ss approving note of the three guardian collies: Lad,
still magnificent and formidable, in spite of his weight 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
him, grimly. None had offered the slightest move to make friends with
the smooth-spoken visitor. Dogs have a queerly occult sixth sense,
sometimes, in regard to those who mean ill to their masters.

This morning, idling along the highroad, a furlong from the Place's
stone gateway, Dugan 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 same
road; headed for the forest. And Dugan's correctly stolid face rippled
into a pleased smile.

Quickening his pace, he hurried on to the gateway 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 automobile turn in at the gateway, two hundred yards up the
wooded slope; and start down the drive.

The Mistress and the Master were returning from the post office.

Dugan's smile vanished. He stopped in his tracks; and did some fast
thinking. Then, mounting the veranda steps, he knocked boldly at a side
door; the door nearest to him. As the maids were in the kitchen or
making 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 from Dugan. 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 meet a guest whose train was due in another ten minutes.
Dugan drew a long breath; and swaggered 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.

The Mistress, deposited at the front veranda, chirped to Lad; and
started across the lawn toward the chrysanthemum bed, a hundred feet
away.

The summer's flowers were gone--even to the latest thin stemmed Teplitz
rose and the last stalk of rose-tinted cosmos. For dining table, now,
and for living-room and guest rooms, nothing was left but the ma