f interest.

At last, the dog got to his feet, stretched himself fore-and-aft, in
true collie fashion; and trotted down the paved walk to the road. There
for a moment, he stood hesitant. As he stood, he was surveying the
scene;--not only with his eyes, but with those far stronger sense
organs, his ears and his nostrils. His ears told him nothing of
interest. His nose told him much. Indeed, before he had fairly reached
the road, these nostrils had telegraphed to his brain an odor that not
only was highly interesting, but totally new to him. Lad's experience
with scents was far-reaching. But this smell lay totally outside all
his knowledge or memory.

It was a rank and queer smell;--not strong enough, out there in the
open, to register in a human-brain; but almost stingingly acute to the
highly sensitized dog. It was an alluring scent; the sort of odor that
roused all his curiosity and seemed to call for prompt investigation.

Nose to ground, Lad set off to trace the smell to its source. Strong as
it was, it grew stronger and fresher at every step. Even a mongrel
puppy could have followed it. Oblivious to all else, Lad broke into a
canter; nose still close to earth; pleasurably excited and keenly
inquisitive.

He ran along the private road for perhaps a hundred yards. Then, he
wheeled in at another paved walk and ran up a low flight of veranda
steps. The front door of a house stood invitingly open to the cool air
of the morning. In through the doorway went Lad; unheeding the gobbling
call of a maid-servant who was sweeping the far end of the veranda.

Lad did not know he was committing trespass. To him an open door had
always meant permission to enter. And the enticingly rank scent was
tenfold stronger indoors than out. Across a hallway he trotted, still
sniffing; and up a flight of stairs leading to the second story of the
house.

At the stairhead, a room door stood wide. And into this room led the
odor. Lad went in. He was in a large and sunlit room; but in the most
disorderly room he had ever set eyes on. The room needed airing, too.
For all its four windows were closed, except one which was open for
perhaps six inches from the top.

Lad circled the room, twice; from door to windows, and thence to center
table and around the walls; pausing at one window sill and again at the
threshold; picking his way daintily over heaps of litter on the floor.
Yes, the room was full of the scent. But, whence the scent emanated