he child learned, on the first day of his visit, that it would be
well-nigh as safe to play with a handful of dynamite as with Lad's
gold-and-white mate, Lady. Lady did not care for liberties from anyone.
And she took no pains to mask her snappish first-sight aversion to the
lanky Cyril. Her fiery little son, Wolf, was scarce less formidable
than she, when it came to being teased by an outsider. But gallant old
Lad was safe game.

He was safe game for Cyril, because Lad's mighty heart and soul were
miles above the possibility of resenting anything from so pitifully
weak and defenseless a creature as this child. He seemed to realize, at
a glance, that Cyril was an invalid and helpless and at a physical
disadvantage. And, as ever toward the feeble, his big nature went out
in friendly protection to this gangling wisp of impishness.

Which was all the good it did him.

In fact, it laid the huge collie open to an endless succession of
torment. For the dog's size and patience seemed to awaken every atom of
bullying cruelty in the small visitor's nature.

Cyril, from the hour of his arrival, found acute bliss in making Lad's
life a horror. His initial step was to respond effusively to the
collie's welcoming advances; so long as the Mistress and the Master
chanced to be in the room. As they passed out, the Mistress chanced to
look back.

She saw Cyril pull a bit of cake from his pocket and, with his left
hand, proffer it to Lad. The tawny dog stepped courteously forward to
accept the gift. As his teeth were about to close daintily on the cake,
Cyril whipped it back out of reach; and with his other hand rapped Lad
smartly across the nose.

Had any grown man ventured a humiliating and painful trick of that sort
on Lad, the collie would have been at the tormentor's throat, on the
instant. But it was not in the great dog's nature to attack a child.
Shrinking back, in amaze, his abnormally sensitive feelings jarred, the
collie retreated majestically to his beloved "cave" under the
music-room piano.

To the Mistress's remonstrance, Cyril denied most earnestly that he had
done the thing. Nor was his vehemently tearful denial shaken by her
assertion that she had seen it all.

Lad soon forgave the affront. And he forgave a dozen other and worse
mal-treatments which followed. But, at last, the dog took to shunning
the neighborhood of the pest. That availed him nothing; except to make
Cyril seek him out in whatsoever refuge the