In truth, Wolf seemed to have forgotten Lady. But Lad had not. Every morning, the moment he was released from the house, Lad would trot over to Lady's empty kennel to see if by any chance she had come back to him during the night. There was eager hope in his big dark eyes as he hurried over to the vacant kennel. There was dejection in every line of his body as he turned away from his hopeless quest. Late gray autumn had emerged overnight into white early winter. The ground of The Place lay blanketed in snow. The lake at the foot of the lawn was frozen solid from shore to shore. The trees crouched away from the whirling north wind as if in shame at their own black nakedness. Nature, like the birds, had flown south, leaving the northern world as dead and as empty and as cheerless as a deserted bird's-nest. The puppy reveled in the snow. He would roll in it and bite it, barking all the while in an ecstasy of excitement. His gold-and-white coat was thicker and shaggier now, to ward off the stinging cold. And the snow and the roaring winds were his playfellows rather than his foes. Most of all, the hard-frozen lake fascinated him. Earlier, when Lad had taught him to swim, Wolf had at first shrunk back from the chilly black water. Now, to his astonishment, he could run on that water as easily--if somewhat sprawlingly--as on land. It was a miracle he never tired of testing. He spent half his time on the ice, despite an occasional hard tumble or involuntary slide. Once and once only--in all her six-week absence and in his own six-week loneliness--had Lad discovered anything to remind him of his lost mate; and that discovery caused him for the first time in his blameless life to break the most sacred of The Place's simple Laws--the inviolable Guest-Law. It was on a day in late November. A runabout came down the drive to the front door of the house. In it rode the vet' who had taken Lady away. He had stopped for a moment on his way to Paterson, to report as to Lady's progress at his dog-hospital. Lad was in the living-room at the time. As a maid answered the summons at the door, he walked hospitably forward to greet the unknown guest. The vet' stepped into the room by one door as the Master entered it by the other--which was lucky for the vet'. Lad took one look at the man who had stolen Lady. Then, without a sound or other sign of warning, he launched his mighty bulk straight at the vet's throat. Accustomed though he was to the ways of dogs, the vet' had barely time to brace himself and to throw one arm in front of his throat. And then Lad's eighty pounds smote him on the chest, and Lad's powerful jaws closed viselike on the forearm that guarded the man's throat. Deep into the thick ulster the white teeth clove their way--through ulster-sleeve and undercoat sleeve and the sleeves of a linen shirt and of flannels--clear through to the flesh of the forearm. "_Lad!_" shouted the Master, springing forward.