“My God!” cried the Judge. “ I did not mean to hit it! It wasn’t a cat! It is something else.”
“The kitchen!” I cried, and without stopping to close the doors against the nipping cold, I led the way down the back stairs.
“No time for caution,” he said. “Unbolt this door. See, it is writhing there on the snow! It is a child!”
I believed at first that he was right. As we ran forward it seemed to be a naked, half-starved child of six or seven years, wallowing in the snow in some terrible agony. My heart jumped against my ribs as I saw it. I stopped in my tracks and let the Judge go on alone.
In a second his voice rose in a tone that braced me like a glass of brandy.
“See!” he cried. “Thank Heaven! It is only a poor, cringing dog—a shaggy hound. Here, you poor beast. Did I hurt you? Come, Laddie, come, boy!”
“Laddie” he had called him, and it was the same “Laddie” that lived with us so long.
“Margaret!” cried the Judge, as he pulled the dirty creature into the kitchen. “A light! The thing is half-starved. Bring some food upstairs to the library.”
The hound was licking his hand and cowering as if accustomed to abuse, and from that night it was nearly six months before the old fellow got his flesh and healthy coat of hair and his spirit back again. That night, having eaten, it looked about the room, found the Judge, went to him, and, laying his head in his lap, looked up at him out of his two sorrowful eyes. I knew then, by the smile of the Judge’s mouth and the way he put on his tortoise-shell glasses, that “Laddie” would never be sent away. Just then, though, the master, after he had looked at the dog a minute, sprang up suddenly and stood staring at me with his mouth twitching.
“What is it, sir?” I asked.