We flew to the window. Right up the path leading by the quarters from the spring at the foot of the hill, trotted an enormous bull dog. Half a dozen men were pelting him with stones from a respectful distance. He paid no attention to stones or shouts. Keeping the straight path, his brute head wagging drunkenly, he was making directly for the open yard-gate, from which a gravel walk led to the porch where we had been sitting. Snap, his master's favorite hunter, and the petted darling of his mistress, was hitched to the rack by the gate, ready-saddled for Cousin Frank's morning round of the plantation. At the noise behind him, the intelligent creature threw up his handsome head, glanced over his shoulder, and began to plunge and snort, as if aware of the danger. His master spoke soothingly as he planted his own body between him and the ugly beast.
"Steady, old boy! steady!"
In saying it he raised the gun to his shoulder. It was all done so quickly that I had hardly seen the livid horror in Cousin Molly Belle's face when the good gun spoke, the muzzle within ten yards of the dog's head, and he rolled over in the path.
"What if you had missed him! He would have been upon you before you could reload!" shuddered the wife, as we ran out to meet Cousin Frank.
"I did not mean to miss him. If I had, I should have clubbed my gun and brained him. No, dear love! it would not 'have done as well had I fired at him over the palings.' Snap was on the other side of the gate. And"—with an arch flash he might have learned from her—"you and Namesake and I think the world and all of Snap, you know."
It was the only allusion he ever made in my hearing to the escapade that won him his wife.
We learned, within a few hours, that the dog had bitten several cows, five other dogs, and a valuable colt, before he reached Oakholme.
I was always very fond of Cousin Frank. Henceforward, he stepped into the vanguard of my heroes. I did not believe that Israel Putnam could have done anything more daring than what I had witnessed in the safe place in which he put us "before he sallied forth into the very jaws of death." That was the way I described it to myself.
Tramping through the lower pasture at his side that afternoon I tried to voice my admiration to him, but used less inflated language. I dearly enjoyed these long walks over the plantation in his company. He was an excellent farmer, and kept no overseer. I learned a great deal of forestry and botany from his talk. If he adapted himself, consciously, to my understanding, he did not let me perceive it. The recollection of his unfailing patience and his apparent satisfaction in the society of the child who worshipped him and his wife, has been a useful lesson to me in my intercourse with the young. I had told Cousin Molly Belle, a long time ago, that he "talked straight to children," with none of the involved meanings and would-be humorous turns of speech with which some grown-uppers diverted themselves and mystified us.
When he smiled at my well-mouthed, "Do you know, Cousin Frank, that your bravery may have saved at least four lives—Cousin Molly Belle's, and baby's, and Snap's, and mine?"—I felt that he was not laughing at me inside, as the manner of some is.