Within a single second, he had graduated from a little
friend of all the world, into a vigilant watchdog.
With a snarl, he dropped the bag and whizzed forward at his
assailant. Needle-sharp milk-teeth bared, head low, ruff
abristle, friendly soft eyes as ferocious as a wolf's, he
charged.
There had been scarce a breathing-space between the second report
of the pistol and the collie's counterattack. But there had been
time enough for the onward-plunging thief to step into the narrow
lip of the water-pipe ditch. The momentum of his own rush hurled
the upper part of his body forward. But his left leg, caught
between the ditch-sides, did not keep pace with the rest of him.
There was a hideous snapping sound, a screech of mortal anguish;
and the man crashed to earth, in a dead faint of pain and
shock,--his broken left leg still thrust at an impossible angle
in the ditch.
Lad checked himself midway in his own fierce charge. Teeth bare,
throat agrowl, he hesitated. It had seemed to him right and
natural to assail the man who had struck him so painfully.
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