Part 10 (2/2)

That night, when the house was shut, Lad crept as usual into his cave under the piano And he lay doith a sigh, his great head between his two absurdly s to sleep for the night, Lad used to spendthose sa cleanliness The paere his one gross vanity; and he wastedtheht he was too depressed to think of anything but the whi imprisoned down in the tool-house

After a while, he fell asleep

A true watchdog sleeps with all his senses or the very edge of wakefulness And when he wakens, he does not waken as do we huly, dazedly, drunk with slumber At one moment he is sound asleep At the next he is broad awake; with every faculty alert

So ever it ith Lad So it ith hiht An hour before dawn, he ith sharp suddenness; and at once he was on his feet; tense, on guard He did not knohat had roused him Yet, now that he ake, two of his senses recorded soht of further sleep

To his ears came a far-off muffled wail;--a hich held more than unhappiness;--a hich vibrated with real terror And he knew the voice for Lady's

To his sensitive nostrils, through the intervening distance and the obstructing walls and s, drifted a faint reek of s whatever to Lad All evening a trace of it had hung in the air; froht to have emanated froether with Lady's cry of fear--

Lad crossed to the front door, and scratched imperiously at it The locked door did not yield to his push Too sensible to keep on at a portal he could not open, he ran upstairs, to the closed door of the Master's rooain he scratched; this time harder andunder his breath

At last the deep-slu himself, and still three-quarters asleep, he heard not only the scratching and the whimper but, in the distance, Lady's wail of fear And, sleep-drugged, he mumbled:

”Shut up, Laddie!--I hear her--Let her howl--If she's lonely, down there, she'll--she'll remember the lesson--all the better Go downstairs and--be quiet!”

He fell sound asleep again Obedient to the slumbrous mandate, Lad turned and pattered mournfully away But, he was not content to return to his own nap, with that terror-cry of Lady's echoing in his ears And he et out

At each side of the piano, in theFrench

Often, by day, Lad used to pass in or out of these door-like s

He knew that they, as well as the doors, were a recognizedpaw, he pushed at the nearest of theht For Lad's presence downstairs was a better burglar-preventive than the best bolts ever forged Tired and drowsy, the Master, this night, had neglected to bar the French s

Thegave, at Lad's vehees A second later, the big dog was running at top speed toward the tool-house

Now, the ways of the nificant brushfire are beyond the exact wisdohty weather When they knocked off work for the day, the two laborers had gone back to the blaze beyond the tool-house and conscientiously had scattered and sta hoarden and had seen no telltale spark to hint at life in the trampled fire

Nevertheless, a scrap of eaze beneath a handful of dead leaves had refused to perish with its comrade-sparks

And, in the course of five hours, an industrious little flicker had ignited other bits of brush and of dried leafage and last year's weed stuuided the course of the crawling thread of red The advancing line had thrown out tendrils of scarlet, as it went

Most of these had died, in the plowed ground One had not It had crept on, half-extinguished at ti merrily, until it had reached the tool-house The shed-like rooh between its fliround And, in this space, the leaves of the preceding autu spark did the rest

Lady woke fro from smoke The boards of the floor were too hot for endurance Between their cracks thin wavery slices of sun to ignite the floor-boards and the lower part of the ra's thin walls

While the pain and hu a sound froht of this sort was afar different thing Howling with panic terror, she dashed about the s Once or twice sheup at the closed

But, fro-space as well as froh leap, she failed