A whizzing rush to the highroad and down it tothe point where his confederate waited with the new number-plates; andhe could snap his fat fingers at pursuit.
Dugan had called at the Place, a week earlier. He had taken interestednote of the little garage's two cars and of the unlocked garage doors.He had taken less approving note of the three guardian collies: Lad,still magnificent and formidable, in spite of his weight ofyears;--Bruce, gloriously beautiful and stately and aloof;--young Wolf,with the fire and fierce agility of a tiger-cat. All three had watchedhim, grimly. None had offered the slightest move to make friends withthe smooth-spoken visitor. Dogs have a queerly occult sixth sense,sometimes, in regard to those who mean ill to their masters.
This morning, idling along the highroad, a furlong from the Place'sstone gateway, Dugan had seen the Mistress and the Master drive past inthe smaller of the two cars. He had seen Lad with them. A little later,he had seen the men cross the road toward the upper field. Then, almoston the men's heels, he had seen Bruce and Wolf canter across the sameroad; headed for the forest. And Dugan's correctly stolid face rippledinto a pleased smile.
Quickening his pace, he hurried on to the gateway and down the drive.But, as he passed the house on his way to the garage where stood theother and larger car, he paused. Out of an ever-vigilant eye-corner, hesaw an automobile turn in at the gateway, two hundred yards up thewooded slope; and start down the drive.
The Mistress and the Master were returning from the post office.
Dugan's smile vanished. He stopped in his tracks; and did some fastthinking. Then, mounting the veranda steps, he knocked boldly at a sidedoor; the door nearest to him. As the maids were in the kitchen ormaking up the bedrooms, his knock was unheard. Half hidden by theveranda vines, he waited.
The car came down the driveway and circled the house to the sidefarthest from Dugan. There, at the front door, it halted. The Mistressand Lad got out. The Master did not go down to the garage. Instead, hecircled the house again; and chugged off up the drive; bound for thestation to meet a guest whose train was due in another ten minutes.Dugan drew a long breath; and swaggered toward the garage. His walk andmanner had in them an easy openness that no honest man's could possiblyhave acquired in a lifetime.
The Mistress, deposited at the front veranda, chirped to Lad; andstarted across the lawn toward the chrysanthemum bed, a hundred feetaway.
The summer's flowers were gone--even to the latest thin stemmed Teplitzrose and the last stalk of rose-tinted cosmos. For dining table, now,and for living-room and guest rooms, nothing was left but the mauve andbronze hardy chrysanthemums which made gay the flower border at thecrest of the lawn overlooking the lake. Thither fared the Mistress, insearch of blossoms.
Between her and the chrysanthemum border was a bed of canvas. Frost hadsmitten the tall, dark stems; leaving only a copse of brown stalks. Outof this copse, chewing greedily at an uprooted bunch of canna-bulbs,slouched Romaine's wandering sow. At, sight of the Mistress, she pausedin her leisurely progress and, with the bunch of bulbs still hangingfrom one corner of her shark-mouth, stood blinking truculently at theastonished woman.
Now, Lad had not obeyed the Mistress's soft chirp. It had not reachedhis dulling ears;--the ears which, of old, had caught her faintestwhisper. Yet, he would have followed her, as ever, without suchsummons, had not his nostrils suddenly become aware of an alien scent.
Lad's sense of smell, like his hearing, was far less keen than once ithad been. But, it was still strong enough to register the trace ofintruders. His hackles bristled. Up went the classically splendid head,to sniff the light breeze, for further information as to the reek ofpig and the lighter but more disquieting scent of man.
Turning his head, to reinforce with his near-sighted eyes the failingevidence of his nostrils, he saw the sow emerge from the canna-clump.He saw, too--or he divined--the look in her pale little red-rimmedeyes; as they glared defiantly at the Mistress. And Lad cleared theporch steps at one long leap.
For the instant, he forgot he was aged and stout and that his jointsached at any sudden motion; and that his wind and his heart were notwhat they had been;--and that his once-terrible fangs were yellowed andblunt; and that his primal strength was forever fled. Peril was facingthe Mistress. That was all Laddie knew or cared. With his wontedtrumpet-bark of challenge, he sped toward her.
The Mistress, recovering from her surprise at the apparition of thehuge pig, noticed the bunch of canna-bulbs dangling from the slobberylips. This very week all the bulbs were to have been dug up and takeninto the greenhouse, for the winter. Angered,--with all a trueflower-lover's indignation,--at this desecrating of one of her belovedplants, she caught up a stick which had been used as a rose-prop.Brandishing this, and crying "Shoo!" very valiantly indeed, sheadvanced upon the sow.
