<hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</SPAN></span></p>
<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></SPAN>CHAPTER III<br/> A MIRACLE OF TWO</h2>
<p>The connecting points between the inner and
outer Lad were a pair of the wisest and
darkest and most sorrowful eyes in all
dogdom—eyes that gave the lie to folk who say
no dog has a soul. There are such dogs once in
a human generation.</p>
<p>Lad had but one tyrant in all the world. That
was his dainty gold-and-white collie-mate, Lady;
Lady, whose affections he had won in fair life-and-death
battle with a younger and stronger dog;
Lady, who bullied him unmercifully and teased
him and did fearful things to his stately dignity;
and to whom he allowed liberties that would have
brought any other aggressor painfully near to
death.</p>
<p>Lady was high-strung and capricious; a collie de
luxe. Lad and she were as oddly contrasted a
couple, in body and mind, as one could find in a
day's journey through their North Jersey hinterland.
To The Place (at intervals far too few between
to suit Lad), came human guests; people,
for the most part, who did not understand dogs<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</SPAN></span>
and who either drew away in causeless fear from
them or else insisted on patting or hauling them
about.</p>
<p>Lad detested guests. He met their advances with
cold courtesy, and, as soon as possible, got himself
out of their way. He knew the Law far too well
to snap or to growl at a guest. But the Law did
not compel him to stay within patting distance of
one.</p>
<p>The careless caress of the Mistress or the Master—especially
of the Mistress—was a delight to him.
He would sport like an overgrown puppy with
either of these deities; throwing dignity to the
four winds. But to them alone did he unbend—to
them and to his adored tyrant, Lady.</p>
<p>To The Place, of a cold spring morning, came
a guest; or two guests. Lad at first was not certain
which. The visible guest was a woman. And,
in her arms she carried a long bundle that might
have been anything at all.</p>
<p>Long as was the bundle, it was ridiculously light.
Or, rather, pathetically light. For its folds contained
a child, five years old; a child that ought to
have weighed more than forty pounds and weighed
barely twenty. A child with a wizened little old
face, and with a skeleton body which was powerless
from the waist down.</p>
<p>Six months earlier, the Baby had been as vigorous
and jolly as a collie pup. Until an invisible
Something prowled through the land, laying Its<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</SPAN></span>
finger-tips on thousands of such jolly and vigorous
youngsters, as frost's fingers are laid on autumn
flowers—and with the same hideous effect.</p>
<p>This particular Baby had not died of the plague,
as had so many of her fellows. At least, her brain
and the upper half of her body had not died.</p>
<p>Her mother had been counseled to try mountain
air for the hopeless little invalid. She had written
to her distant relative, the Mistress, asking leave
to spend a month at The Place.</p>
<p>Lad viewed the arrival of the adult guest with
no interest and with less pleasure. He stood,
aloof, at one side of the veranda, as the newcomer
alighted from the car.</p>
<p>But, when the Master took the long bundle from
her arms and carried it up the steps, Lad waxed
curious. Not only because the Master handled his
burden so carefully, but because the collie's uncanny
scent-power told him all at once that it was human.</p>
<p>Lad had never seen a human carried in this
manner. It did not make sense to him. And he
stepped, hesitantly, forward to investigate.</p>
<p>The Master laid the bundle tenderly on the
veranda hammock-swing, and loosed the blanket-folds
that swathed it. Lad came over to him, and
looked down into the pitiful little face.</p>
<p>There had been no baby at The Place for many
a year. Lad had seldom seen one at such close
quarters. But now the sight did something queer
to his heart—the big heart that ever went out to the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</SPAN></span>
weak and defenseless, the heart that made a playfully
snapping puppy or a cranky little lapdog as
safe from his terrible jaws as was Lady herself.</p>
<p>He sniffed in friendly fashion at the child's
pathetically upturned face. Into the dull baby-eyes,
at sight of him, came a look of pleased interest—the
first that had crossed their blankness for many
a long day. Two feeble little hands reached out
and buried themselves lovingly in the mass of soft
ruff that circled Lad's neck.</p>
<p>The dog quivered all over, from nose to brush,
with joy at the touch. He laid his great head down
beside the drawn cheek, and positively reveled in
the pain the tugging fingers were inflicting on his
sensitive throat.</p>
<p>In one instant, Lad had widened his narrow and
hard-established circle of Loved Ones, to include
this half-dead wisp of humanity.</p>
<p>The child's mother came up the steps in the
Master's wake. At sight of the huge dog, she
halted in quick alarm.</p>
<p>"Look out!" she shrilled. "He may attack her!
