Part 28 (1/2)

Locoineers say a cow on a track is far less perilous to an onco The for, oftener than not, derails the engine

Standing with the bulk of its weight close to the ground, it is well-nigh as bad an obstacle to trains as would be a boulder of the saineers But he had identically their opinion of pigs

In all his long life, the great collie had never known fear At least, he never had yielded to it Wherefore, in the autuay zest such of titus Roh the fence

But, nowadays, there was little enough of gay zest about anything Laddie did For he was old;--very, very old He had passed the fourteenthas is an octogenarian for a nant annoyance, age had crept upon the big dog; gradually blurring his long clean lines; silvering his any coat with stipples of silver; spreading to greater size the absurdly s a little the preternaturally keen hearing and narrowing the vision

Yes, Lad was old And he was a bit unwieldy froer could he lead Wolf and Bruce in the forest rabbit chases

Wherefore he stayed at home, for the most part and seldom strayed far from the Mistress and the Master whom he worshi+ped

Moreover, he deputed the bulk of trespass-repelling to his fiery little son, Wolf; and to the graver and sweeter Bruce;--”Bruce, the Beautiful”

Which brings us by needfully prosy degrees to a , when two marauders came to the Place at the same time, if by different routes

They could not well have come at a more propitious time, for themselves; nor at a worse time for those whose domain they visited

Bruce and Wolf had trotted idly off to the forest, back of the Place, for a desultory ramble in quest of rabbits or squirrels This they had done because they were bored For, the Mistress and the Master had driven over for the one with the, neither Wolf nor Bruce would have stirred a step fros, But, thus early in the day, neither duty nor companionshi+p held them at home And the autumn woods promised a half-hour of mild sport

The superintendent and his helpers were in the distant ”upper field,”

working around the roots of so fruit trees But for the maids, busy indoors, the Place was deserted of human or canine life

Thus, luck ith the two intruders

Through the fence-gap in the oak-grove, bored titus Roest and oldest and crankiest sow She was in search of acorns and of any other food that ht lie handy to her line of rove, there was too reedy pigs of the herd These she could fight off and drive froe without co bulk; and on through the Place's half of the oak-grove Pausing now and then to root amid the strewn leaves, she made her leisurely way toward the open laith its two-hundred-year-old shade-oaks, and its flower-borders which still held a few toothsorounds in much more open fashi+on He was a man in the late twenties; well-set up, neatly, even sprucely, dressed; and he walked with a slight swagger He looked very much at home and very certain of his welcouessed hi salesman, finely equipped with nerve and with confidence in his own goods The average servant would have been vastly impressed with his air of self assurance; and would have ad-nized hian, one of the cleverest autoan was an industrious young enious And he had a streak of quick-witted audacity which made him an ornament to his chosen profession His hborhood, he would stop at some local hotel, and, armed with clever patter and a sheaf of autoion's better-class hoh he ly earnest efforts to do so But he learned the precise location of each garage; the cars therein; and the easiest way to the highroad, and any possible obstacles to a hasty flight thereto Usually, he succeeded in persuading his reluctant host to take hie to look at the cars and to estimate the insurable value of each While there, it was easy to pale padlock for future skeleton-key reference; or to note what sort of car-locks were used

A night or two later, the garage was entered and the best car was stolen Dugan, like love, laughed at lockss were kept,--he woulda tio for a ith their dogs, would enter by broad daylight, and take a chance at getting the car out, unobserved If he were interrupted before starting off in the machine, why, he was that same polite insurance aunt who had come back to revise his esti another look at it to oing, he had no fear of capture A whizzing rush to the highroad and down it to the point where his confederate waited with the new nuers at pursuit

Dugan had called at the Place, a week earlier He had taken interested note of the little garage's two cars and of the unlocked garage doors

He had taken less approving note of the three guardian collies: Lad, still ht of years;--Bruce, gloriously beautiful and stately and aloof;--young Wolf, with the fire and fierce agility of a tiger-cat All three had watched hihtest s have a queerly occult sixth sense, soard to those whothe highroad, a furlong froan had seen the Mistress and the Master drive past in the smaller of the two cars He had seen Lad with them A little later, he had seen the men cross the road toward the upper field Then, almost on the men's heels, he had seen Bruce and Wolf canter across the saan's correctly stolid face rippled into a pleased sateway and down the drive

But, as he passed the house on his way to the garage where stood the other and larger car, he paused Out of an ever-vigilant eye-corner, he saw an autoateway, two hundred yards up the wooded slope; and start down the drive

The Mistress and the Master were returning froan's smile vanished He stopped in his tracks; and did so the veranda steps, he knocked boldly at a side door; the door nearest to hi up the bedrooms, his knock was unheard Half hidden by the veranda vines, he waited

The car came down the driveway and circled the house to the side farthest froan There, at the front door, it halted The Mistress and Lad got out The Master did not go down to the garage Instead, he circled the house again; and chugged off up the drive; bound for the station to uest whose train was due in another ten ered toward the garage His walk and manner had in them an easy openness that no honest man's could possibly have acquired in a lifetime