"That's a pity, Dickywick. What's he been doing?" "He won't let me go out into the road. Every time he caught hold of my coat and pulled me back. He's most frightfully strong, and he pulled me over once. He wants a lamming." "I wonder if he would let me go out," said Jane. "Let's go and see, shall we?" "Right-oh," said Dick, perfectly satisfied. In the garden they found Zero cheerful and quite unrepentant. As a rule, he rushed to the gate in the hopes of being taken out for a run. But this evening, as Jane neared the gate, he became disquieted. He caught hold of her dress and tried to drag her back. He ran round and round her, whimpering. He flung himself in front of her feet. "Now, you see," said Dick triumphantly. "Yes, I see." "Well, I shall go and fetch a stick." "Oh, no. Zero does not want us to go out because he believes there's some danger on the road." "O-o-oh! Do you really mean it?" "Honest Injun." "Then he's not a bad dog at all, and I told him he was. Come here, Zero." He patted the dog's head. "You're a good dog really. My mistake. Sorry. What are you laughing at, mother? That's what Tom always says. Now let's go and see the danger on the road." "Well, it wouldn't be quite fair to Zero, after all the trouble he's taken. Besides, I want to see the rabbits at their games. They ought to be out just now." "All right," said Dick. "You follow me, and I'll show you them. But you mustn't make the least sound. You must be very Red-Indian." Dick's mother followed him obediently, and was very Red-Indian. The rabbits lived in a high bank just beyond the far end of the garden, and what the gardener had said about them before the wire-netting came could not be printed. Jane watched the rabbits, and conversed about them in the hoarse whisper enjoined by her son, but she was thinking principally about Zero. Then Dick went to bed, and his father came back from the city. He went up at least one day a week, and came back full of aggressive virtue and likely to refer to himself as a man who earned his own living, thank Heaven. At dinner Richard said: "By the way, I'd been meaning to speak of it--what's the matter with Zero?" "Why?" "He won't leave the gate. He was there when I drove in. I called him in, but he went back almost directly. I saw him through the window as I was dressing, and he was still there--lying quite still, with his eyes glued on the road." And then Jane recounted the experience of Dick and herself. "You may laugh, Richard, but something is going to happen, and Zero knows what it will be." "Well," said Richard, "if anybody is proposing to burglarise us to-night, I don't envy him the preliminaries with Zero. But, of course, it may be nothing. All the same I've always said there ought to be a lodge at that gate." But to this Jane was most firmly opposed. A new semi-artistic red-brick lodge would be out of keeping with Midway altogether. "And what are you going to do about Zero?"