CHAPTER III
A MIRACLE OF TWO
The connecting points between the inner and outer Lad were a pair ofthe wisest and darkest and most sorrowful eyes in all dogdom--eyesthat gave the lie to folk who say no dog has a soul. There are suchdogs once in a human generation.
Lad had but one tyrant in all the world. That was his daintygold-and-white collie-mate, Lady; Lady, whose affections he had won infair life-and-death battle with a younger and stronger dog; Lady, whobullied him unmercifully and teased him and did fearful things to hisstately dignity; and to whom he allowed liberties that would havebrought any other aggressor painfully near to death.
Lady was high-strung and capricious; a collie de luxe. Lad and shewere as oddly contrasted a couple, in body and mind, as one could findin a day's journey through their North Jersey hinterland. To ThePlace (at intervals far too few between to suit Lad), came humanguests; people, for the most part, who did not understand dogs and whoeither drew away in causeless fear from them or else insisted onpatting or hauling them about.
Lad detested guests. He met their advances with cold courtesy, and, assoon as possible, got himself out of their way. He knew the Law fartoo well to snap or to growl at a guest. But the Law did not compelhim to stay within patting distance of one.
The careless caress of the Mistress or the Master--especially of theMistress--was a delight to him. He would sport like an overgrownpuppy with either of these deities; throwing dignity to the fourwinds. But to them alone did he unbend--to them and to his adoredtyrant, Lady.
To The Place, of a cold spring morning, came a guest; or twoguests. Lad at first was not certain which. The visible guest was awoman. And, in her arms she carried a long bundle that might have beenanything at all.
Long as was the bundle, it was ridiculously light. Or, rather,pathetically light. For its folds contained a child, five years old; achild that ought to have weighed more than forty pounds and weighedbarely twenty. A child with a wizened little old face, and with askeleton body which was powerless from the waist down.
Six months earlier, the Baby had been as vigorous and jolly as acollie pup. Until an invisible Something prowled through the land,laying Its finger-tips on thousands of such jolly and vigorousyoungsters, as frost's fingers are laid on autumn flowers--and withthe same hideous effect.
This particular Baby had not died of the plague, as had so many of herfellows. At least, her brain and the upper half of her body had notdied.
Her mother had been counseled to try mountain air for the hopelesslittle invalid. She had written to her distant relative, the Mistress,asking leave to spend a month at The Place.
Lad viewed the arrival of the adult guest with no interest and withless pleasure. He stood, aloof, at one side of the veranda, as thenewcomer alighted from the car.
But, when the Master took the long bundle from her arms and carried itup the steps, Lad waxed curious. Not only because the Master handledhis burden so carefully, but because the collie's uncanny scent-powertold him all at once that it was human.
Lad had never seen a human carried in this manner. It did not makesense to him. And he stepped, hesitantly, forward to investigate.
The Master laid the bundle tenderly on the veranda hammock-swing, andloosed the blanket-folds that swathed it. Lad came over to him, andlooked down into the pitiful little face.
There had been no baby at The Place for many a year. Lad had seldomseen one at such close quarters. But now the sight did something queerto his heart--the big heart that ever went out to the weak anddefenseless, the heart that made a playfully snapping puppy or acranky little lapdog as safe from his terrible jaws as was Ladyherself.
He sniffed in friendly fashion at the child's pathetically upturnedface. Into the dull baby-eyes, at sight of him, came a look of pleasedinterest--the first that had crossed their blankness for many a longday. Two feeble little hands reached out and buried themselveslovingly in the mass of soft ruff that circled Lad's neck.
The dog quivered all over, from nose to brush, with joy at thetouch. He laid his great head down beside the drawn cheek, andpositively reveled in the pain the tugging fingers were inflicting onhis sensitive throat.
In one instant, Lad had widened his narrow and hard-established circleof Loved Ones, to include this half-dead wisp of humanity.
The child's mother came up the steps in the Master's wake. At sight ofthe huge dog, she halted in quick alarm.
"Look out!" she shrilled. "He may attack her! Oh, _do_ drive himaway!"
