Now, in northern New Jersey a live sheep is well nigh as rare as a pterodactyl. This flock of twenty had cost their owner their weight in merino wool. A dog--especially a collie--that does not know sheep, is prone to consider them his lawful prey, in other words, the sight of a sheep has turned many an otherwise law-abiding dog into a killer.
To avoid so black a smirch on The Place's hospitality, the Master had loaded all his collies, except Lad, into the car, and had shipped them off, that morning, for a three-day sojourn at the boarding kennels, ten miles away.
"Does the Old Dog go, too, sir?" asked The Place's foreman, with a questioning nod at Lad, after he had lifted the others into the tonneau.
Lad was viewing the proceedings from the top of the veranda steps. The Master looked at him, then at the car, and answered:
"No. Lad has more right here than any measly imported sheep. He won't bother them if I tell him not to. Let him stay."
The sheep, convoyed by the misanthropic McGillicuddy, filed down the drive, from the highroad, an hour later, and were marshaled into the corral.
As the jostling procession, followed by its dour shepherd, turned in at the gate of The Place, Lad rose from his rug on the veranda. His nostrils itching with the unfamiliar odor, his soft eyes outraged by the bizarre sight, he set forth to drive the intruders out into the main road.
Head lowered, he ran, uttering no sound. This seemed to him an emergency which called for drastic measures rather than for monitory barking. For all he knew, these twenty fat, woolly, white things might be fighters who would attack him in a body, and who might even menace the safety of his gods; and the glum McGillicuddy did not impress him at all favorably. Hence the silent charge at the foe--a charge launched with the speed and terrible menace of a thunderbolt.
McGillicuddy sprang swiftly to the front of his flock, staff upwhirled; but before the staff could descend on the furry defender of The Place, a sweet voice called imperiously to the dog.
The Mistress had come out upon the veranda and had seen Lad dash to the attack.
"Down!" called the Mistress. "Leave them alone! Do you hear, Lad? _Leave them alone!_ Come back here!"