At the tree foot the big dog wasted neither time nor energy in frantic barking or in capering excitedly about. Instead, he lay at majestic ease, gazing up toward the treed man with grave attentiveness.
Thus, for a full half-hour, the two had remained—the treer and the treed. Thus, from present signs, they would continue to remain until Christmas.
There is, by tradition, something intensely comic in the picture of a man treed by a dog. The man, in the present case, supplied the only element of comedy in the scene. The dog was anything but comic, either in looks or in posture.
He was a collie, huge of bulk, massive of shoulder, deep and shaggy of chest. His forepaws were snowy and absurdly small. His eyes were seal-dark and sorrowful—eyes that proclaimed not only an uncannily wise brain, but a soul as well. In brief, he was Lad; official guard of The Place's safety.
It was in this rôle of guard that he was now serving as jailer to the man he had seen slouching through the undergrowth of the forest which grew close up to The Place's outbuildings.
From his two worshipped deities—the Mistress and the Master—Lad had learned in puppyhood the simple provisions of the Guest Law. He knew, for example, that no one openly approaching the house along the driveway from the furlong-distant highroad was to be molested. Such a visitor's advent—especially at night—might lawfully be greeted by a salvo of barks. But the barks were a mere announcement, not a threat.
On the other hand, the Law demanded the instant halting of all prowlers, or of anyone seeking to get to the house from road or lake by circuitous and stealthy means. Such roundabout methods spell Trespass. Every good watchdog knows that. But wholly good watchdogs are far fewer than most people—even their owners—realize. Lad was one of the few.
To-day's trespasser had struck into The Place's grounds from an adjoining bit of woodland. He had moved softly and obliquely and had made little furtive dashes from one bit of cover to another, as he advanced toward the outbuildings a hundred yards north of the house.
He had moved cleverly and quietly. No human had seen or heard him. Even Lad, sprawling half-asleep on the veranda, had not seen him. For, in spite of theory, a dog's eye by daylight is not so keen or so far-seeing as is a human's. But the wind had brought news of a foreign presence on The Place—a presence which Lad's hasty glance at driveway and lake edge did not verify.