Turning to the Master, he added:
"I suppose one of us will have to stand guard over him while the other one hunts up the sheep. Shall I——"
"Neither of us need do that," said the Master. "Lad!"
The collie started eagerly forward, and Schwartz started still more eagerly backward.
"Watch him!" commanded the Master. "Watch him!"
It was an order Lad had learned to follow in the many times when the Mistress and the Master left him to guard the car or to do sentry duty over some other article of value. He understood. He would have preferred to deal with this enemy according to his own lights. But the Master had spoken. So, standing at view, the collie looked longingly at Schwartz's throat.
"Keep perfectly still!" the Master warned the prisoner, "and perhaps he won't go for you. Move, and he most surely will. Watch him, Laddie!"
Maclay and the Master left the captive and his guard, and set forth on a flashlight-illumined tour of the knoll. It was a desolate spot, far back in the swamp and more than a mile from any road; a place visited not three times a year, except in the shooting season.
In less than a half-minute the plaintive ba-a-a of a sheep guided the searchers to the left of the knoll where stood a thick birch-and-alder copse. Around this they circled until they reached a narrow opening where the branch-ends, several feet above ground, were flecked with hanks of wool.
Squirming through the aperture in single file, the investigators found what they sought.