Ignorant as to the meaning of either of these unique signals the dog stood, puzzled. The Wall Street Farmer recovered at once from his fit of babyish emotion, and motioned his dog to go on to the next post.
The Merle did not move. Here, at last, was a signal he understood perfectly well. Yet, after the manner of the best-taught "working" dogs, he had been most rigidly trained from earliest days to finish the carrying out of one order before giving heed to another.
He had received the signal to go in one direction. He had obeyed. He had then received the familiar signal to halt and to await instructions. Again he had obeyed. Next, he had received a wildly emphatic series of signals whose meaning he could not read. A long course of training told him he must wait to have these gestures explained to him before undertaking to obey the simple signal that had followed.
This, in his training kennel, had been the rule. When a pupil did not understand an order he must stay where he was until he could be made to understand. He must not dash away to carry out a later order that might perhaps be intended for some other pupil.
Wherefore, the Merle stood stock still. The Wall Street Farmer repeated the gesture of pointing toward the next post. Inquiringly, Lochinvar watched him. The Wall Street Farmer made the gesture a third time—to no purpose other than to deepen the dog's look of inquiry. Lochinvar was abiding, steadfastly, by his hard-learned lessons of the Scottish moorland days.
Someone in the crowd tittered. Someone else sang out delightedly:
"Lad wins!"
The Wall Street Farmer heard. And he proceeded to mislay his easily-losable self control. Again, these inferior country folk seemed about to wrest from him a prize he had deemed all his own, and to rejoice in the prospect.
"You mongrel cur!" he bellowed. "Get along there!"
This diction meant nothing to Lochinvar, except that his owner's temper was gone—and with it his scanty authority.