Oh, <i>do</i> drive him away!"</p>
<p>"Who? Lad," queried the Mistress. "Why, Lad
wouldn't harm a hair of her head if his life depended
on it! See, he adores her already. I
never knew him to take to a stranger before. And
she looks brighter and happier, too, than she has
looked in months. Don't make her cry by sending
him away from her."</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>"But," insisted the woman, "dogs are full of
germs. I've read so. He might give her some
terrible——"</p>
<p>"Lad is just as clean and as germless as I am,"
declared the Mistress, with some warmth. "There
isn't a day he doesn't swim in the lake, and there
isn't a day I don't brush him. He's——"</p>
<p>"He's a collie, though," protested the guest,
looking on in uneasy distaste, while Baby secured
a tighter and more painful grip on the delighted
dog's ruff. "And I've always heard collies are
awfully treacherous. Don't you find them so?"</p>
<p>"If we did," put in the Master, who had heard
that same asinine question until it sickened him, "if
we found collies were treacherous, we wouldn't
keep them. A collie is either the best dog or the
worst dog on earth. Lad is the best. We don't
keep the other kind. I'll call him away, though,
if it bothers you to have him so close to Baby.
Come, Lad!"</p>
<p>Reluctantly, the dog turned to obey the Law;
glancing back, as he went, at the adorable new idol
he had acquired; then crossing obediently to where
the Master stood.</p>
<p>The Baby's face puckered unhappily. Her pipestem
arms went out toward the collie. In a tired
little voice she called after him:</p>
<p>"Dog! <i>Doggie!</i> Come back here, right away!
I love you, Dog!"</p>
<p>Lad, vibrating with eagerness, glanced up at the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</SPAN></span>
Master for leave to answer the call. The Master,
in turn, looked inquiringly at his nervous guest.
Lad translated the look. And, instantly, he felt
an unreasoning hate for the fussy woman.</p>
<p>The guest walked over to her weakly gesticulating
daughter and explained:</p>
<p>"Dogs aren't nice pets for sick little girls, dear.
They're rough; and besides, they bite. I'll find
Dolly for you as soon as I unpack:"</p>
<p>"Don't want Dolly," fretted the child. "Want
the dog! He isn't rough. He won't bite. Doggie!
I love you! Come <i>here!</i>"</p>
<p>Lad looked up longingly at the Master, his
plumed tail a-wag, his ears up, his eyes dancing.
One hand of the Master's stirred toward the hammock
in a motion so imperceptible that none but a
sharply watchful dog could have observed it.</p>
<p>Lad waited for no second bidding. Quietly, unobtrusively,
he crossed behind the guest, and stood
beside his idol. The Baby fairly squealed with
rapture, and drew his silken head down to her face.</p>
<p>"Oh, well!" surrendered the guest, sulkily. "If
she won't be happy any other way, let him go to
her. I suppose it's safe, if you people say so. And
it's the first thing she's been interested in, since——<i>No</i>,
darling," she broke off, sternly. "You shall
<i>not</i> kiss him! I draw the line at that. Here! Let
Mamma rub your lips with her handkerchief."</p>
<p>"Dogs aren't made to be kissed," said the Master,
sharing, however, Lad's disgust at the lip-scrubbing<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</SPAN></span>
process. "But she'll come to less harm from kissing
the head of a clean dog than from kissing the
mouths of most humans. I'm glad she likes Lad.
