Lad moved over to him; hesitated a moment, looking wistfully upward at the solid ground above. Then, he seemed to decide which way his duty pointed. Lying down beside the freezing child, he pressed his great shaggy body close to Cyril’s; protecting him from the swirling snow and from the worst of the cold. The dog’s dark, deep-set eyes roved watchfully toward the crevice, alert for sign of any other marauder that might issue forth. His own shaggy shoulder was hurting him, annoyingly, from the wildcat’s bite. But to this he gave no heed. Closer yet, he pressed his warm, furry body to the ice-cold youngster; fending off the elements as valorously as he had fended off the wildcat. The warmth of the great body began to penetrate Cyril’s numbed senses. The child snuggled to the dog gratefully. Lad’s pink tongue licked caressingly at the white face; and the collie whimpered crooning sympathy to the little sufferer. So, for a time the dog and the child lay there; Cyril’s numb body warming under the contact. Then, at a swift intake of the windy air, Lad’s whimper changed to a thunder of wild barking. His nostrils had told him of the search party’s approach, a few hundred yards to the windward. Their dispiritingly aimless hunt changing into a scrambling rush in the direction whence came the faint-heard barks, the searchers trooped toward the ledge. “Here we are!” shrilled the child, as the Master’s halloo sounded directly above. “Here we are! Down here! A—a lion tackled us, awhile back. But we licked him;—I and Laddie!” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ FIVE: “Youth Will Be Served!” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] FIVE: “Youth Will be Served!” Bruce was a collie—physically and in many other ways a super-collie. Twenty-six inches at the shoulder, seventy-five pounds in weight, his great frame had no more hint of coarseness than had his classic head and foreface. His mighty coat was black-stippled at its edges, like Seedley Stirling’s, giving the dog almost the look of a “tricolour” rather than of a “dark-sable-and-white.” There was an air of majesty, of perfect breeding, about Bruce—an intangible something that lent him the bearing of a monarch. He was, in brief, such a dog as one sees perhaps thrice in a generation. At the Place, after old Lad’s death, Bruce ruled as king. He was no mere kennel dog—reared and cared for like some prize ox—but was part and parcel of the household, a member of the family, as befitted a dog of his beauty and brain and soul.