"Who? Lad," queried the Mistress. "Why, Lad wouldn't harm a hair ofher head if his life depended on it! See, he adores her already. Inever knew him to take to a stranger before. And she looks brighterand happier, too, than she has looked in months. Don't make her cry bysending him away from her."
"But," insisted the woman, "dogs are full of germs. I've read so. Hemight give her some terrible----"
"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, andthere isn't a day I don't brush him. He's----"
"He's a collie, though," protested the guest, looking on in uneasydistaste, while Baby secured a tighter and more painful grip on thedelighted dog's ruff. "And I've always heard collies are awfullytreacherous. Don't you find them so?"
"If we did," put in the Master, who had heard that same asininequestion until it sickened him, "if we found collies were treacherous,we wouldn't keep them. A collie is either the best dog or the worstdog on earth. Lad is the best. We don't keep the other kind. I'll callhim away, though, if it bothers you to have him so close to Baby.Come, Lad!"
Reluctantly, the dog turned to obey the Law; glancing back, as hewent, at the adorable new idol he had acquired; then crossingobediently to where the Master stood.
The Baby's face puckered unhappily. Her pipestem arms went out towardthe collie. In a tired little voice she called after him:
"Dog! _Doggie!_ Come back here, right away! I love you, Dog!"
Lad, vibrating with eagerness, glanced up at the Master for leave toanswer the call. The Master, in turn, looked inquiringly at hisnervous guest. Lad translated the look. And, instantly, he felt anunreasoning hate for the fussy woman.
The guest walked over to her weakly gesticulating daughter andexplained:
"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:"
"Don't want Dolly," fretted the child. "Want the dog! He isn'trough. He won't bite. Doggie! I love you! Come _here!_"
Lad looked up longingly at the Master, his plumed tail a-wag, his earsup, his eyes dancing. One hand of the Master's stirred toward thehammock in a motion so imperceptible that none but a sharply watchfuldog could have observed it.
Lad waited for no second bidding. Quietly, unobtrusively, he crossedbehind the guest, and stood beside his idol. The Baby fairly squealedwith rapture, and drew his silken head down to her face.
"Oh, well!" surrendered the guest, sulkily. "If she won't be happy anyother way, let him go to her. I suppose it's safe, if you people sayso. And it's the first thing she's been interested in, since----_No_,darling," she broke off, sternly. "You shall _not_ kiss him! I drawthe line at that. Here! Let Mamma rub your lips with her handkerchief."
"Dogs aren't made to be kissed," said the Master, sharing, however,Lad's disgust at the lip-scrubbing process. "But she'll come to lessharm from kissing the head of a clean dog than from kissing the mouthsof most humans. I'm glad she likes Lad. And I'm still gladder that helikes her. It's almost the first time he ever went to an outsider ofhis own accord."
That was how Lad's idolatry began. And that, too, was how a miserablysick child found a new interest in life.
Every day, from morning to dusk, Lad was with the Baby. Forsaking hisimmemorial "cave" under the music-room piano, he lay all night outsidethe door of her bedroom. In preference even to a romp through theforest with Lady, he would pace majestically alongside the in
valid'swheelchair as it was trundled along the walks or up and down theveranda.
Forsaking his post on the floor at the left of the Master's seat, atmeals--a place that had been his alone since puppyhood--he lay alwaysbehind the Baby's table couch. This to the vast discomfort of the maidwho had to step over him in circumnavigating the board, and to theopen annoyance of the child's mother.
Baby, as the days went on, lost none of her first pleasure in hershaggy playmate. To her, the dog was a ceaseless novelty. She loved totwist and braid the great white ruff on his chest, to toy with hissensitive ears, to make him "speak" or shake hands or lie down orstand up at her bidding. She loved to play a myriad of intricategames with him--games ranging from _Beauty and the Beast_, to _FairyPrincess and Dragon_.
Whether as _Beast_ (to her _Beauty_) or in the more complex andexacting role of _Dragon_, Lad entered wholesouledly into every suchgame. Of course, he always played his part wrong. Equally, of course,Baby always lost her temper at his stupidity, and pummeled him, by wayof chastisement, with her nerveless fists--a punishment Lad acceptedwith a grin of idiotic bliss.
