"She's right," chimed in the Superintendent. "You've entered the dog for the contest, and by all the rules he'll have to stay in it. Lad doesn't know the first thing about 'working.' Neither does the only other local entrant that the first two rules have left in the competition. And Lochinvar is perfect at every detail of sheep-work. Lad and the other can't do anything but swell his victory. It's rank bad luck, but——"
"All right! All right!" growled the Master. "We'll go through with it. Does anyone know the terms of a 'Kirkaldie Association's Preliminaries,' for 'Working Sheepdog Trials?' My own early education was neglected."
"Glure's education wasn't," said the Superintendent. "He has the full set of rules in his brand new Sportsman Library. That's, no doubt, where he got the idea. I went to him for them this morning, and he let me copy the laws governing the preliminaries. They're absurdly simple for a 'working' dog and absurdly impossible for a non-worker. Here, I'll read them over to you."
He fished out a folded sheet of paper and read aloud a few lines of pencil-scribblings:
"Four posts shall be set up, at ninety yards apart, at the corners of a square enclosure. A fifth post shall be set in the center. At this fifth post the owner or handler of the contestant shall stand with his dog. Nor shall such owner or handler move more than three feet from the post until his dog shall have completed the trial.
"Guided only by voice and by signs, the dog shall go alone from the center-post to the post numbered '1.' He shall go thence, in the order named, to Posts 2, 3 and 4, without returning to within fifteen feet of the central post until he shall have reached Post 4.
"Speed and form shall count as seventy points in these evolutions. Thirty points shall be added to the score of the dog or dogs which shall make the prescribed tour of the posts directed wholly by signs and without the guidance of voice."
"There," finished the superintendent, "you see it is as simple as a kindergarten game. But a child who had never been taught could not play Puss-in-the-Corner.' I was talking to the English trainer that Glure bought along with the dog. The trainer tells me Lochinvar can go through those maneuvers and a hundred harder ones without a word being spoken. He works entirely by gestures. He watches the trainer's hand. Where the hand points he goes. A snap of the fingers halts him. Then he looks back for the next gesture. The trainer says it's a delight to watch him."
"The delight is all his," grumbled the Master. "Poor, poor Lad! He'll get bewildered and unhappy. He'll want to do whatever we tell him to, but he can't understand. It was different the time he rounded up Glure's flock of sheep—when he'd never seen a sheep before. That was ancestral instinct. A throwback. But ancestral instinct won't teach him to go to Post 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. He——"
"Hello, people!" boomed a jarringly cordial voice. "Welcome to the Towers!"