And I'm still gladder that he likes her. It's almost
the first time he ever went to an outsider of his
own accord."</p>
<p>That was how Lad's idolatry began. And that,
too, was how a miserably sick child found a new
interest in life.</p>
<p>Every day, from morning to dusk, Lad was with
the Baby. Forsaking his immemorial "cave"
under the music-room piano, he lay all night outside
the door of her bedroom. In preference even
to a romp through the forest with Lady, he would
pace majestically alongside the invalid's wheelchair
as it was trundled along the walks or up and
down the veranda.</p>
<p>Forsaking his post on the floor at the left of the
Master's seat, at meals—a place that had been his
alone since puppyhood—he lay always behind the
Baby's table couch. This to the vast discomfort of
the maid who had to step over him in circumnavigating
the board, and to the open annoyance of
the child's mother.</p>
<p>Baby, as the days went on, lost none of her
first pleasure in her shaggy playmate. To her, the
dog was a ceaseless novelty. She loved to twist and
braid the great white ruff on his chest, to toy
with his sensitive ears, to make him "speak" or
shake hands or lie down or stand up at her bidding.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</SPAN></span>
She loved to play a myriad of intricate games with
him—games ranging from <i>Beauty and the Beast</i>,
to <i>Fairy Princess and Dragon</i>.</p>
<p>Whether as <i>Beast</i> (to her <i>Beauty</i>) or in the more
complex and exacting rôle of <i>Dragon</i>, Lad entered
wholesouledly into every such game. Of course,
he always played his part wrong. Equally, of
course, Baby always lost her temper at his stupidity,
and pummeled him, by way of chastisement, with
her nerveless fists—a punishment Lad accepted with
a grin of idiotic bliss.</p>
<p>Whether because of the keenly bracing mountain
air or because of her outdoor days with a chum
who awoke her dormant interest in life, Baby was
growing stronger and less like a sallow ghostling.
And, in the relief of noting this steady improvement,
her mother continued to tolerate Lad's chumship
with the child, although she had never lost her
own first unreasoning fear of the big dog.</p>
<p>Two or three things happened to revive this
foolish dread. One of them occurred about a week
after the invalid's arrival at The Place.</p>
<p>Lady, being no fonder of guests than was Lad,
had given the veranda and the house itself a wide
berth. But one day, as Baby lay in the hammock
(trying in a wordy irritation to teach Lad the
alphabet), and as the guest sat with her back to
them, writing letters, Lady trotted around the
corner of the porch.</p>
<p>At sight of the hammock's queer occupant, she<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</SPAN></span>
paused, and stood blinking inquisitively. Baby
spied the graceful gold-and-white creature. Pushing
Lad to one side, she called, imperiously:</p>
<p>"Come here, new Doggie. You pretty, <i>pretty</i>
Doggie!"</p>
<p>Lady, her vanity thus appealed to, strolled mincingly
forward. Just within arm's reach, she halted
again. Baby thrust out one hand, and seized her
by the ruff to draw her into petting-distance.</p>
<p>The sudden tug on Lady's fur was as nothing to
the haulings and maulings in which Lad so meekly
reveled. But Lad and Lady were by no means
alike, as I think I have said. Boundless patience
and a chivalrous love for the Weak, were not numbered
among Lady's erratic virtues. She liked
liberties as little as did Lad; and she had a far
more drastic way of resenting them.</p>
<p>At the first pinch of her sensitive skin there was
an instant flash of gleaming teeth, accompanied by
a nasty growl and a lightning-quick forward lunge
of the dainty gold-white head. As the wolf
slashes at a foe—and as no animals but wolf and
collie know how to—Lady slashed murderously at
the thin little arm that sought to pull her along.</p>
<p>And Lad, in the same breath, hurled his great
bulk between his mate and his idol. It was a move
unbelievably swift for so large a dog. And it
served its turn.</p>
<p>The eye-tooth slash that would have cut the little<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</SPAN></span>
girl's arm to the bone, sent a red furrow athwart
Lad's massive shoulder.</p>
<p>Before Lady could snap again, or, indeed, could
get over her surprise at her mate's intervention, Lad
was shouldering her off the edge of the veranda
steps. Very gently he did this, and with no show
of teeth. But he did it with much firmness.</p>
<p>In angry amazement at such rudeness on the part
of her usually subservient mate, Lady snarled
ferociously, and bit at him.</p>
<p>Just then, the child's mother, roused from her
letter-writing by the turmoil, came rushing to her
endangered offspring's rescue.</p>
<p>"He growled at Baby," she reported hysterically,
as the noise brought the Master out of his study
and to the veranda on the run. "He <i>growled</i> at
her, and then he and that other horrid brute got to
fighting, and——"</p>
<p>"Pardon me," interposed the Master, calling both
dogs to him, "but Man is the only animal to maltreat
the female of his kind. No male dog would
fight with Lady. Much less would Lad—Hello!"