Whether because of the keenly bracing mountain air or because of heroutdoor days with a chum who awoke her dormant interest in life, Babywas growing stronger and less like a sallow ghostling. And, in therelief of noting this steady improvement, her mother continued totolerate Lad's chumship with the child, although she had never losther own first unreasoning fear of the big dog.
Two or three things happened to revive this foolish dread. One of themoccurred about a week after the invalid's arrival at The Place.
Lady, being no fonder of guests than was Lad, had given the verandaand the house itself a wide berth. But one day, as Baby lay in thehammock (trying in a wordy irritation to teach Lad the alphabet), andas the guest sat with her back to them, writing letters, Lady trottedaround the corner of the porch.
At sight of the hammock's queer occupant, she paused, and stoodblinking inquisitively. Baby spied the graceful gold-and-whitecreature. Pushing Lad to one side, she called, imperiously:
"Come here, new Doggie. You pretty, _pretty_ Doggie!"
Lady, her vanity thus appealed to, strolled mincingly forward. Justwithin arm's reach, she halted again. Baby thrust out one hand, andseized her by the ruff to draw her into petting-distance.
The sudden tug on Lady's fur was as nothing to the haulings andmaulings in which Lad so meekly reveled. But Lad and Lady were by nomeans alike, as I think I have said. Boundless patience and achivalrous love for the Weak, were not numbered among Lady's erraticvirtues. She liked liberties as little as did Lad; and she had a farmore drastic way of resenting them.
At the first pinch of her sensitive skin there was an instant flash ofgleaming teeth, accompanied by a nasty growl and a lightning-quickforward lunge of the dainty gold-white head. As the wolf slashes at afoe--and as no animals but wolf and collie know how to--Lady slashedmurderously at the thin little arm that sought to pull her along.
And Lad, in the same breath, hurled his great bulk between his mateand his idol. It was a move unbelievably swift for so large a dog. Andit served its turn.
The eye-tooth slash that would have cut the little girl's arm to thebone, sent a red furrow athwart Lad's massive shoulder.
Before Lady could snap again, or, indeed, could get over her surpriseat her mate's intervention, Lad was shouldering her off the edge ofthe veranda steps. Very gently he did this, and with no show ofteeth. But he did it with much firmness.
In angry amazement at such rudeness on the part of her usuallysubservient mate, Lady snarled ferociously, and bit at him.
Just then, the child's mother, roused from her letter-writing by theturmoil, came rushing to her endangered offspring's rescue.
"He growled at Baby," she reported hysterically, as the noise broughtthe Master out of his study and to the veranda on the run. "He_growled_ at her, and then he and that other horrid brute got tofighting, and----"
"Pardon me," interposed the Master, calling both dogs to him, "but Manis the only animal to maltreat the female of his kind. No male dogwould fight with Lady. Much less would Lad--Hello!" he brokeoff. "Look at his shoulder, though! That was meant for Baby. Insteadof scolding Lad, you may thank him for saving her from an ugly slash.I'll keep Lady chained up, after this."
"But----"
"But, with Lad beside her, Baby is in just about as much danger asshe would be with a guard of forty U. S. Regulars," went on theMaster. "Take my word for it. Come along, Lady. It's the kennel foryou for the next few weeks, old girl. Lad, when I get back, I'll washthat shoulder for you."
With a sigh, Lad went over to the hammock and lay down, heavily. Forthe first time since Baby's advent at The Place, he was unhappy--very,_very_ unhappy. He had had to jostle and fend off Lady, whom heworshipped. And he knew it would be many a long day before hissensitively temperamental mate would forgive or forget. Meantime, sofar as Lady was concerned, he was in Coventry.
And just because he had saved from injury a Baby who had meant no harmand who could not help herself! Life, all at once, seemed dismayinglycomplex to Lad's simple soul.
