collie sought to leap aboard the truck in the wake of a roll of
bedding. "No, no. You're going with us, in the car."

Now, long usage and an uncanny intelligence had given Lad a more than
tolerable understanding of the English language's simpler phrases. The
term, "You're going with us in the car," was as comprehensible to him
as to any child. He had heard it spoken, with few variations, a
thousand times, in the past nine years. At once, on hearing the
Master's command, he jumped down from the truck; trotted off to the
car, a hundred yards distant; and sprang into his wonted place in the
luggage-cluttered tonneau.

He chanced to jump aboard, from one side; just as the guide's
hobbledehoy son was hoisting a heavy and cumbersome duffle bag into the
tonneau, from the other. Lad's eighty pounds of nervous energy smote
the bag, amidships; as the boy was balancing it high in air,
preparatory to setting it down between two other sacks. As a result,
boy and bag rolled backward in a tangled embrace, across several yards
of stony ground.

Lad had not meant to cause any such catastrophe. Yet he stood looking
down in keen enjoyment at the lively spectacle. But as the boy came to
a halt, against a sharp-pointed rock, and sat up, sniveling with pain,
the great dog's aspect changed. Seeming to realize he was somehow to
blame, he jumped lightly down from the car and went over to offer to
the sufferer such comfort as patting forepaw and friendly licking
tongue could afford.

"Here!" called the guide, who had seen but a crosssection of the
collision. "Here, you! Stop a-playin' with the dorg, and hustle them
bags onto--"

"I wa'n't playin' with him," half-blubbered the boy, glowering dourly
at the sympathetic Lad; and scrambling up from his bruise-punctured
roll on the ground. "He came a-buntin' me; and I--"

"That'll do, Sonny!" rasped Barret, who was strong on discipline and
who fancied he had witnessed the climax of a merry game between boy and
dog, "I seen what I seen. And I don't aim to take no back-talk from a
wall-eyed, long-legged, chuckle-headed brat; that's hired to help his
poor old dad and who spends his time cuttin' monkeyshines with a dorg.
You take that collie over to the truck, and ask his boss to look after
him and to see he don't pester us while we're aworkin'. On the way
back, stop at the lean-to and catch me that bag of cookin' things I
left there. The's just room for 'em, under the seat. Chase!"

Woefully,