Mr. Glure (dressed, as usual, for the Occasion) looked like a blend of Landseer's "Edinburgh Drover" and a theater-program picture of "What the Man Will Wear."
He had been walking beside a garishly liveried groom who was leading an enormous Holstein bull toward the judging enclosure. The bull was steered by a five-foot bar, the end snapped to a ring in his nose.
"Hello, good people!" Mr. Glure boomed, pump-handling the unenthusiastic Mistress' right hand and bestowing a jarringly annoying slap upon the Master's shoulder. "Glad to see you! You're late. Almost too late for the best part of the show. Before judging begins, I'm having some of my choicest European stock paraded in the ring. Just for exhibition, you know. Not for a contest. I like to give a treat to some of these farmers who think they know how to breed cattle."
"Yes?" queried the Master, who could think of nothing cleverer to say.
"Take that bull, Tenebris, of mine, for instance," proclaimed Glure, with a wave toward the approaching Holstein and his guide. "Best ton of livestock that ever stood on four legs. Look how he——"
Glure paused in his lecture for he saw that both the Mistress and the Master were staring, not at the bull, but at the beast's leader. The spectacle of a groom in gaudy livery, on duty at a cattle show, was all but too much for their gravity.
"You're looking at that boy of mine, hey? Fine, well-set-up chap, isn't he? A faithful boy. Devoted to me. Slavishly devoted. Not like most of these grumpy, independent Jersey rustics. Not much. He's a treasure, Winston is. Used to be chief handler for some of the biggest cattle breeders in the East he tells me. I got hold of him by chance, and just by the sheerest good luck, a week or so ago. Met him on the road and he asked for a lift. He——"
It was then that Lad disgraced himself and his deities, and proved himself all unworthy to appear in so refined an assembly. The man in livery had convoyed the bull to within a few feet of the proudly exhorting Glure. Now, without growl or other sign of warning, the hitherto peaceable dog changed into a murder machine.
In a single mighty bound he cleared the narrowing distance between himself and the advancing groom.
The leap sent him hurtling through the air, an eighty-pound furry catapult, straight for the man's throat.