He whimpered a little, under his breath; and lifted his head towardBaby's dangling hand for a caress that might help make thingseasier. But Baby had been bitterly chagrined at Lady's reception ofher friendly advances. Lady could not be punished for this. But Ladcould.
She slapped the lovingly upthrust muzzle with all her feebleforce. For once, Lad was not amused by the castigation. He sighed, asecond time; and curled up on the floor beside the hammock, in a rightmiserable heap; his head between his tiny forepaws, his greatsorrowful eyes abrim with bewildered grief.
Spring drowsed into early summer. And, with the passing days, Babycontinued to look less and less like an atrophied mummy, and more likea thin, but normal, child of five. She ate and slept, as she had notdone for many a month.
The lower half of her body was still dead. But there was a faint glowof pink in the flat cheeks, and the eyes were alive once more. Thehands that pulled at Lad, in impulsive friendliness or in punishment,were stronger, too. Their fur-tugs hurt worse than at first. But thehurt always gave Lad that same twinge of pleasure--a twinge thathelped to ease his heart's ache over the defection of Lady.
On a hot morning in early June, when the Mistress and the Master haddriven over to the village for the mail, the child's mother wheeledthe invalid chair to a tree-roofed nook down by the lake--a spot whosedeep shade and lush long grass promised more coolness than did theveranda.
It was just the spot a city-dweller would have chosen for a nap--andjust the spot through which no countryman would have cared to venture,at that dry season, without wearing high boots.
Here, not three days earlier, the Master had killed a copperheadsnake. Here, every summer, during the late June mowing, The Place'sscythe-wielders moved with glum caution. And seldom did their progressgo unmarked by the scythe-severed body of at least one snake.
The Place, for the most part, lay on hillside and plateau, free frompoisonous snakes of all kinds, and usually free from mosquitoes aswell. The lawn, close-shaven, sloped down to the lake. To one sideof it, in a narrow stretch of bottom-land, a row of weeping willowspierced the loose stone lake-wall.
Here, the ground was seldom bone-dry. Here, the grass grew rankest.Here, also, driven to water by the drought, abode eft, lizardand an occasional snake, finding coolness and moisture in the longgrass, and a thousand hiding places amid the stone-crannies or thelake-wall.
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. Shewould have been doubly warned against the folly which she nowproceeded to commit--of lifting the child from the wheel-chair, andplacing her on a spread rug in the grass, with her back to the lowwall.
The rug, on its mattress of lush grasses, was soft. The lake breezestirred the lower boughs of the willows. The air was pleasantly coolhere, and had lost the dead hotness that brooded over the higherg
round.
The guest was well pleased with her choice of a resting place. Lad wasnot.
The big dog had been growingly uneasy from the time the wheel-chairapproached the lake-wall. Twice he put himself in front of it; onlyto be ordered aside. Once the wheels hit his ribs with jarringimpact. As Baby was laid upon her grassy bed, Lad barked loudly andpulled at one end of the rug with his teeth.
The guest shook her parasol at him and ordered him back to thehouse. Lad obeyed no orders, save those of his two deities. Instead ofslinking away, he sat down beside the child; so close to her that hisruff pressed against her shoulder. He did not lie down as usual, butsat--tulip ears erect, dark eyes cloudy with trouble; head turningslowly from side to side, nostrils pulsing.
To a human, there was nothing to see or hear or smell--other than thecool beauty of the nook, the soughing of the breeze in the willows,the soft fragrance of a June morning. To a dog, there were faintrustling sounds that were not made by the breeze. There were equallyfaint and elusive scents that the human nose could not register.Notably, a subtle odor as of crushed cucumbers. (If ever you havekilled a pit-viper, you know that smell.)
The dog was worried. He was uneasy. His uneasiness would not let himsit still. It made him fidget and shift his position; and, once ortwice, growl a little under his breath.
Presently, his eyes brightened, and his brush began to thud gently onthe rug-edge. For, a quarter mile above, The Place's car was turningin from the highway. In it were the Mistress and the Master, cominghome with the mail. Now everything would be all right. And the onerousduties of guardianship would pass to more capable hands.
