Stealthily the trio made their way down the hill to the farmstead at its farther base. Silently they crept along the outer fringe of the home-lot, until they came opposite the black-gabled bulk of the barn. Presently, their slowly cautious progress brought them to the edge of the barnyard, and to the rail fence which surrounds it. There they halted.
From within the yard, as the huddle of drowsy sheep caught the scent of the dog, came a slight stirring. But, after a moment, the yard was quiet again.
"Get that?" whispered the Master, his mouth close to Maclay's ear. "Those sheep are supposed to have been raided by a killer-dog, for the past two nights. Yet the smell of a dog doesn't even make them bleat. If they had been attacked by any dog, last night, the scent of Lad would throw them into a panic."
"I get something else, too," replied Maclay, in the same all-but soundless whisper. "And I'm ashamed I didn't think of it before. Romaine said the dog wriggled into the yard through the bars, and out again the same way. Well, if those bars were wide enough apart for an eighty-pound collie, like Lad, to get through, what would there be to prevent all these sheep from escaping, the same way, any time they wanted to? I'll have a look at those bars before I pass judgment on the case. I begin to be glad you and your wife coerced me into this adventure."
"Of course, the sheep could have gotten through the same bars that the dog did," answered the Master. "For, didn't Romaine say the dog not only got through, but dragged three dead sheep through, after him, each night, and hid them somewhere, where they couldn't be found? No man would keep sheep in a pen as open as all that. The entire story is full of air-holes."
Lad, at a touch from his Master, had lain softly down at the men's feet, beside the fence. And so, for another full hour, the three waited there.
The night was heavily overcast; and, except for the low drone of distant tree-toads and crickets, it was deathly silent. Heat lightning, once in a while, played dimly along the western horizon.
"Lucky for us that Romaine doesn't keep a dog!" whispered Maclay. "He'd have raised the alarm before we got within a hundred yards of here."
"He told my foreman he gave his mongrel dog away, when he stocked himself with sheep. And he's been reading a lot of rot about dogs being non-utilitarian, too. His dog would have been anything but non-utilitarian, to-night."
A touch on the sleeve from Maclay silenced the rambling whisper. Through the stillness, a house door shut very softly, not far away. An instant later, Lad growled throatily, and got to his feet, tense and fiercely eager.