The latter did not stir; except to lower her bristling head an inch orso; and let drop the bunch of bulbs from between her razor-teeth. TheMistress advanced another step; and struck at the beast.
The sow veered, to avoid the blow; then, with ludicrous yet deadlyswiftness, wheeled back and charged straight for the woman.
Many a child and not a few grown men and women have gone down undersuch murderous charges; to be trampled and gouged and torn to death,before help could come. But the slaveringly foul jaws did not so muchas touch the hem of the Mistress's dress.
Between her and the sow flashed a swirl of mahogany-and-snow. Lad,charging at full speed, crashed into the forward-lurchingsix-hundredweight of solid flesh and inch-thick hide.
The impact bowled him clean over, knocking the breath out of him. Notfrom choice had he made such a blundering and un-collielike attack. Inother days, he could have flashed in and out again, with the speed oflight; leaving his antagonist with a slashed face or even a broken leg,as souvenir of his assault. But those days were past. His uncannilywise brain and his dauntless courage were all that remained of hisancient prowess. And this brain and pluck told him his one chance ofchecking the sow's charge on the Mistress was to hurl himself full ather.
His impetus, which had knock him flat, scarce slowed down the pig'slurching rush; scarce enabled the frightened Mistress to recoil a step.Then, the sow was lunging at her again, over the prostrate dog's body.
But, even as he fell, Lad had gathered his feet under him. And theshock which knocked him breathless did not make the wise brain waver inits plan of campaign. Before he sought to rise, up drove his baredteeth, at the sow that was plunging across him. And those teeth clovedeep into her pinkish nostrils;--well-nigh the only vulnerable spot,(as Lad knew) in her bristling pigskin armor.
Lad got his grip. And, with all his fragile old strength, he hung on;grinding the outworn fangs further and further into the sensitive noseof his squealing foe.
This stopped the sow's impetuous charge; for good and all. With a heavycollie hanging to one's tortured nose and that collie's teeth sunk deepinto it, there is no scope for thinking of any other opponent. Shehalted, striking furiously, with her sharp cloven fore-hoofs, at thewrithing dog beneath her.
One ferociously driving hoof cut a gash in Lad's chest. Another torethe skin from his shoulder. Unheeding, he hung on. The sow bracedherself, solid, on outspread legs; and shook her head and forequarterswith all her muscular might.
Lad was hurled free, his weakened jaws failing to withstand such ayank. Over and over he rolled, to one side; the
sow charging after him.She had lost all interest in attacking the Mistress. Her flaming littlebrain now held no thought except to kill and mangle the dog that hadhurt her snout so cruelly. And she rushed at him, the tushes glintingfrom under her upcurled and bleeding lips.
But, the collie, for all his years and unwieldiness, was still acollie. And, by the time he stopped rolling, he was scrambling to hisfeet. Shrinking quickly to one side, as the sow bore down upon him, heeluded her rush, by the fraction of an inch; and made a wolflike slashfor her underbody, as she hurtled by.
The blunted eyetooth made but a superficial furrow; which served onlyto madden its victim still further. Wheeling, she returned to theattack. Again, with a ghost of his old elusive speed; Laddie avoidedher rush, by the narrowest of margins; and, snapping furiously, caughther by the ear.
Now, more than once, in other frays, Lad had subdued and scaredtrespassing pigs by this hold. But, in those days, his teeth had beenkeen and his jaw strong enough to crack a beef bone. Moreover, the pigson which he had used it to such effect were not drunk with the lust ofkilling.
The sow squealed, afresh, with pain; and once more braced herself andshook her head with all her might: Again, Lad was flung aside by thatshake; this time with a fragment of torn ear between his teeth.
As she drove slaveringly at him once more, Lad swerved and darted in;diving for her forelegs. With the collie, as with his ancestor, thewolf, this dive for the leg of an enemy is a favorite and tremendouslyeffective trick in battle. Lad found his hold, just above the rightpastern. And he exerted every atom of his power to break the bone or tosever the tendon.
In all the Bible's myriad tragic lines there is perhaps none other soinfinitely sad,--less for its actual significance than for what itimplies to every man or woman or animal, soon or late,--than that whichdescribes the shorn Samson going forth in jaunty confidence to meet thePhilistines he so often and so easily had conquered:
"He wist not that the Lord was departed from him!"
To all of us, to whom the doubtful blessing of old age is granted, mustcome the black time when we shall essay a task which once we couldaccomplish with ease;--only to find its achievement has passed foreverbeyond our waning powers. And so, this day, was it with Sunnybank Lad.
Of yore, such a grip as he now secured would have ham strung orotherwise maimed its victim and left her wallowing helpless. But thedull teeth merely barked the leg's tough skin. And a spasmodic jerkripped it loose from the dog's hold.
