The Master had been drawing on his mackinaw and hip-boots as he spoke. Now he opened the front door. “Laddie!” he said, very slowly and incisively to the expectantly eager collie. “Cyril! Find _Cyril!_ _Find_ him!” To the super-wise collie, there was nothing confusing in the command. Like many another good dog, he knew the humans of the household by their names; as well as did any fellow-human. And he knew from long experience the meaning of the word, “Find!” Countless times that word had been used in games and in earnest. Its significance, now, was perfectly plain to him. The master wanted him to hunt for the obnoxious child who so loved to annoy and hurt him. Lad would rather have found any one else, at the Master’s behest. But it did not occur to the trained collie to disobey. With a visible diminishing of his first eager excitement, but with submissive haste, the big dog stepped out on to the veranda and began to cast about in the drifts at the porch edge. Immediately, he struck Cyril’s shuffling trail. And, immediately, he trotted off along the course. The task was less simple than ordinarily. For, the snow was coming down in hard-driven sheets; blotting out scent almost as effectively as sight. But not for naught had a thousand generations of Lad’s thoroughbred ancestors traced lost sheep through snowstorms on the Scottish moors. To their grand descendant they had transmitted their weird trailing power, to the full. And the scent of Cyril, though faint and fainter, and smothered under swirling snow, was not too dim for Lad’s sensitive nostrils to catch and hold it. The Master lumbered along, through the rising drifts, as fast as he could. But the way was rough and the night was as black dark as it was cold. In a few rods, the dog had far outdistanced him. And, knowing how hard must be the trail to follow by sense of smell, he forbore to call back the questing collie, lest Lad lose the clue altogether. He knew the dog was certain to bark the tidings when he should come up with the fugitive. The Master by this time began to share his wife’s worry. For the trail Lad was following led out of the grounds and across the highway, toward the forest. The newborn snowstorm was developing into a very promising little blizzard. And the icy lash of the wind proved the fallacy of the old theory, “too cold to snow.” Even by daylight it would have been no light task to steer a true course through the whirling and blinding storm. In the darkness the man found himself stumbling along with drunkenly zigzag steps; his buffeted ears strained through the noise of the wind for sound of Lad’s bark.