"No," he said, fiercely—"no, little doggie, no—no!" And Chad dropped on his knees and took Jack in his arms and hugged him to his breast.
CHAPTER 13.
ON TRIAL FOR HIS LIFE
By degrees the whole story was told Chad that night. Now and then the Turners would ask him about his stay in the Bluegrass, but the boy would answer as briefly as possible and come back to Jack. Before going to bed, Chad said he would bring Jack into the house:
"Somebody might pizen him," he explained, and when he came back, he startled the circle about the fire:
"Whar's Whizzer?" he asked, sharply. "Who's seen Whizzer?"
Then it developed that no one had seen the Dillon dog—since the day before the sheep was found dead near a ravine at the foot of the mountain in a back pasture. Late that afternoon Melissa had found Whizzer in that very pasture when she was driving old Betsy, the brindle, home at milking-time. Since then, no one of the Turners had seen the Dillon dog. That, however, did not prove that Whizzer was not at home. And yet,
"I'd like to know whar Whizzer is now!" said Chad, and, after, at old Joel's command, he had tied Jack to a bedpost—an outrage that puzzled the dog sorely—the boy threshed his bed for an hour—trying to think out a defence for Jack and wondering if Whizzer might not have been concerned in the death of the sheep.
It is hardly possible that what happened, next day, could happen anywhere except among simple people of the hills. Briefly, the old Squire and the circuit-rider had brought old Joel to the point of saying, the night before, that he would give Jack up to be killed, if he could be proven guilty. But the old hunter cried with an oath: