Lad was more impressed than ever by the
man's wondrous possibilities as a midnight entertainer. He
waited, gayly expectant, for more. He got it.
There was a second rackety explosion and a second puff of
lightning from the man's out-flung hand. But, this time,
something like a red-hot whip-lash smote Lad with horribly
agonizing force athwart the right hip.
The man had done this,--the man whom Laddie had thought so
friendly and playful!
He had not done it by accident. For his hand had been out-flung
directly at the pup, just as once had been the arm of the
kennelman, back at Lad's birthplace, in beating a disobedient
mongrel. It was the only beating Lad had ever seen. And it had
stuck, shudderingly, in his uncannily sensitive memory. Yet now,
he himself had just had a like experience.
In an instant, the pup's trustful friendliness was gone. The man
had come on the Place, at dead of night, and had struck him. That
must be paid for! Never would the pup forget,--his agonizing
lesson that night intruders are not to be trusted or even to be
tolerated.
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