he broke off. "Look at his shoulder, though! That
was meant for Baby. Instead of scolding Lad, you
may thank him for saving her from an ugly slash.
I'll keep Lady chained up, after this."</p>
<p>"But——"</p>
<p>"But, with Lad beside her, Baby is in just about
as much danger as she would be with a guard of
forty U. S. Regulars," went on the Master. "Take<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</SPAN></span>
my word for it. Come along, Lady. It's the
kennel for you for the next few weeks, old girl.
Lad, when I get back, I'll wash that shoulder for
you."</p>
<p>With a sigh, Lad went over to the hammock and
lay down, heavily. For the first time since Baby's
advent at The Place, he was unhappy—very, <i>very</i>
unhappy. He had had to jostle and fend off Lady,
whom he worshipped. And he knew it would be
many a long day before his sensitively temperamental
mate would forgive or forget. Meantime,
so far as Lady was concerned, he was in Coventry.</p>
<p>And just because he had saved from injury a
Baby who had meant no harm and who could not
help herself! Life, all at once, seemed dismayingly
complex to Lad's simple soul.</p>
<p>He whimpered a little, under his breath; and
lifted his head toward Baby's dangling hand for a
caress that might help make things easier. But
Baby had been bitterly chagrined at Lady's reception
of her friendly advances. Lady could not be
punished for this. But Lad could.</p>
<p>She slapped the lovingly upthrust muzzle with
all her feeble force. For once, Lad was not amused
by the castigation. He sighed, a second time; and
curled up on the floor beside the hammock, in a
right miserable heap; his head between his tiny
forepaws, his great sorrowful eyes abrim with
bewildered grief.</p>
<p>Spring drowsed into early summer. And, with<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</SPAN></span>
the passing days, Baby continued to look less and
less like an atrophied mummy, and more like a thin,
but normal, child of five. She ate and slept, as
she had not done for many a month.</p>
<p>The lower half of her body was still dead. But
there was a faint glow of pink in the flat cheeks,
and the eyes were alive once more. The hands
that pulled at Lad, in impulsive friendliness or in
punishment, were stronger, too. Their fur-tugs
hurt worse than at first. But the hurt always gave
Lad that same twinge of pleasure—a twinge that
helped to ease his heart's ache over the defection
of Lady.</p>
<p>On a hot morning in early June, when the Mistress
and the Master had driven over to the village
for the mail, the child's mother wheeled the invalid
chair to a tree-roofed nook down by the lake—a
spot whose deep shade and lush long grass promised
more coolness than did the veranda.</p>
<p>It was just the spot a city-dweller would have
chosen for a nap—and just the spot through which
no countryman would have cared to venture, at that
dry season, without wearing high boots.</p>
<p>Here, not three days earlier, the Master had
killed a copperhead snake. Here, every summer,
during the late June mowing, The Place's scythe-wielders
moved with glum caution. And seldom
did their progress go unmarked by the scythe-severed
body of at least one snake.</p>
<p>The Place, for the most part, lay on hillside<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</SPAN></span>
and plateau, free from poisonous snakes of all
kinds, and usually free from mosquitoes as well.
The lawn, close-shaven, sloped down to the lake.
