But one thing he did realize—that a silly baby was toddling straight toward the fire. As many another wise dog has gone, before and since, Lad quietly stepped between Morty and the hearth. He stood, broadside to the fire and to the child—a shaggy wall between the peril and the baby.
But so quickly had anger carried Mortimer toward the hearth that the dog had not been able to block his progress until only a bare eighteen inches separated the youngster from the blaze.
Thus Lad found the heat from the burning logs all but intolerable. It bit through his thick coat and into the tender flesh beneath. Like a rock he stood there.
Mortimer, his gentle plan of kitten killing foiled, redoubled his screeches. Lad's back was higher than the child's eyes. Yet Morty sought to hurl the kitten over this stolid barrier into the fire.
Tipperary fell short; landing on the dog's shoulders, digging her needle claws viciously therein, and thence leaping to the floor, from which she sprang to the top of the bookshelves, spitting back blasphemously at her tormentor.
Morty's interest in the fire had been purely as a piece of immolation for the cat, but finding his path to it barred, he straightway resolved to go thither himself.
He started to move round to it, in front of Lad. The dog took a forward step that again barred the way. Morty went insane with wrath at this new interference with his sweet plans. His howls swelled to a sustained roar, that reached the ears of the grown-ups on the lawn.
He flew at Lad, beating the dog with all the puny force of his fists, sinking his milk teeth into the collie's back, wrenching and tearing at the thick fur, stamping with his booted heels upon the absurdly tiny white forepaws, kicking the short ribs and the tender stomach.
Never for an instant did the child slacken his howls as he punished the dog that was saving him from death. Rather, he increased their volume from moment to moment. Lad did not stir. The kicking and beating and gouging and hair-pulling were not pleasant, but they were wholly bearable. The heat was not. The smell of singed hair began to fill the room, but Lad stood firm.
And then in rushed the relief expedition, the Wall Street Farmer at its head.