As the car rounded the corner of the house and came to a stop at thefront door, the guest caught sight of it. Jumping up from her seat onthe rug, she started toward it in quest of mail. So hastily did sherise that she dislodged one of the wall's small stones and sent itrattling down into a wide crevice between two larger rocks.
She did not heed the tinkle of stone on stone; nor a sharp little hissthat followed, as the falling missile smote the coils of a sleepingcopperhead snake in one of the wall's lowest cavities. But Lad heardit. And he heard the slithering of scales against rocksides, as thesnake angrily sought new sleeping quarters.
The guest walked away, all ignorant of what she had done. And, beforeshe had taken three steps, a triangular grayish-ruddy head was pushedout from the bottom of the wall.
Twistingly, the copperhead glided out onto the grass at the very edgeof the rug. The snake was short, and thick, and dirty, with a distinctand intricate pattern interwoven on its rough upper body. The headwas short, flat, wedge-shaped. Between eye and nostril, on eitherside, was the sinister "pinhole," that is the infallible mark of thepoison-sac serpent.
(The rattlesnake swarms among some of the stony mountains of the NorthJersey hinterland; though seldom, nowadays, does it venture intothe valleys. But the copperhead--twin brother in murder to therattler--still infests meadow and lakeside. Smaller, fatter, deadlierthan the diamond-back, it gives none of the warning which redeems thelatter from complete abhorrence. It is a creature as evil as its ownaspect--and name. Copperhead and rattlesnake are the only pit-vipersleft now between Canada and Virginia.)
Out from its wall-cranny oozed the reptile. Along the fringe of therug it moved for a foot or two; then paused uncertain--perhapsmomentarily dazzled by the light. It stopped within a yard of thechild's wizened little hand that rested idle on the rug. Baby's otherarm was around Lad, and her body was between him and the snake.
Lad, with a shiver, freed himself from the frail embrace and gotnervously to his feet.
There are two things--and perhaps _only_ two things--of which the besttype of thoroughbred collie is abjectly afraid and from which he willrun for his life. One is a mad dog. The other is a poisonoussnake. Instinct, and the horror of death, warn him violently away fromboth.
At stronger scent, and then at sight of the copperhead, Lad's stoutheart failed him. Gallantly had he attacked human marauders who hadinvaded The Place. More than once, in dashing fearlessness, he hadfought with dogs larger than himself. With a d'Artagnan-like gaietyof zest, he had tackled and deflected a bull that had charged headdown at the Mistress.
Commonly speaking, he knew no fear. Yet now he was afraid; tremulously,quakingly, _sickly_ afraid. Afraid of the deadly thing that washalting within three feet of him, with only the Baby's fragile bodyas a barrier between.
Left to himself, he would have taken, incontinently, to his heels.With the lower animal's instinctive appeal to a human in momentsof danger, he even pressed closer to the helpless child at hisside, as if seeking the protection of her humanness. A great wave ofcowardice shook the dog from foot to head.
The Master had alighted from the car; and was coming down the hill,toward his guest, with several letters in his hand. Lad cast ayearning look at him. But the Master, he knew, was too far away to besummoned in time by even the most imperious bark.
And it was then that the child's straying gaze fell on the snake.
With a gasp and a shudder, Baby shrank back against Lad. At least, theupper half of her body moved away from the peril. Her legs and feetlay inert. The motion jerked the rug's fringe an inch or two,disturbing the copperhead. The snake coiled, and drew back itsthree-cornered head, the forklike maroon tongue playing fitfully.
With a cry of panic-fright at her own impotence to escape, the childcaught up a picture book from the rug beside her, and flung it at theserpent. The fluttering book missed its mark. But it served itspurpose by giving the copperhead reason to believe itself attacked.
Back went the triangular head, farther than ever; and then flashedforward. The double move was made in the minutest fraction of asecond.
A full third of the squat reddish body going with the blow, thecopperhead struck. It struck for the thin knee, not ten inches awayfrom its own coiled body. The child screamed again in mortal terror.
Before the scream could leave the fear-chalked lips, Baby was knockedflat by a mighty and hairy shape that lunged across her toward herfoe.