To one side of it, in a narrow stretch of bottom-land,
a row of weeping willows pierced the loose
stone lake-wall.</p>
<p>Here, the ground was seldom bone-dry. Here,
the grass grew rankest. Here, also, driven to
water by the drought, abode eft, lizard and an occasional
snake, finding coolness and moisture in the
long grass, and a thousand hiding places amid the
stone-crannies or the lake-wall.</p>
<p>If either the Mistress or the Master had been at
home on this morning, the guest would have been
warned against taking Baby there at all. She
would have been doubly warned against the folly
which she now proceeded to commit—of lifting
the child from the wheel-chair, and placing her on
a spread rug in the grass, with her back to the low
wall.</p>
<p>The rug, on its mattress of lush grasses, was soft.
The lake breeze stirred the lower boughs of the
willows. The air was pleasantly cool here, and
had lost the dead hotness that brooded over the
higher ground.</p>
<p>The guest was well pleased with her choice of
a resting place. Lad was not.</p>
<p>The big dog had been growingly uneasy from
the time the wheel-chair approached the lake-wall.
Twice he put himself in front of it; only to be<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</SPAN></span>
ordered aside. Once the wheels hit his ribs with
jarring impact. As Baby was laid upon her grassy
bed, Lad barked loudly and pulled at one end of
the rug with his teeth.</p>
<p>The guest shook her parasol at him and ordered
him back to the house. Lad obeyed no orders, save
those of his two deities. Instead of slinking away,
he sat down beside the child; so close to her that
his ruff pressed against her shoulder. He did not
lie down as usual, but sat—tulip ears erect, dark
eyes cloudy with trouble; head turning slowly from
side to side, nostrils pulsing.</p>
<p>To a human, there was nothing to see or hear or
smell—other than the cool beauty of the nook, the
soughing of the breeze in the willows, the soft fragrance
of a June morning. To a dog, there were
faint rustling sounds that were not made by the
breeze. There were equally faint and elusive scents
that the human nose could not register. Notably,
a subtle odor as of crushed cucumbers. (If ever
you have killed a pit-viper, you know that smell.)</p>
<p>The dog was worried. He was uneasy. His uneasiness
would not let him sit still. It made him
fidget and shift his position; and, once or twice,
growl a little under his breath.</p>
<p>Presently, his eyes brightened, and his brush
began to thud gently on the rug-edge. For, a
quarter mile above, The Place's car was turning
in from the highway. In it were the Mistress and
the Master, coming home with the mail. Now<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</SPAN></span>
everything would be all right. And the onerous
duties of guardianship would pass to more capable
hands.</p>
<p>As the car rounded the corner of the house and
came to a stop at the front door, the guest caught
sight of it. Jumping up from her seat on the rug,
she started toward it in quest of mail. So hastily
did she rise that she dislodged one of the wall's
small stones and sent it rattling down into a wide
crevice between two larger rocks.</p>
<p>She did not heed the tinkle of stone on stone; nor
a sharp little hiss that followed, as the falling missile
smote the coils of a sleeping copperhead snake
in one of the wall's lowest cavities. But Lad heard
it. And he heard the slithering of scales against
rocksides, as the snake angrily sought new sleeping
quarters.</p>
<p>The guest walked away, all ignorant of what she
had done. And, before she had taken three steps,
a triangular grayish-ruddy head was pushed out
from the bottom of the wall.</p>
<p>Twistingly, the copperhead glided out onto the
grass at the very edge of the rug. The snake was
short, and thick, and dirty, with a distinct and intricate
pattern interwoven on its rough upper body.
The head was short, flat, wedge-shaped. Between
eye and nostril, on either side, was the sinister "pinhole,"
that is the infallible mark of the poison-sac
serpent.</p>
<p>(The rattlesnake swarms among some of the<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</SPAN></span>
stony mountains of the North Jersey hinterland;
though seldom, nowadays, does it venture into the
valleys. But the copperhead—twin brother in
murder to the rattler—still infests meadow and
lakeside. Smaller, fatter, deadlier than the
diamond-back, it gives none of the warning which
redeems the latter from complete abhorrence. It is
a creature as evil as its own aspect—and name.
Copperhead and rattlesnake are the only pit-vipers
left now between Canada and Virginia.)</p>
<p>Out from its wall-cranny oozed the reptile.
