Part 11 (1/2)

Across the lawn and door-yard and around the end of the stables thundered Lad With the speed of a charging bull he ca shack, he knew ht and peril than any hu he whirled, so close to it that the flahty coat and blistered and blackened his white paws

Then, running back a yard or so, he flung his eighty-pound weight crashi+ngly at the fastened door The door, as it chanced, ell-nigh the only solid portion of the shack And it held fir and which knocked hiround

At sound of herLad could hear her terrified whimpers as she danced frantically about on the red-hot boards And the knowledge of her torture drove hi up fro his splendid head back and, with muzzle to the clouded skies, he tore to shreds the soleht with a wolf-howl; hideous in its savage grief, deafeningly loud

As though the aweso to his feet a embers; steady, alert, cal eyes fixed thele dustyof the tool-house Its sill was a full five feet above ground Its four small panes were separated by a wide old-fashi+oned cross-piece of hardwood and putty The putty, froe, was as solid as cement The whole as a bare sixteen by twenty inches

Lad ran back, once ly on theandhis distance with the sureness of a sharpshooter

The big collie had made up his mind His plan was forhest type of collie, there can be scant doubt he knew just what that plan entailed

It was suicide But, oh, it was a glorious suicide! Compared to it the love-sacrifices of a host of Antonys and Abelards and Ros Indeed, its nearest approach in real life was perhaps Moore's idiotically beautiful boast:

Through the fiery furnace your steps I'll pursue; To find you and save you:--or perish there, too!

The great dog gathered hiy body whizzed across the scarlet pattern of e spear he flew; hurtling through the flaainst the shuthe crashed, with the speed of a catapult

Against it he crashed; and clean through it, into the hell of sulation inside the shack

His head had s cross-piece of wood and dried putty and had cruiant shoulders had ripped the -fra roolass and splintered wood

To the fire-eaten floor he was hurled, close to his cowering and whi mate He reeled to his feet, and stood there, shoulder to shoulder with Lady His as done

And, yet, it was not in Sunnybank Lad's nature to be such a fool as is the usual melodrama hero True, he had come to share Lady's fate, if he could not rescue her Yet, he would not submit talanced at the door Already he had found by harsh experience that his strength availed nothing in the battering down of those strong panels And he peered up, through the swirling red s of hereby he had ain, he must have kno hopeless of achievement was the feat he was about to try But, as ever, mere obstacles were not per, he seized Lady by the nape of the neck With aall his fierce strength into one subliing fro to atteth, could have accoh, narro, carrying a weight of fifty pounds between his teeth

Lad's leap did not carry him half the distance he had aimed for Back to the floor he fell, Lady with hi and by stark terror, Lady had not the wit to realize what Lad was attehly by the neck, and had leaped in air with her; and had then brought her bangingly down upon the torturing hot boards And her panic was auge

At Lad's face she flew, snarlingeyetooth laid bare his cheek Then she drove for his throat

Lad stood stock still His onlyjaws And, deep into the fur and skin and flesh of his shoulder her furious teeth shore their way

It would have been child's play for him to have shaken her off and to have leaped to safety, alone, through the sash-less

Yet he stood where he was; his sorrowful eyes looking tenderly down upon theinto him so ferociously

And that was the picture the Master beheld; as he flung open the door and blinked gaspingly through the sht out of bed, on the jump, by Lad's unearthly wolf howl, he had sate But, not until he unbarred the tool-house door did he guess that Lady was not the burning shack's only prisoner