Part 17 (2/2)

He crouched there; shaking and worn out He was only eleven His fragile body had undergone a fearful hour of toil and hardshi+p As he was drawing in his breath for a cry to any chance searchers, the boy are of a swift pattering, above his head He looked up The sky was shade or two less densely black than the ravine edge As Cyril gazed in terror, a shaggy dark shape outlined itself against the sky-line, just above hi followed the eccentric footsteps of the wanderer, with great and greater difficulty, to the fence-lee where the tracing was much easier, Lad came to the lip of the ravine a bare five e

There, for an instant, the great dog stood; ears cocked, head inquiringly on one side; looking down upon the ledge Cyril shrank to a quivering little heap of abject terror, at sight of the indistinct anih above

This for the briefestbark that seemed to fill the world and to reecho froave clamorous voice to his discovery of the lost child

On a clear or windless night, his racket must have penetrated to the dullest ears at the Place, and far beyond For the bark of a dog haspower than has any other sound of double its voluale laden with tons of flying snow, the report of a cannon could scarce have carried over the stretch of ept ground between the ravine and the Place

Lad seemed to understand this For, after a dozen thunderous barks, he fell silent; and stood again, head on one side, in thought

At first sound of the barking, Cyril had recognized the dog And his terror had vanished In its place surged a peevish irritation against the beast that had so frightened himent to hurl up at the rackety collie

Then, the child paused in his fu had scant reason to love him or to seek his society Of late, Lad had kept out of his way as much as possible Thus it was not likely the collie had coht; for thewith his tormentor

His presence must mean that the Master was close behind; and that the whole Place was in a fer Lad away and checking the barks, Cyrilhim Too weak and too numb with cold to cliround above, he did not want to miss any chance for rescue

Hence, as Lad ceased to bark, the child set up a yell, with all his slight lung-power, to attract the seekers' notice He ordered Lad to ”Speak!” and shook his fist angrily at the dog, when no answering bark followed

Despairing ofannouncement that he had found the child, Lad presentlyabout, head down, he faced the storain; and set off at what speed he could compass, toward home, to lead the Master to the spot where Cyril was trapped This seeo, when Lady had caught her foot in a fox-trap, back in the woods

As the dog vanished froray-black sky-line, Cyril set up a howl of wrathful co was better than to be in this dreary spot alone Besides, with Lad gone, how could Lad's Master find the way to the ledge?

Twice the child called after the retreating collie And, in another few steps, Lad had halted and begun to retrace his way toward the ledge

He did not return because of Cyril's call He had learned, by ugly experience, to disregard the child's orders They ont to mean much unpleasantness for him Nevertheless, Lad halted Not in obedience to the summons; but because of a sound and a scent that sallop away An eddy of the wind had borne both to the dog's acute senses

Stiffening, his curved eyeteeth baring thealloped back to the ravine-lip; and stood there sniffing the icy air and growling deep in his throat Looking down to the ledge he saw Cyril was no longer its sole occupant Crouched at the opening of a crevice, not ten feet fro bulky and sinister;--ahoer, after a day of fruitless hunting through the dead forest world, a giant wildcat had been stirred froe's crevice by the impact of the child upon the heap of leaves The human scent had startled the creature and it had slunk farther back into the crevice

Thewere added to the shattering of the ravine's solitude

Then the dog had gone away Curiosity,--the besetting trait of the cat tribe,--had led noiselessly forward a little way, to learn whatout, it had beheld a spindling child; a hued to fury in the bob-cat's feline heart Here was no opponent; but a -unsatisfied hunger; the faer of mid-winter which makes the folk of the wilderness risk capture or death by raiding guarded hencoops

Out from the crevice stole the wildcat Its ears were flattened close to its evil head Its yellow eyes were mere slits of fire Its claws unsheathed the, hooked claws, capable of diserown deer at one sabre-stroke of the e the claws sank, and receded, in rhythhtened into a ball The back quivered The feet braced the ready for aCyril, his head turned the other as still peering up along the cliff-edge for sight of Lad

This hat Lad's scent and hearing,--and perhaps so else,--had warned hi shi+ft

And this was the scene he looked down upon, now, from the ravine-lip, five feet above

The collie brain,--though never the collie heart,--is wont to flash back, in moments of mortal stress, to the ancestral wolf Never in his own life had Sunnybank Lad set eyes on a wildcat But, in the primal forests, wolf and bob-cat had perforce un and had waged the eternal cat-and-dog feud, of the ages

Ancestry now told Lad that there is perhaps no ry wildcat Ancestry also told him a wolf's one chance of certain victory in such a contest Ancestry's aid was not required, to tell hirievously and causelessly torreat loyal heart, in this stark es There was but one thing to do,--one perilous, desperate chance to take; if the child were to be saved

The wildcat sprang