And the copperhead's fangs sank deep in Lad's nose.
He gave no sign of pain; but leaped back. As he sprang his jaws caughtBaby by the shoulder. The keen teeth did not so much as bruise hersoft flesh as he half-dragged, half-threw her into the grass behindhim.
Athwart the rug again, Lad launched himself bodily upon the coiledsnake.
As he charged, the swift-striking fangs found a second mark--this timein the side of his jaw.
An instant later the copperhead lay twisting and writhing andthrashing impotently among the grassroots; its back broken, and itsbody seared almost in two by a slash of the dog's saber-like tusk.
The fight was over. The menace was past. The child was safe.
And, in her rescuer's muzzle and jaw were two deposits of mortalpoison.
Lad stood panting above the prostrate and crying Baby. His work wasdone; and instinct told him at what cost. But his idol was unhurt andhe was happy. He bent down to lick the convulsed little face in muteplea for pardon for his needful roughness toward her.
But he was denied even this tiny consolation. Even as he leaneddownward he was knocked prone to earth by a blow that all butfractured his skull.
At the child's first terrified cry, her mother had turned back.Nearsighted and easily confused, she had seen only that the doghad knocked her sick baby flat, and was plunging across her body.Next, she had seen him grip Baby's shoulder with his teeth anddrag her, shrieking, along the ground.
That was enough. The primal mother-instinct (that is sometimes almostas strong in woman as in lioness--or cow), was aroused. Fearless ofdanger to herself, the guest rushed to her child's rescue. As she ranshe caught her thick parasol by the ferule and swung it aloft.
Down came the agate-handle of the sunshade on the head of the dog. Thehandle was as large as a woman's fist, and was composed of a singlestone, set in four silver claws.
As Lad staggered to his feet after the terrific blow felle
d him, theimpromptu weapon arose once more in air, descending this time on hisbroad shoulders.
Lad did not cringe--did not seek to dodge or run--did not show histeeth. This mad assailant was a woman. Moreover, she was a guest, andas such, sacred under the Guest Law which he had mastered frompuppyhood.
Had a man raised his hand against Lad--a man other than the Master ora guest--there would right speedily have been a case for a hospital,if not for the undertaker. But, as things now were, he could notresent the beating.
His head and shoulders quivered under the force and the pain of theblows. But his splendid body did not cower. And the woman, wild withfear and mother-love, continued to smite with all her random strength.
Then came the rescue.
At the first blow the child had cried out in fierce protest at herpet's ill-treatment. Her cry went unheard.
"Mother!" she shrieked, her high treble cracked with anguish. "Mother!Don't! _Don't!_ He kept the snake from eating me! He----!"
The frantic woman still did not heed. Each successive blow seemed tofall upon the little onlooker's own bare heart. And Baby, under thestress, went quite mad.
Scrambling to her feet, in crazy zeal to protect her beloved playmate,she tottered forward three steps, and seized her mother by the skirt.
At the touch the woman looked down. Then her face went yellow-white;and the parasol clattered unnoticed to the ground.
For a long instant the mother stood thus; her eyes wide and glazed,her mouth open, her cheeks ashy--staring at the swaying child whoclutched her dress for support and who was sobbing forth incoherentpleas for the dog.
The Master had broken into a run and into a flood of wordlessprofanity at sight of his dog's punishment. Now he came to an abrupthalt and was glaring dazedly at the miracle before him.
The child had risen and had walked.
The child had _walked!_--she whose lower motive-centers, the wisedoctors had declared, were hopelessly paralyzed--she who could neverhope to twitch so much as a single toe or feel any sensation from thehips downward!
Small wonder that both guest and Master seemed to have caught, for themoment, some of the paralysis that so magically departed from theinvalid!
And yet--as a corps of learned physicians later agreed--there was nomiracle--no magic--about it. Baby's was not the first, nor thethousandth case in pathologic history, in which paralyzed sensorypowers had been restored to their normal functions by means of ashock.
