A groan from the Master—a groan of heartbreak—was the first sound from the four. The dog he loved was a killer.
"It isn't true! It isn't true!" stoutly declared the Mistress.
The Wall Street Farmer and McGullicuddy had already broken into a run. The shepherd had found the tracks of many little hoofs on the dewy ground. And he was following the trail. The guest, swearing and panting, was behind him. The Mistress and the Master brought up the rear.
At every step they peered fearfully around them for what they dreaded to see—the mangled body of some slain sheep. But they saw none. And they followed the trail.
In a quarter mile they came to its end.
All four flashlights played simultaneously upon a tiny hillock that rose from the meadow at the forest edge. The hillock was usually green. Now it was white.
Around its short slopes was huddled a flock of sheep, as close-ringed as though by a fence. At the hillock's summit sat Lad. He was sitting there in a queer attitude, one of his snowy forepaws pinning something to the ground—something that could not be clearly distinguished through the huddle but which, evidently, was no sheep.
The Wall Street Farmer broke the tense silence with a gobbled exclamation.
"Whisht!" half reverently interrupted the shepherd, who had been circling the hillock on census duty. "There's na a sheep gone, nor—so far's I can see—a sheep hurted. The fu' twenty is there."
The Master's flashlight found a gap through which its rays could reach the hillock crest. The light revealed, under Lad's gently pinioning forepaw, the crouching and badly scared Melisande—the $1100 Prussian sheep dog.