Further Adventures of Lad

by Albert Payson Terhune

Up the low-stretching branches the man swarmed, until he was well out of reach. Then, pausing in his climb, he shook his fist down at the collie, who was circling the tree in a vain attempt to find some way of climbing it.

Chattering, mouthing, gibbering like a monkey, Ruloff shook an impotent fist at the dog that had treed him; and squalled insults at him and at the hysterically delighted child.

Sonya rushed up to Lad, flinging her arms around him and trying to kiss him. At her embrace, the collie's tension relaxed. He turned his back on the jabbering Ruloff, and looked pantingly up into the child's excited face.

Then, whimpering a little under his breath, he licked her cheek; and made shift to wag his plumed tail in reassurance. After which, having routed the enemy and done what he could to comfort the rescued, Laddie moved heavily over to the veranda.

For some reason he was finding it hard to breathe. And his heart was doing amazing things against his ribs. He was very tired—very drowsy. He wanted to finish his interrupted nap. But it was a long way into the house. And a spot on the veranda, under the wide hammock, promised coolness. Thither he went; walking more and more slowly.

At the hammock, he looked back: Ruloff was shinnying down from the tree; on the far side. All the fight, all the angry zest for torturing, seemed to have gone out of the man. Without so much as glancing toward Sonya or the dog, he made his way, in a wide detour, toward the barn and lunch.

Sonya ran up on the veranda after Lad. As he laid himself heavily down, under the hammock, she sat on the floor beside him; taking his head in her lap, stroking its silken fur and beginning to sing to him in that high-pitched crooning little voice of hers.

Laddie loved this. And he loved the soft caress of her hand. It soothed him to sleep.

It was good to sleep. He had just undergone more vehement exertion and excitement than had been his for many a long month. And he had earned his rest. It was sweet to doze like this—petted and sung to.

It was not well to exercise body and emotions as he had just done. Lad realized that, now;—now that it was all over and he could rest. Rest! Yes, it was good to rest,—to be smoothed and crooned at. It was thus the Mistress had stroked and crooned to him, so many thousand times. And always Lad had loved it.