adopted. Toward the rest of the world, from the
first, he was friendly but more or less indifferent.

Almost at once, his owners noted an odd trait in the dog's nature. He
would of course get into any or all of the thousand mischief-scrapes
which are the heritage of puppies. But, a single reproof was enough to
cure him forever of the particular form of mischief which had just been
chidden. He was one of those rare dogs that learn the Law by instinct;
and that remember for all time a command or a prohibition once given
them.

For example:--On his second day at the Place, he made a furious rush at
a neurotic mother hen and her golden convoy of chicks. The
Mistress,--luckily for all concerned,--was within call. At her sharp
summons the puppy wheeled, midway in his charge, and trotted back to
her. Severely, yet trying not to laugh at his worried aspect, she
scolded Lad for his misdeed.

An hour later, as Lad was scampering ahead of her, past the stables,
they rounded a corner and came flush upon the same nerve-wrecked hen
and her brood. Lad halted in his scamper, with a suddenness that made
him skid. Then, walking as though on eggs, he made an idiotically wide
circle about the feathered dam and her silly chicks. Never thereafter
did he assail any of the Place's fowls.

It was the same, when he sprang up merrily at a line of laundry,
flapping in alluring invitation from the drying ground lines. A single
word of rebuke,--and thenceforth the family wash was safe from him.

And so on with the myriad perplexing "Don'ts" which spatter the career
of a fun-loving collie pup. Versed in the patience-fraying ways of pups
in general, the Mistress and the Master marveled and bragged and
praised.

All day and every day, life was a delight to the little dog. He had
friends everywhere, willing to romp with him. He had squirrels to
chase, among the oaks. He had the lake to splash ecstatically in: He
had all he wanted to eat; and he had all the petting his hungry little
heart could crave.

He was even allowed, with certain restrictions, to come into the
mysterious house itself. Nor, after one defiant bark at a leopard-skin
rug, did he molest anything therein. In the house, too, he found a
genuine cave:--a wonderful place to lie and watch the world at large,
and to stay cool in and to pretend he was a wolf. The cave was the deep
space beneath the piano in the music room. It seemed to have a peculiar
charm to Lad. To the end of his da