Along the fringe of the rug it moved for a foot or
two; then paused uncertain—perhaps momentarily
dazzled by the light. It stopped within a yard
of the child's wizened little hand that rested idle on
the rug. Baby's other arm was around Lad, and
her body was between him and the snake.</p>
<p>Lad, with a shiver, freed himself from the frail
embrace and got nervously to his feet.</p>
<p>There are two things—and perhaps <i>only</i> two
things—of which the best type of thoroughbred
collie is abjectly afraid and from which he will
run for his life. One is a mad dog. The other is
a poisonous snake. Instinct, and the horror of
death, warn him violently away from both.</p>
<p>At stronger scent, and then at sight of the copperhead,
Lad's stout heart failed him. Gallantly
had he attacked human marauders who had invaded
The Place. More than once, in dashing fearlessness,
he had fought with dogs larger than himself.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</SPAN></span>
With a d'Artagnan-like gaiety of zest, he had
tackled and deflected a bull that had charged head
down at the Mistress.</p>
<p>Commonly speaking, he knew no fear. Yet now
he was afraid; tremulously, quakingly, <i>sickly</i>
afraid. Afraid of the deadly thing that was halting
within three feet of him, with only the Baby's
fragile body as a barrier between.</p>
<p>Left to himself, he would have taken, incontinently,
to his heels. With the lower animal's instinctive
appeal to a human in moments of danger,
he even pressed closer to the helpless child at his
side, as if seeking the protection of her humanness.
A great wave of cowardice shook the dog from
foot to head.</p>
<p>The Master had alighted from the car; and was
coming down the hill, toward his guest, with several
letters in his hand. Lad cast a yearning look at
him. But the Master, he knew, was too far away
to be summoned in time by even the most imperious
bark.</p>
<p>And it was then that the child's straying gaze
fell on the snake.</p>
<p>With a gasp and a shudder, Baby shrank back
against Lad. At least, the upper half of her body
moved away from the peril. Her legs and feet lay
inert. The motion jerked the rug's fringe an inch
or two, disturbing the copperhead. The snake
coiled, and drew back its three-cornered head, the
forklike maroon tongue playing fitfully.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>With a cry of panic-fright at her own impotence
to escape, the child caught up a picture book from
the rug beside her, and flung it at the serpent. The
fluttering book missed its mark. But it served its
purpose by giving the copperhead reason to believe
itself attacked.</p>
<p>Back went the triangular head, farther than ever;
and then flashed forward. The double move was
made in the minutest fraction of a second.</p>
<p>A full third of the squat reddish body going with
the blow, the copperhead struck. It struck for the
thin knee, not ten inches away from its own coiled
body. The child screamed again in mortal terror.</p>
<p>Before the scream could leave the fear-chalked
lips, Baby was knocked flat by a mighty and hairy
shape that lunged across her toward her foe.</p>
<p>And the copperhead's fangs sank deep in Lad's
nose.</p>
<p>He gave no sign of pain; but leaped back. As he
sprang his jaws caught Baby by the shoulder. The
keen teeth did not so much as bruise her soft flesh
as he half-dragged, half-threw her into the grass
behind him.</p>
<p>Athwart the rug again, Lad launched himself
bodily upon the coiled snake.</p>
<p>As he charged, the swift-striking fangs found
a second mark—this time in the side of his jaw.</p>
<p>An instant later the copperhead lay twisting and
writhing and thrashing impotently among the grass<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</SPAN></span>roots;
its back broken, and its body seared almost in
two by a slash of the dog's saber-like tusk.</p>
<p>The fight was over. The menace was past. The
child was safe.</p>
<p>And, in her rescuer's muzzle and jaw were two
deposits of mortal poison.</p>
<p>Lad stood panting above the prostrate and crying
Baby. His work was done; and instinct told
him at what cost. But his idol was unhurt and
he was happy. He bent down to lick the convulsed
little face in mute plea for pardon for his needful
roughness toward her.</p>
<p>But he was denied even this tiny consolation.
