But no such sound came to him. And, he realised that snow and adverse winds can sometimes muffle even the penetrating bark of a collie. The man grew frightened. Halting, he shouted with all the power of his lungs. No whimper from Cyril answered the hail. Nor, at his Master’s summons, did Lad come bounding back through the drifts. Again and again, the Master called. For the first time in his obedient life, Lad did not, respond to the call. And the Master knew his own voice could not carry, for a single furlong, against wind and snowfall. “I’ll go on for another half-hour,” he told himself, as he sought to discern the dog’s all-but obliterated footsteps through the deepening snow. “And then I’ll go back and raise a search party.” He came to a bewildered stop. Fainter and more indistinguishable had Lad’s floundering tracks become. Now,—by dint of distance and snow,—they ceased to be visible in the welter of drifted whiteness under the glare of the Master’s flashlight. “This means a search party,” decided the man. And he turned homeward, to telephone for a posse of neighbours. Lad, being only a dog, had no such way of sharing his burden. He had been told to find the child. And his simple code of life and of action left him no outlet from doing his duty; be that duty irksome or easy. So he kept on. Far ahead of the Master, his keen ears had not caught the sound of the shouts. The gale and the snow muffled them and drove them back into the shouter’s throat. Cyril, naturally, had not had the remotest intent of labouring through the bitter cold and the snow to the house of any neighbour; there to tell his woful tale of oppression. The semblance of martyrdom, without its bothersome actuality, was quite enough for his purpose. Once before, at home, when his father had administered a mild and much-needed spanking, Cyril had made a like threat; and had then gone to hide in a chum’s home, for half a day; returning to find his parents in agonies of remorse and fear, and ready to load him with peace-offerings. The child saw no reason why the same tactics should not serve every bit as triumphantly, in the present case. He knew the maids were in the kitchen and at least one man was in the stables. He did not want his whereabouts to be discovered before he should have been able to raise a healthy and dividend-bringing crop of remorse in the hearts of the Mistress and the Master, so he resolved to go farther afield. In the back of the meadow, across the road, and on the hither side of the forest, was a disused cattle-barrack, with two stalls under its roofpile of hay. The barrack was one of Cyril’s favourite playhouses. It was dry and tight. Through his thick clothing he was not likely to be very cold, there; for an hour or two. He could snuggle down in the warm hay and play Indians, with considerable comfort; until such time as the fright and penitence of his hosts should have come to a climax and make his return an ovation.