Part 16 (2/2)

”But suppose he should really go over to one of the neighbors,” urged the Mistress, ”and tell such an awful story as he threatened to? Or suppose--”

”Not a chance!” the Master reassured her ”Now that the summer people are away, there isn't an occupied house within half a h the snow, in this bitter cold, for the joy of telling lies No, he's down at the stables or else he's sneaked in through the kitchen; the way he did that other tirandstand exit after I'd ventured to lecture hieneral rottenness Remember hoorried about hi in the kitchen and pestering the maids? He--”

”But that tiry, as he is now I do hope--”

”Stop worrying!” adjured the Master ”He's all right”

Which proved, for perhaps the trillionth time in history, that a wo than a ht And, at every passing ht; until presently he was all wrong

For the best part of an hour, in pursuance of her husband's counsel, the Mistress sat and waited for the prodigal's return Then, surreptitiously, she made a round of the house; sent a e, and finally ca-eyed and pale

”He isn't anywhere around,” she reported, frightened ”It's dinner tione in hour nobody's seen him He isn't on the Place

Oh, I wonder if--”

”H' an endurance contest, eh? Well, if he can stand it, we can”

But at sight of the deepening trouble in his wife's face, he got up fro out into the hall, he suht shout our heads off,” he said, ”and he'd never answer; if he's really trying to scare us That's part of his lovable nature

There's just one way to track hi on his mackinaw and hipboots as he spoke

Now he opened the front door

”Laddie!” he said, very slowly and incisively to the expectantly eager collie ”Cyril! Find CYRIL! FIND hi confusing in the co, he knew the humans of the household by their na experience theof the word, ”Find!”

Countless tinificance, noas perfectly plain to him The Master wanted him to hunt for the obnoxious child who so loved to annoy and hurt him

Lad would rather have found anyone else, at the Master's behest But it did not occur to the trained collie to disobey With a visible dier excite stepped out on to the veranda and began to cast about in the drifts at the porch edge

I trail And, i the course

The task was less si down in hard-driven sheets; blotting out scent alht had a thousand generations of Lad's thoroughbred ancestors traced lost sheep through snowstorrand descendant they had trans power, to the full And the scent of Cyril, though faint and fainter, and s snoas not too dim for Lad's sensitive nostrils to catch and hold it

The Master lu drifts, as fast as he could But the as rough and the night was as black dark as it was cold In a few rods, the dog had far outdistanced hi how hard must be the trail to follow by sense of s collie, lest Lad lose the clew altogether He knew the dog was certain to bark the tidings when he should coan to share his wife's worry For the trail Lad was following led out of the grounds and across the highway, toward the forest

The newborn snowstor little blizzard And the icy lash of the wind proved the fallacy of the old theory, ”too cold to snow” Even by daylight it would have been no light task to steer a true course through the whirling and blinding stor with drunkenly zigzag steps; his buffeted ears strained, through the noise of the wind for sound of Lad's bark

But no such sound came to him And, he realized that snow and adverse winds can so bark of a collie The , he shouted with all the power of his lungs No whimper from Cyril answered the hail Nor, at his h the drifts Again and again, the Master called

For the first time in his obedient life, Lad did not respond to the call And the Master knew his own voice could not carry, for a single furlong, against wind and snowfall

”I'll go on for another half-hour,” he told hi's all-but obliterated footsteps through the deepening snow ”And then I'll go back and raise a search party”

He cauishable had Lad's floundering tracks become Now,--by dint of distance and snow,--they ceased to be visible in the welter of drifted whiteness under the glare of the Master's flashlight

”This means a search-party,” decided the man