Part 1 (1/2)

Further Adventures of Lad

by Albert Payson Terhune

CHAPTER I The Coe of Haing from the theft of a brand-new ash-can fro of Mrs

Blauvelt's whole lineful of clothes, on a washday dusk

Up the Valley and down it, froewood, there had been a half-score robberies of a very different order--depredations wrought, manifestly, by professionals; thieves whose motor cars served the twentieth century purpose of such historic steeds as dick Turpin's Black Bess and Jack Shepard's Ranter These thefts were in the line of jewelry and the like; and were as daringly wrought as were the modest local operators' raids on ash-can and laundry

It is the easiest thing in the world to stir hu In house after house, for ion, old pistols were cleaned and loaded;fastenings and doorlocks were inspected and new hiding-places found for portable fae, and down the Valley from a dozen country homes, seeped the tide of precautions And it swirled at last around the Place,--a thirty-acre hohway to lake; and whose wistaria-clad gray house drowsed a or ,--a pointer,--had died, rich in years and honor

And the new peril of burglary hly needful to choose a successor for hi a whalebone-and-steel-and-snow bull terrier, or a reedy Great Dane But the Mistress wanted a collie So they co the collie

He reached the Place in a cra an intricate and i problem seemed solved

But when the crate was opened and its occupant stepped gravely forth, on the Place's veranda, the problem was revived

All the Master and the Mistress had known about the newcoe,--was that his breeder had naer facts they had sorimly ferocious aniht in time be induced to make friends with the Place's vouched-for occupants In view of this, they had had a stout kennel made and to it they had affixed with double staples a chain strong enough to restrain a bull

(It may as well be said here that never in all the sixteen years of his beautiful life did Lad occupy that or any other kennel nor wear that or any other chain)

Even the crate which brought the new dog to the Place failed somehow to destroy the illusion of size and fierceness But, the moment the crate door was opened the delusion recked by Lad himself

Out on to the porch he walked The ramshackle crate behind hiht thing had departed For a shaft of sunlight was shi+ athwart the veranda floor And into the middle of the warm bar of radiance Laddie stepped,--and stood

His fluffy puppy-coat of wavythelints and in a dazzle as of snow His forepaere absurdly s of the stocky leg-bones gave as clear proly deep little chest and square shoulders

Here one day would stand a giant aerous to foes as an angry tiger; a dog without fear or treachery; a dog of uncanny brain and great lovingly loyal heart and, withal, a dancing sense of fun A dog with a soul

All this, any canine physiologist e, the smolder in the deep-set sorrowful dark eyes To the casual observer, he was but a beautiful and appealing and wonderfully cuddleable bunch of puppyhood

Lad's dark eyes swept the porch, the soft swelling green of the lawn, the flash of fire-blue lake aroup of humans at one side of him Gravely, ie in his new surroundings; courteously inquisitive as to the twist of luck that had set him down here and as to the people who, presumably, were to be his future companions

Perhaps the stout little heart quivered just a bit, ifof brothers and sisters and ainst whose side he had nestled every night since he was born But if so, Lad was too valiant to show homesickness by so much as a whimper And, assuredly, this House of Peace was infinitely better than the miserable crate wherein he had spent twenty horrible and jouncing and sroup strayed the level sorrowful gaze

After the swift inspection, Laddie's eyes rested again on the Mistress

For an instant, he stood, looking at her, in that mildly polite curiosity which held no hint of personal interest

Then, all at once, his plu a flicker of warm friendliness Unbidden--oblivious of everyone else he trotted across to where the Mistress sat He put one tiny white paw in her lap; and stood thus, looking up lovingly into her face, tail awag, eyes shi+ning