The child had had no malformation, no accident, to injure the spine orthe co-ordination between limbs and brain. A long illness had left herpowerless. Country air and new interest in life had gradually builtup wasted tissues. A shock had re-established communication betweenbrain and lower body--a communication that had been suspended; notbroken.
When, at last, there was room in any of the human minds for aught butblank wonder and gratitude, the joyously weeping mother was made tolisten to the child's story of the fight with the snake--a storycorroborated by the Master's find of the copperhead's half-severedbody.
"I'll--I'll get down on my knees to that heaven-sent dog," sobbed theguest, "and apologize to him. Oh, I wish some of you would beat me asI beat him! I'd feel so much better! Where is he?"
The question brought no answer. Lad had vanished. Nor could eagercallings and searchings bring him to view. The Master, returning froma shout-punctuated hunt through the forest, made Baby tell her storyall over again. Then he nodded.
"I understand," he said, feeling a ludicrously unmanly desire tocry. "I see how it was. The snake must have bitten him, at leastonce. Probably oftener, and he knew what that meant. Lad knowseverything--_knew_ everything, I mean. If he had known a little lesshe'd have been human. But--if he'd been human, he probably wouldn'thave thrown away his life for Baby."
"Thrown away his life," repeated the guest. "I--I don't understand.Surely I didn't strike him hard enough to----"
"No," returned the Master, "but the snake did."
"You mean, he has----?"
"I mean it is the nature of all animals to crawl away, alone, into theforest to die. They are more considerate than we. They try to cause nofurther trouble to those they have loved. Lad got his death from thecopperhead's fangs. He knew it. And while we were all taken up withthe wonder of Baby's cure, he quietly went away--to die."
The Mistress got up hurriedly, and left the room. She loved the greatdog, as she loved few humans. The guest dissolved into a flood ofsloppy tears.
"And I beat him," she wailed. "I beat him--horribly! And all the timehe was dying from the poison he had saved my child from! Oh, I'llnever forgive myself for this, the longest day I live."
"The longest day is a long day," drily commented the Master. "Andself-forgiveness is the easiest of all lessons to learn. After all,Lad was only a dog. That's why he is dead."
The Place's atmosphere tingled with jubilation over the child'scure. Her uncertain, but always successful, efforts at walking were anhourly delight.
But, through the general joy, the Mistress and the Master could notalways keep their faces bright. Even the guest mourned frequently,and loudly, and eloquently the passing of Lad. And Baby was openlyinconsolable at the loss of her chum.
At dawn on the morning of the fourth day, the Master let himselfsilently out of the house, for his usual before-breakfast cross-countrytramp--a tramp on which, for years, Lad had always been his companion.Heavy-hearted, the Master prepared to set forth alone.
As he swung shut the veranda door behind him, Something arose stifflyfrom a porch rug--Something the Master looked at in a daze ofunbelief.
It was a dog--yet no such dog as had ever before sullied the cleannessof The Place's well-scoured veranda.
The animal's body was lean to emaciation. The head was swollen--though,apparently, the swelling had begun to recede. The fur, from spineto toe, from nose to tail-tip, was one solid and shapeless mass ofcaked mud.
The Master sat down very suddenly on the veranda floor beside thedirt-encrusted brute, and caught it in his arms, sputtering disjointedly:
"Lad!--_Laddie!_--Old _friend!_ You're alive again!You're--you're--_alive!_"
Yes, Lad had known enough to creep away to the woods to die. But,thanks to the wolf-strain in his collie blood, he had also known howto do something far wiser than die.
Three days of self-burial, to the very nostrils, in the mysteriouslyhealing ooze of the marshes, behind the forest, had done for him whatsuch mud-baths have done for a million wild creatures. It had drawnout the viper-poison and had left him whole again--thin, shaky on thelegs, slightly swollen of head--but _whole_.
"He's--he's awfully dirty, though! Isn't he?" commented the guest,when an idiotic triumph-yell from the Master had summoned the wholefamily, in sketchy attire, to the veranda. "Awfully dirty and----"
"Yes," curtly assented the Master, Lad's head between his caressinghands. "'Awfully dirty.' That's why he's still alive."