Even as he leaned downward he was knocked
prone to earth by a blow that all but fractured his
skull.</p>
<p>At the child's first terrified cry, her mother had
turned back. Nearsighted and easily confused, she
had seen only that the dog had knocked her sick
baby flat, and was plunging across her body. Next,
she had seen him grip Baby's shoulder with his
teeth and drag her, shrieking, along the ground.</p>
<p>That was enough. The primal mother-instinct
(that is sometimes almost as strong in woman as
in lioness—or cow), was aroused. Fearless of
danger to herself, the guest rushed to her child's
rescue. As she ran she caught her thick parasol
by the ferule and swung it aloft.</p>
<p>Down came the agate-handle of the sunshade
on the head of the dog. The handle was as large<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</SPAN></span>
as a woman's fist, and was composed of a single
stone, set in four silver claws.</p>
<p>As Lad staggered to his feet after the terrific
blow felled him, the impromptu weapon arose once
more in air, descending this time on his broad
shoulders.</p>
<p>Lad did not cringe—did not seek to dodge or
run—did not show his teeth. This mad assailant
was a woman. Moreover, she was a guest, and as
such, sacred under the Guest Law which he had
mastered from puppyhood.</p>
<p>Had a man raised his hand against Lad—a man
other than the Master or a guest—there would
right speedily have been a case for a hospital, if not
for the undertaker. But, as things now were, he
could not resent the beating.</p>
<p>His head and shoulders quivered under the force
and the pain of the blows. But his splendid body
did not cower. And the woman, wild with fear
and mother-love, continued to smite with all her
random strength.</p>
<p>Then came the rescue.</p>
<p>At the first blow the child had cried out in
fierce protest at her pet's ill-treatment. Her cry
went unheard.</p>
<p>"Mother!" she shrieked, her high treble cracked
with anguish. "Mother! Don't! <i>Don't!</i> He kept
the snake from eating me! He——!"</p>
<p>The frantic woman still did not heed. Each successive
blow seemed to fall upon the little onlooker's<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</SPAN></span>
own bare heart. And Baby, under the stress, went
quite mad.</p>
<p>Scrambling to her feet, in crazy zeal to protect
her beloved playmate, she tottered forward three
steps, and seized her mother by the skirt.</p>
<p>At the touch the woman looked down. Then
her face went yellow-white; and the parasol clattered
unnoticed to the ground.</p>
<p>For a long instant the mother stood thus; her
eyes wide and glazed, her mouth open, her cheeks
ashy—staring at the swaying child who clutched
her dress for support and who was sobbing forth
incoherent pleas for the dog.</p>
<p>The Master had broken into a run and into a
flood of wordless profanity at sight of his dog's
punishment. Now he came to an abrupt halt and
was glaring dazedly at the miracle before him.</p>
<p>The child had risen and had walked.</p>
<p>The child had <i>walked!</i>—she whose lower motive-centers,
the wise doctors had declared, were hopelessly
paralyzed—she who could never hope to
twitch so much as a single toe or feel any sensation
from the hips downward!</p>
<p>Small wonder that both guest and Master seemed
to have caught, for the moment, some of the
paralysis that so magically departed from the
invalid!</p>
<p>And yet—as a corps of learned physicians later
agreed—there was no miracle—no magic—about it.
Baby's was not the first, nor the thousandth case<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</SPAN></span>
in pathologic history, in which paralyzed sensory
powers had been restored to their normal functions
by means of a shock.</p>
<p>The child had had no malformation, no accident,
to injure the spine or the co-ordination between
limbs and brain. A long illness had left her powerless.
Country air and new interest in life had
gradually built up wasted tissues. A shock had re-established
communication between brain and lower
body—a communication that had been suspended;
not broken.</p>
<p>When, at last, there was room in any of the
human minds for aught but blank wonder and
gratitude, the joyously weeping mother was made
to listen to the child's story of the fight with the
snake—a story corroborated by the Master's find of
the copperhead's half-severed body.</p>
<p>"I'll—I'll get down on my knees to that heaven-sent
dog," sobbed the guest, "and apologize to him.
