other of the Place's dogs in Lad's lifetime. He slept at night
under the music-room piano, in the "cave" that was his delight. At
mealtimes he was even admitted into the sacred dining-room, where he
lay on the floor at the Master's left hand. He had the run of the
house, as fully as any human.

It was when Lad was eighteen months old that the mad-dog scare swept
Hampton village; and reached its crawly tentacles out across the lake
to the mile-distant Place.

Down the village street, one day, trotted an enormous black mongrel;
full in the center of the roadway. The mongrel's heavy head was low,
and lolled from side to side with each lurching stride of the big body.
The eyes were bloodshot. From the mouth and the hanging dewlaps, flecks
of foam dropped now and then to the ground.

The big mongrel was sick of mind and of body. He craved only to get out
of that abode of men and to find solitude in the forests and hills
beyond the village.

For this is the considerate way of dogs; and of cats as well. When dire
sickness smites them, they do not hang about, craving sympathy and
calling for endless attention. All they want is to get out of the
way,--well out of the way, into the woods and swamps and mountains;
where they may wrestle with their life-or-death problem in their own
primitive manner; and where, if need be, they may die alone and
peacefully, without troubling anyone else.

Especially is this true with dogs. If their malady is likely to affect
the brain and to turn them savage, they make every possible attempt to
escape from home and to be as far away from their masters as may be,
before the crisis shall goad them into attacking those they love.

And, when some such suffering beast is seen, on his way to solitude, we
humans prove our humanity by raising the idiotic bellow of "Mad dog!"
and by chasing and torturing the victim. All this, despite proof that
not one sick dog in a thousand, thus assailed, has any disease which is
even remotely akin to rabies.

Next to vivisection, no crime against helpless animals is so needlessly
and foolishly cruel as the average mad-dog chase.

Which is a digression; but which may or may not enable you to keep your
head, next time a mad-dog scare sweeps your own neighborhood.

Down the middle of the dusty street trotted the sick mongrel. Five
minutes earlier, he had escaped from the damp cellar in which his owner
had imprisoned him when first he fell ill. And now, his one pur