Lad barely had time to spring aside, to dodge the wheeling sow. He waspanting heavily. His wounds were hurting and weakening him. His windwas gone. His heart was doing queer things which made him sick anddizzy. His strength was turning to water. His courage alone blazed highand undimmed.
Not once did it occur to him to seek safety in flight. He must haveknown the probable outcome. For Lad knew much. But the great heart didnot flinch at the prospect. Feebly, yet dauntlessly, he came back tothe hopeless battle. The Mistress was in danger. And he alone couldhelp.
No longer able to avoid the rushes, he met some of them withpathetically useless jaws; going down under others and rising with evergreater slowness and difficulty. The sow's ravening teeth found a goal,more than once, in the burnished mahogany coat which the Mistressbrushed every day with such loving care. The pronged hoofs had twicemore cut him as he strove to roll aside from their onslaught after oneof his heavy tumbles.
The end of the fight seemed very near. Yet Lad fought on. To theattack, after each upset or wound, he crawled with deathless courage.
The Mistress, at Lad's first charge, had stepped back. But, at once shehad caught up again the stick and belabored the sow with all her frailmuscular might. She might as well have been beating the side of aconcrete wall. Heedless of the flailing, the sow ignored her; andcontinued her maddened assault on Lad. The maids, attracted by thenoise, crowded the front doorway; clinging together and jabbering. Tothem the Mistress called now for the Master's shotgun, from the studywall, and for a handful of shells.
She kept her head; though she saw she was powerless to save the dog sheloved. And her soul was sick within her at his peril which her punyefforts could not avert.
Running across the lawn, toward the house, she met half way the maidwho came trembling forth with the gun and two shells. Without stoppingto glance at the cartridges,--nor to realize that they were filled withNumber Eight shot, for quails,--she thrust two of them into the breechand, turning, fired pointblank at the sow.
Lad was down again; and the sow,--no longer in a squealing rush, butwith a new cold deadliness,--was gauging the distance to his exposedthroat. The first shot peppered her shoulder; the tiny pellets scarcescratching the tough hide.
The Mistress had, halted, to fire. Now, she ran forward: With themuzzle not three feet from the sow's head, she pulled trigger again.
The pig's huge jaws road opened with deliberate width. One forefoot waspinning the helplessly battling dog to earth, while she made ready totear out his throat.
The second shot whizzed about her head and face. Two or three of thepellets entered the open mouth.
With a sound that was neither grunt nor howl, yet which savored ofboth, the sow lurched back from the flash and roar and the anguishingpain in her tender mouth. The Mistress whirled aloft the empty anduseless gun and brought it crashing down on the pig's skull. The carvedmahogany stock broke in two. The jar of impact knocked the weapon fromits wielder's numbed fingers.
The sow seemed scarce to notice the blow. She continued backing away;and champed her jaws as if to locate the cause of the agony in hermouth. Her eyes were inflamed and dazed by the flash of the gun.
The Mistress took advantage of the moment's breathing space to bendover the staggeringly rising Lad; and, catching him by the ruff, tourge him toward the house. For once, the big collie refused to obey. Heknew pig nature better than did she. And he knew the sow was not yetfinished with the battle. He strove to break free from the loved graspand to stagger back to his adversary.
The Mistress, by main strength, drew him, snarling and protesting,toward the safety of the house. Panting, bleeding, reeling, pitiablyweak, yet he resisted the tender urging; and kept twisting his bloodyhead back for a glimpse of his foe. Nor was the precaution useless.For, before the Mistress and her wounded dog were half-way across theremaining strip of lawn, the sow recovered enough of her deflected witsand fury to lower her head and gallop down after them.
At her first step, Lad, by a stupendous effort, wrenched free from theMistress's clasp; and flung himself between her and the charging massof pork. But, as he did so, he found breath for a trumpet-bark thatsounded more like a rallying cry.
For, dulled as were his ears, they were still keener than any human's.And they had caught the sound of eight flying paws amid the dead leavesof the drive. Wolf and Bruce, coming home at a leisurely trot, fromtheir ramble in the forest, had heard the two reports of the shotgun;and had broken into a run. They read the meaning in Lad's exhaustedbark, as clearly as humans might read a printed word. And it lent wingsto their feet.
Around the corner of the house tore the two returning collies. In asingle glance, they seemed to take in the whole grisly scene. They,too, had had their bouts with marauding swine; and they were stillyoung enough to enjoy such clashes and to partake of them withoutdanger.
The sow, too blind with pain and rage to know reinforcements werecoming to the aid of the half-dead hero, tore forward. The Mistress,with both hands, sought to drag Lad behind her. The maids screeched inplangent chorus.
