This gear meant the annual fall camping trip in the back reaches of the Ramapo Mountains, some twenty-odd miles north of the Place; the fortnight of tent-life, of shooting, of fishing, of bracingly chill nights and white-misted dawns and of drowsily happy campfire evenings. It meant all manner of adventure and fun for Lad. Now, on a fishing jaunt, the presence of any kind of dog is a liability; not an asset. A thousand dog-fancier fishermen can attest to that. And, when humans are hunting any sort of game, a collie is several degrees worse than worthless. Thus, Lad's usefulness, as a member of the party, was likely to be negligible;--except in the matter of guarding camp and as an all-round pal for the two campers. Yet, as on former years, there was no question of leaving him at home. Where the Mistress and the Master went, he went, too; whenever such a thing were possible. He was their chum. And they would have missed him as much as he would have missed them. Which, of course, was an absurd way for two reasonably sane people to regard a mere dog. But, then, Lad was not a "mere" dog. Thus it was that he took his place, by invitation, in the car's tonneau, amid a ruck of hand-luggage; as the camp-ward pilgrimage began. Ten miles farther on, the equipment truck halted to take aboard a guide named Barret, and his boy; and their professionally reliable old Irish setter. This setter had a quality, not over-common with members of his grand breed; a trait which linked his career pathetically with that of a livery-plug. He would hunt for anybody. He went through his day's work, in stubble or undergrowth, with the sad conscientiousness of an elderly bookkeeper. Away from the main road, and up a steadily rising byway that merged into an axle-snapping mountain-track, toiled the cars; at last coming to a wheezy and radiator-boiling halt at the foot of a rock-summit so steep that no vehicle could breast it. In a cup, at the summit of this mountain-top hillock, was the camp-site; its farther edge only a few yards above a little bass-populated spring-lake. The luggage was hauled, gruntily, up the steep; and camp was pitched. Then car and truck departed for civilization. And the two weeks of wilderness life set in. It was a wonderful time for old Lad. The remoteness and wild stillness of it all seemed to take him back, in a way, to the wolf-centuries of his ancestors. It had been monstrous pleasant to roam the peaceful forest back of the Place. But there was a genuine thrill in exploring these all-but manless woods; with their queer scents of wild things that seldom ventured close to the ordained haunts of men.