“Good little pal!” approved Trent, touched at the wordless sympathy and feeling somehow less desolate and miserable than he had felt for many a long month.
It was mid-afternoon when they drove through the edge of a rambling village and on for a mile or so to a lane that led into a neglected farm.
“This is home, Buff!” announced Trent, his eyes dwelling with sharp unhappiness upon the tumbledown aspect of the deserted place. “Home—including the mortgage that went on to it to pay for my lawyer. Did you notice how those village people stared at us, and how they nudged each other? Well, that’s just the first dose. A sort of sample package. Are you game to stand for the rest of it? I am, if you are.”
Running the battered car into a shed, Trent lifted Buff to the ground and set off towards the closed and forbidding house. Buff capered on ahead of him, trotting back at every ten paces to make sure his master was following.
Trent paused for a moment in the dooryard, to grope in his pocket for a key. Buff had gained the summit of the low veranda. As Trent halted, the pup took advantage of the delay to rest his car-cramped muscles by stretching out at full length on the narrow strip of porch. Trent took a step forward, then stopped again; this time to stare in bewildered surprise at the collie. For he noted that Buff was lying like a couchant lion, so far as his forequarters were concerned, but that his hind-legs were both stretched out straight behind him.
Now, as Trent’s dog-lore told him, that is a position in which no collie lies. Nor does any dog lie with his hind legs out behind him, unless he has in his make-up a strong admixture of bulldog blood. Yet, Trent’s dog-knowledge also told him that this was apparently a pure-bred collie; perfect in every point. Wherefore, he stared in wonder at the phenomenon of Buff’s position.
Then, giving up the problem, he advanced into the house. Buff, springing up at once, followed Trent inquisitively through the doorway, as the key turned noiselessly in the lock and the front door swung open under the pressure of the man’s knee. Out gushed the musty odour that haunts unused country houses. It filled Trent’s nostrils and deepened his sense of desolation. But, mingled with the smell of emptiness and disuse, another and more definite scent assailed Trent’s nose. It was the reek of tobacco—of rank pipe tobacco, at that. Nor was it stale.
At the whiff of it Trent stiffened like a pointing dog. His lips had been parted in a careless word to Buff. Now he choked back the unborn syllables.
Treading on tiptoe, he made his way from room to room. Buff, sensing the other’s efforts at silence, padded quietly at his heels. As they moved along, Trent paused from time to time, to sniff the heavy air.
Presently he flung open a door, with no caution whatever, and sprang into a room beyond. It was the kitchen he entered in this whirlwind fashion. And he saw, as his nose had told him, that it was already occupied. A mattress had been hauled hither from one of the bedrooms. Sprawled thereon were two men. One of them was snoring, the other was puffing at a clay pipe.