Then, just as the sow was launching herself on the futilely snappingLad, she was stupidly aware that the dog had somehow changed to threedogs. One of these three the Mistress was still holding. The twoothers, with excellent teamwork, were assailing the sow from oppositesides.
She came to a sliding stop in her charge; blinking in bewildered fury.
Bruce had caught her by the torn left ear; and was keeping easily outof her way, while he inflicted torture thereon. W
olf, like a furrywhirlwind, had stopped only long enough to slash her bleeding nose tothe bone; and now was tearing away at her hind leg in an industriousand very promising effort to hamstring her. In front, Lad was stillstraining to break the Mistress's loving hold; and to get at hispestered enemy.
This was more than the huge porker had bargained for. Through all hermurder-rage, she had sense enough to know she was outnumbered andbeaten. She broke into a clumsy gallop; heading homeward.
But Bruce and Wolf would not have it so. Delightedly they tore in tothe attack. Their slashing fangs and their keenly nipping front teethwere everywhere. They were all over her. In sudden panic, blinded byterror and pain, the sow put her six hundred pounds of unwieldy weightinto the fastest motion she could summon. At a scrambling run, she setoff, around the house; head down, bitten tail aloft; the two dogs ather bleeding haunches.
Dimly, she saw a big and black obstacle loom up in her path. It wascoming noisily toward her. But she was going too fast and too blindlyto swerve. And she met it, headlong; throwing her vast weight forwardin an attempt to smash through it. At the same time, Wolf and Bruceleft off harrying her flanks and sprang aside.
Dugan had reached the garage unseen. There, he had backed out the car,by hand; shoving it into the open, lest the motor-whirr give prematureannouncement of his presence. Then, as he boarded the machine andreached for the self-starter, all bedlam broke loose, from somewhere inthe general direction of the house, fifty yards away.
Dugan, glancing up apprehensively, beheld the first phases of thefight. Forgetting the need of haste and of secrecy, he sat there,open-mouthed, watching a scrimmage which was beyond all his sportingexperience and which thrilled him as no prize-fight had ever done.Moveless, wide eyed, he witnessed the battle.
But the arrival of the two other dogs and the flight of the sow rousedhim to a sense of the business which had brought him thither. TheMistress and the maids had no eyes or ears for anything but the woundedLad. Dugan knew he could, in all probability, drive to the main roadunnoticed; if he should keep the house between him and the women.
He pressed the self-starter; threw off the brake and put the car intomotion. Then, as he struck the level stretch of driveway, back of thehouse, he stepped hard on the accelerator. Here, for a few rods, wasdanger of recognition; and it behooved him to make speed. He made it.
Forward bounded the car and struck a forty-mile gait. And around thehouse's far corner and straight toward Dugan came flying the sow andthe two collies. The dogs, at sight of the onrushing car, sprang aside.The sow did not.
In the narrow roadway there was no room for Dugan to turn out. Nor didhe care to. Again and again he had run over dogs, without harming hiscar or slackening its pace. And of course it would be the same with apig. He stepped harder on the accelerator.
Alf Dugan came to his senses in the hospital ward of the Paterson jail.He had not the faintest idea how he chanced to be there. When they toldhim the car had turned turtle and that he and a broken-necked pig hadbeen hauled out of the wreckage, he asked in all honesty:
"What car? What pig? Quit stringing me, can't you? Which of my legs didyou say is bust, and which one is just twisted? They both feel as badas each other. How'd I get here, anyhow? What happened me?"
When the vet had worked over Lad for an hour and had patched him up andhad declared there was no doubt at all about his getting well, Wolf andBruce were brought in to see the invalid. The Mistress thought he mightbe glad to see them.
He was not.
Indeed, after one scornful look in their direction, Laddie turned awayfrom the visitors, in cold disgust. Also, he was less demonstrativewith the Mistress, than usual. Anyone could see his feelings weredeeply hurt. And anyone who knew Lad could tell why.
He had borne the brunt of the fight. And, at the last, these lesserdogs had won the victory without his aid. Still worse, his belovedMistress,--for whom he had so blithely staked his aged life,--theMistress had held him back by force from joining in the delirious lastphases of the battle. She had made him stand tamely by, while othersfinished the grand work he had begun.
It was not fair. And Laddie let everyone in sight know it was not fair;and that he had no intention of being petted into a good humor.
Still, when, by and by, the Mistress sat down on the floor beside himand told him what a darling and wonderful and heroic dog he was and howproud she felt of his courage, and when her dear hand rumpled the softhair behind his ears,--well, somehow Lad found himself laying his headin her lap; and making croony low sounds at her and pretending to biteher little white hand.
It was always hard to stay offended at the Mistress.