From over the brow of Mount Pisgah appeared the non-picturesque figure of a man in blue denim overalls—one Titus Romaine, owner of the sparse-grassed hill. Drawn by the noisy multiple patter of his flock's hoofs, he emerged from under a hilltop boulder's shade; to learn the cause of their flight.
Now, in all his life, Lad had seen sheep just once before. That one exception had been when Hamilcar Q. Glure, "the Wall Street Farmer," had corralled a little herd of his prize Merinos, overnight, at The Place, on the way to the Paterson Livestock Show. On that occasion, the sheep had broken from the corral, and Lad, acting on ancestral instinct, had rounded them up, without injuring or scaring one of them.
The memory was not pleasing to Lad, and he wanted nothing more to do with such stupid creatures. Indeed, as he looked now upon the sheep that were obstructing his run, he felt a distinct aversion to them. Whining a little, he trotted back to where stood the Mistress and the Master. And, as they waited, Titus Romaine bore wrathfully down upon them.
"I've been expectin' something like that!" announced the land-owner. "Ever since I turned these critters out here, this mornin'. I ain't surprised a bit. I——"
"What is it you've been expecting, Romaine?" asked the Master. "And how long have you been a sheep-raiser? A sheep, here in the North Jersey hinterland, is as rare as——"
"I been expectin' some savage dog would be runnin' 'em," retorted the farmer. "Just like I've read they do. An' now I've caught him at it!"
"Caught whom?—at what?" queried the perplexed Mistress; failing to note the man's baleful glower at the contemptuous Lad.
"That big ugly brute of your'n, of course," declared Romaine. "I caught him, red-handed, runnin' my sheep. He——"
"Lad did nothing of the kind," denied the Mistress. "The instant he caught sight of them he stopped running. Lad wouldn't hurt anything that is weak and helpless. Your sheep saw him and they ran away. He didn't follow them an inch."
"I seen what I seen," cryptically answered the man. "An' I give you fair warnin', if any of my sheep is killed, I'll know right where to come to look for the killer."