or any possible return to the danger
zone, until the car should have passed. More than once, at other times,
had he done this. But, today, she had eluded his mighty shoulder and
had flung herself back to the assault.

As she fell, she rolled over, twice, from her own momentum. The second
revolution left her directly in front of the skidding wheels. One of
them had actually touched her squirming spine; when white teeth gripped
her by the scruff of the neck. Those teeth could crush a mutton-bone as
a child cracks a peanut. But, on Lady, today, their power was exerted
only to the extent of lifting her, in one swift wrench, clear of the
ground and high in air.

The mischievous collie flew through space like a lithe mass of golden
fluff; and came to earth, in a heap, at the edge of the drive; well
clear of the menacing wheels. With Lad, it fared otherwise.

The great dog had braced himself, with all his might, for the
muscle-wrenching heave. Wherefore, he had no chance to spring clear, in
time to avoid the car. This, no doubt, he had realized, when he sprang
to his adored mate's rescue. For Lad's brain was uncanny in its
cleverness. That same cleverness, more likely than mere chance,--now
came to his own aid.

The left front wheel struck him and struck him fair. It hit his massive
shoulder, dislocating the joint and knocking the eighty-pound dog prone
to earth, his ruff within an inch of the wheel. There was no time to
gather his feet under him or to coerce the dislocated shoulder into
doing its share toward lifting him in a sideways spring that should
carry him out of the machine's way. There was but one thing Lad could
do. And he did it.

His body in a compact bunch, he rolled midway between the wheels;
making the single revolution at a speed the eye could scarce follow,--a
speed which jerked him from under the impending left wheel which
already had smitten him down.

Over him slid the wheel-locked car, through the mud of a recent rain;
while the boy clung to the emergency brake and yelled.

Over him and past him skidded the car. It missed the prostrate
dog,--missed him with all four wheels; though the rear axle's housing
smeared his snowy ruff with a blur of black grease.

On went the machine for another ten feet, before it could halt. Then a
chalk-faced delivery boy peered backward in fright,--to see Lad getting
painfully to his feet and holding perplexedly aloft his tiny right
forepaw in token of the dislocate