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w, 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 him. Maddened by pain and by choking and by stark terror, Lady had not the wit to realize what Lad was attempting. All she knew was that he had seized her roughly 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 augmented by delirious rage. At Lad's face she flew, snarling murderously. One slash of her curving eyetooth laid bare his cheek. Then she drove for his throat. Lad stood stock still. His only move was to interpose his shaggy shoulder to her ravening jaws. 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 window. Yet he stood where he was; his sorrowful eyes looking tenderly down upon the maddened youngster who was tearing into him so ferociously. And that was the picture the Master beheld; as he flung open the door and blinked gaspingly through the smoke for the dog he had locked in. Brought out of bed, on the jump, by Lad's unearthly wolf howl, he had smelt the smoke and had run out to investigate. But, not until he unbarred the tool-house door did he guess that Lady was not the burning shack's only prisoner. "It'll be another six months before your wonderful coat grows out again, Laddie dear," observed the Mistress, next day, as she renewed the smelly wet cloths on Lad's burned and glass-cut body. "Dr. Hopper says so. But he says the rest of you will be as well as ever, inside of a fortnight. And he says Lady will be well, before you will. But, honestly, you'll never look as beautiful, again, to me, as you do this very minute. He--he said you look like a scarecrow. But you don't. You look like a--like a--a-What gorgeously splendid thing DOES he look like, dear?" she appealed to her husband. "He looks," replied the Master, after deep thought, "he looks like LAD. And that's about the highest praise I know how to give him;--or give to anyone." CHAPTER V. The Stowaway There were but three collies on the Place, in those days. Lad; his dainty gold-and-white mate, Lady; and their fluffy and fiery wisp of a son, little Wolf. When Wolf was a spoiled and obstreperous puppy of three mont
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