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them ample warning of the stranger’s presence.
    To Lad, on the lower floor of the house, where every window was shut, the aid of scent was denied. Yet his sense of hearing was enough. Plainly, he heard the softly advancing steps—heard and read them. He read them for an intruder’s —read them for the steps of a man who was afraid to be heard or seen, and who was employing all the caution in his power.
    A booming, trumpeting bark of warning sprang into Lad’s throat—and died there. The sharp command “Quiet!” was still in force. Even in his madness, that day, he had uttered no sound. He strangled back the tumultuous bark and listened in silence. He had risen to his feet and had come out from under the piano. In the middle of the living room he stood, head lowered, ears pricked. His ruff was abristle. A ridge of hair rose grotesquely from the shaggy mass of coat along his spine. His lips had slipped back from his teeth. And so he stood and waited.
    The shuffling, soft steps were nearer now. Down through the trees they came, and then onto the springy grass of the lawn. Now they crunched lightly on the gravel of the drive. Lad moved forward a little and again stood at attention.
    The man was climbing to the veranda. The vines rustled ever so slightly as he brushed past them. His footfall sounded lightly on the veranda itself.
    Next there was a faint clicking noise at the old-fashioned lock of one of the bay windows. Presently, by half inches, the window began to rise. Before it had risen an inch, Lad knew the trespasser was no one with whose scent he was familiar.
    Another pause, followed by the very faintest scratching, as the burglar ran a knife blade along the crack of the inner wooden blinds in search of the catch.
    The blinds parted slowly. Over the window sill the man threw a leg. Then he stepped down, noiselessly into the room.
    He stood there a second, evidently listening.
    And, before he could stir or breathe, something in the darkness hurled itself upon him.
    Without so much as a growl of warning, eighty pounds of muscular, hairy energy smote the burglar full in the chest. A set of hot-breathing jaws flashed for his jugular vein, missed it by a half-inch, and the graze left a red-hot searing pain along the man’s throat. In the merest fraction of a moment, the murderously snapping jaws sank into the thief’s shoulder. It is collie custom to fight with a running accompaniment of snarling growls. But Lad did not give voice. In total silence he made his onslaught. In silence, he sought and gained his hold.
    The burglar was less considerate of the Mistress’ comfort. With a screech that would have waked every mummy in Egypt, he reeled back, under that first unseen impact, lost his balance and crashed to the hardwood floor, overturning a table and a lamp in his fall. Certain that a devil had attacked him there in the black darkness, the man gave forth yell after yell of mortal terror. Frantically, he strove to push away his assailant and his clammy hand encountered a mass of fur.
    The man had heard that all the dogs on The Place had been sent away because of the Mistress’ illness. Hence his attempt at burglary. Hence also, his panic fear when Lad had sprung on him.
    But with the feel of the thick warm fur, the man’s superstitious terror died. He knew he had roused the house; but there was still time to escape if he could rid himself of this silent, terrible creature. He staggered to his feet. And, with the knife he still clutched, he smote viciously at his assailant.
    Because Lad was a collie, Lad was not killed then and there. A bulldog or a bull-terrier, attacking a man, seeks for some convenient hold. Having secured that hold—be it good or bad—he locks his jaws and hangs on. You can well-nigh cut his head from his body before he will let go. Thus, he is at the mercy of any armed man who can keep cool long enough to kill him.
    But a collie has a strain of