“Attacked me, he did!” bragged Zeb Harlow, that night at the store. “Come straight for me, like he was going to eat me alive. But I stopped him, all right, all right. I stood my ground. After the second step he took, I let him have both bar’ls. You saw for yourselves what he looked like after he tried to tackle ME.” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ TWO: The Coming of Lad ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] TWO: The Coming of Lad In the mile-away village of Hampton, there had been a veritable epidemic of burglaries—ranging from the theft of a brand-new ash-can from the steps of the Methodist chapel to the ravaging of Mrs. Blauvelt’s whole lineful of clothes, on a washday dusk. Up the Valley and down it, from Tuxedo to Ridgewood, there had been a half-score robberies of a very different order—depredations wrought, manifestly, by professionals; thieves whose motor cars served the twentieth century purpose of such historic steeds as Dick Turpin’s Black Bess and Jack Shepard’s Ranter. These thefts were in the line of jewelry and the like; and were as daringly wrought as were the modest local operators’ raids on ash-can and laundry. It is the easiest thing in the world to stir humankind’s ever-tense burglar-nerves into hysterical jangling. In house after house, for miles of the peaceful North Jersey region, old pistols were cleaned and loaded; window fastenings and door-locks were inspected and new hiding-places found for portable family treasures. Across the lake from the village, and down the Valley from a dozen country homes, seeped the tide of precautions. And it swirled at last around the Place,—a thirty-acre homestead, isolated and sweet, whose grounds ran from highway to lake; and whose wisteria-clad grey house drowsed among big oaks midway between road and water; a furlong or more distant from either. The Place’s family dog,—a pointer,—had died, rich in years and honour. And the new peril of burglary made it highly needful to choose a successor for him. The Master talked of buying a whalebone-and-steel-and-snow bull terrier, or a more formidable if more greedy Great Dane. But the Mistress wanted a collie. So they compromised by getting the collie. He reached the Place in a crampy and smelly crate; preceded by a long envelope containing an intricate and imposing pedigree. The burglary-preventing problem seemed solved. But when the crate was opened and its occupant stepped gravely forth, on the Place’s veranda, the problem was revived. All the Master and the Mistress had known about the newcomer,—apart from his price and his lofty lineage,—was that his breeder had named him “Lad.”