Oh, I wish some of you would beat me as I beat
him! I'd feel so much better! Where is he?"</p>
<p>The question brought no answer. Lad had vanished.
Nor could eager callings and searchings
bring him to view. The Master, returning from a
shout-punctuated hunt through the forest, made
Baby tell her story all over again. Then he nodded.</p>
<p>"I understand," he said, feeling a ludicrously
unmanly desire to cry. "I see how it was. The
snake must have bitten him, at least once. Probably
oftener, and he knew what that meant. Lad<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</SPAN></span>
knows everything—<i>knew</i> everything, I mean. If
he had known a little less he'd have been human.
But—if he'd been human, he probably wouldn't
have thrown away his life for Baby."</p>
<p>"Thrown away his life," repeated the guest.
"I—I don't understand. Surely I didn't strike him
hard enough to——"</p>
<p>"No," returned the Master, "but the snake did."</p>
<p>"You mean, he has——?"</p>
<p>"I mean it is the nature of all animals to crawl
away, alone, into the forest to die. They are more
considerate than we. They try to cause no further
trouble to those they have loved. Lad got his death
from the copperhead's fangs. He knew it. And
while we were all taken up with the wonder of
Baby's cure, he quietly went away—to die."</p>
<p>The Mistress got up hurriedly, and left the room.
She loved the great dog, as she loved few humans.
The guest dissolved into a flood of sloppy tears.</p>
<p>"And I beat him," she wailed. "I beat him—horribly!
And all the time he was dying from the
poison he had saved my child from! Oh, I'll never
forgive myself for this, the longest day I live."</p>
<p>"The longest day is a long day," drily commented
the Master. "And self-forgiveness is the
easiest of all lessons to learn. After all, Lad was
only a dog. That's why he is dead."</p>
<p>The Place's atmosphere tingled with jubilation
over the child's cure. Her uncertain, but always<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</SPAN></span>
successful, efforts at walking were an hourly
delight.</p>
<p>But, through the general joy, the Mistress and
the Master could not always keep their faces bright.
Even the guest mourned frequently, and loudly, and
eloquently the passing of Lad. And Baby was
openly inconsolable at the loss of her chum.</p>
<p>At dawn on the morning of the fourth day, the
Master let himself silently out of the house, for
his usual before-breakfast cross-country tramp—a
tramp on which, for years, Lad had always been his
companion. Heavy-hearted, the Master prepared
to set forth alone.</p>
<p>As he swung shut the veranda door behind him,
Something arose stiffly from a porch rug—Something
the Master looked at in a daze of unbelief.</p>
<p>It was a dog—yet no such dog as had ever before
sullied the cleanness of The Place's well-scoured
veranda.</p>
<p>The animal's body was lean to emaciation. The
head was swollen—though, apparently, the swelling
had begun to recede. The fur, from spine to toe,
from nose to tail-tip, was one solid and shapeless
mass of caked mud.</p>
<p>The Master sat down very suddenly on the
veranda floor beside the dirt-encrusted brute, and
caught it in his arms, sputtering disjointedly:</p>
<p>"Lad!—<i>Laddie!</i>—Old <i>friend!</i> You're alive
again! You're—you're—<i>alive!</i>"</p>
<p>Yes, Lad had known enough to creep away to<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</SPAN></span>
the woods to die. But, thanks to the wolf-strain in
his collie blood, he had also known how to do
something far wiser than die.</p>
<p>Three days of self-burial, to the very nostrils, in
the mysteriously healing ooze of the marshes,
behind the forest, had done for him what such
mud-baths have done for a million wild creatures.
It had drawn out the viper-poison and had left
him whole again—thin, shaky on the legs, slightly
swollen of head—but <i>whole</i>.</p>
<p>"He's—he's awfully dirty, though! Isn't he?"
commented the guest, when an idiotic triumph-yell
from the Master had summoned the whole family,
in sketchy attire, to the veranda. "Awfully dirty
and——"</p>
<p>"Yes," curtly assented the Master, Lad's head
between his caressing hands. "'Awfully dirty.'
That's why he's still alive."</p>
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