It was a dog--yet no such dog as had ever before sullied the cleanness of The Place's well-scoured veranda. The animal's body was lean to emaciation. The head was swollen--though, apparently, the swelling had begun to recede. The fur, from spine to toe, from nose to tail-tip, was one solid and shapeless mass of caked mud. The Master sat down very suddenly on the veranda floor beside the dirt-encrusted brute, and caught it in his arms, sputtering disjointedly: "Lad!--_Laddie!_--Old _friend!_ You're alive again! You're--you're--_alive!_" Yes, Lad had known enough to creep away to the woods to die. But, thanks to the wolf-strain in his collie blood, he had also known how to do something far wiser than die. Three days of self-burial, to the very nostrils, in the mysteriously healing ooze of the marshes, behind the forest, had done for him what such mud-baths have done for a million wild creatures. It had drawn out the viper-poison and had left him whole again--thin, shaky on the legs, slightly swollen of head--but _whole_. "He's--he's awfully dirty, though! Isn't he?" commented the guest, when an idiotic triumph-yell from the Master had summoned the whole family, in sketchy attire, to the veranda. "Awfully dirty and----" "Yes," curtly assented the Master, Lad's head between his caressing hands. "'Awfully dirty.' That's why he's still alive." CHAPTER IV HIS LITTLE SON Lad's mate Lady was the only one of the Little People about The Place who refused to look on Lad with due reverence. In her frolic-moods she teased him unmercifully; in a prettily imperious way she bossed and bullied him--for all of which Lad adored her. He had other reasons, too, for loving Lady--not only because she was dainty and beautiful, and was caressingly fond of him, but because he had won her in fair mortal combat with the younger and showier Knave. For a time after Knave's routing, Lad was blissfully happy in Lady's undivided comradeship. Together they ranged the forests beyond The Place in search of rabbits. Together they sprawled shoulder to shoulder on the disreputable old fur rug in front of the living-room fire. Together they did joyous homage to their gods, the Mistress and the Master. Then in the late summer a new rival appeared--to be accurate, three rivals. And they took up all of Lady's time and thought and love. Poor old Lad was made to feel terribly out in the cold. The trio of rivals that had so suddenly claimed Lady's care were fuzzy and roly-poly, and about the size of month-old kittens. In brief, they were three thoroughbred collie puppies. Two of them were tawny brown, with white forepaws and chests. The third was not like Lad in color, but like the mother--at least, all of him not white was of the indeterminate yellowish mouse-gray which, at three months or earlier, turns to pale gold.