"You mean, he has——?"
"I mean it is the nature of all animals to crawl away, alone, into the forest to die. They are more considerate than we. They try to cause no further trouble to those they have loved. Lad got his death from the copperhead's fangs. He knew it. And while we were all taken up with the wonder of Baby's cure, he quietly went away—to die."
The Mistress got up hurriedly, and left the room. She loved the great dog, as she loved few humans. The guest dissolved into a flood of sloppy tears.
"And I beat him," she wailed. "I beat him—horribly! And all the time he was dying from the poison he had saved my child from! Oh, I'll never forgive myself for this, the longest day I live."
"The longest day is a long day," drily commented the Master. "And self-forgiveness is the easiest of all lessons to learn. After all, Lad was only a dog. That's why he is dead."
The Place's atmosphere tingled with jubilation over the child's cure. Her uncertain, but always successful, efforts at walking were an hourly delight.
But, through the general joy, the Mistress and the Master could not always keep their faces bright. Even the guest mourned frequently, and loudly, and eloquently the passing of Lad. And Baby was openly inconsolable at the loss of her chum.
At dawn on the morning of the fourth day, the Master let himself silently out of the house, for his usual before-breakfast cross-country tramp—a tramp on which, for years, Lad had always been his companion. Heavy-hearted, the Master prepared to set forth alone.
As he swung shut the veranda door behind him, Something arose stiffly from a porch rug—Something the Master looked at in a daze of unbelief.
It was a dog—yet no such dog as had ever before sullied the cleanness of The Place's well-scoured veranda.