guard. Head
on paws he would lie, intently scanning anyone who might chance to
pause near the auto; and, with a glint of curved white fang beneath
sharply upcurled lip, warning away such persons as ventured too close.

Marketing done, today, the trio from the Place started homeward. Less
than a quarter-mile from their own gateway, they heard the blaring honk
of a motor horn behind them.

Within a second thereafter, a runabout roared past, the cut-out making
echoes along the still road; and a poisonously choking cloud of dust
whirling aloft in the speedster's wake.

The warning honk had not given the Mistress time to turn out. Luckily
she was driving well on her own side of the none-too-wide road. As it
was, a sharp little jar gave testimony to the light touch of mudguards.
And the runabout whizzed on.

"That's one of the speed-idiots who make an automobile an insult to
everybody except its owner! The young fool!" stormed the Master,
glowering impotently at the other car, already a hundred yards ahead;
and at the back of its one occupant, a sportily-clad youth in the early
twenties.

A high-pitched yelping bark,--partly of dismay, partly of
warning,--from Lad, broke in on the Master's fuming remonstrance. The
big dog had sprung up from his rear seat cushion and, with forepaws
gripping the back of the front seat, he was peering forward; his head
and shoulders between the Mistress and the Master.

Never before in all his rides had Lad so transgressed the rules of
motoring behavior as to thrust himself forward like this. A word of
rebuke died on the Master's tongue; as the Mistress, with a gasp of
fear, pointed ahead, in the path of the speeding runabout.

Lady and Wolf had had a jolly gallop through the summer woodlands. And
at last they had turned their faces homeward; for the plunge in the
cool lake which was wont to follow a hot weather run. Side by side they
jogged along, to the forest edge--and into the sixteen-acre meadow that
stretches from forest to highway.

A few rods on the far side of the road which separated the meadow from
the rest of the Place, Wolf paused to investigate a chipmunk hole. Lady
was more interested just then in splashing her hot body in the chill of
the lake than in exploring for hypothetical chipmunks.

Moreover, her keen ears caught a sound which rapidly swept nearer and
nearer. A motor-car with the muffler cut out was approaching, at a most
gratifyingly high speed.

The noise wa