ivity and naughtiness until, in self-defense, the Lady of Cedar Hill
began to give them away to her fortunate friends. Joy-of-Life was
invited over to make an early choice. As Wellesley is not far from
Cedar Hill, whose mistress she dearly loved, she went again and again,
studying the youngsters with characteristic earnestness. They were
nearly full-grown before she drove me over to confirm her election. The
dogs were called up to meet us, and the lawn before the house looked to
my bewildered gaze one white and golden blur of cavorting collies.

"Are they all here?" I asked, after vain efforts to count the heads in
that whirl of perpetual motion.

"All but the barn dog," replied the Lady of Cedar Hill. "He is kept
chained for the present, until he gets wonted to his humble sphere, but
we will go down and call on him."

He saw us first. An excited bark made me aware of a young collie,
almost erect in the barn door, tugging madly against his chain. The
Lady of Cedar Hill, with a loving laugh, ran forward to release him.
His gambol of gratitude nearly knocked her down, but before she had
recovered her balance he was too far away for rebuke, romping,
bounding, wheeling about the meadow, such a glorious image of wild
grace and rapturous freedom that our hearts gladdened as we looked.

"But he is the most beautiful of all," I exclaimed.

"Oh, no," said the instructed Lady of Cedar Hill, "not from the
blue-ribbon point of view." And she went on to explain that Njal, the
biggest of the nine, was quite too big for a collie of such
distinguished pedigree. His happy body, gleaming pure gold in the sun,
with its snowy, tossing ruff, was both too tall and too long. His
white-tipped tail was too luxuriantly splendid. The cock of his shining
ears was not in the latest kennel style. His honest muzzle was a trifle
blunt. He was, in short, lacking in various fine points of collie
elegance, and so, while his dainty, aristocratic brothers and sisters
were destined to be the ornaments of gentle homes, Njal was relegated
to a life of service, in care of the cattle, and to that end had been
for the month past kept in banishment at the barn.

But Njal had persistently rebelled against his destiny. He declined to
explore the barn, always straining at the end of his chain in the
doorway, watching with wistful eyes the frolics of his mother, hardly
more than a puppy herself, with her overwhelming children. She seemed
to have forgotten that