“Seize him, Bruno!” said Lorenzo. “Seize him!”
Bruno, on hearing this command, began smelling about the floor, and barking more eagerly than ever.
“Bruno smells his tracks, I verily believe,” said Lorenzo, speaking to his mother. Then, addressing Bruno again, he clapped his hands together and pointed to the ground, saying,
“Go seek him, Bruno! seek him!”
Bruno departs upon his errand.
Bruno began immediately to follow the scent of Murphy’s footsteps along the floor, out from the closet into the kitchen, and from the kitchen into the yard; he ran along the path a little way, and then made a wide circuit over the grass, at a place where Murphy had gone round to get as far as possible away from Bruno’s house. He then came back into the path again, smelling as he ran, and thence passed out through the gate; here, keeping his nose still close to the ground, he went on faster and faster, until he entered the thicket and disappeared.
Lorenzo did not pay particular attention to these motions. He had given Bruno the order, “Seek him!” rather from habit than any thing else, and without any idea that Bruno would really follow the tracks of the thief. Accordingly, when Bruno ran off down the yard, he imagined that he had gone away somewhere to play a little while, and that he would soon come back.
“He’ll be sure to come back pretty soon,” said he, “to get his breakfast.”
But Bruno did not come back to breakfast. Lorenzo waited an hour after breakfast, and still he did not come.
He waited two hours longer, and still he did not come.