Then, surreptitiously, she made a round of the house; sent a man
to ransack the stables, telephoned to the gate lodge, and finally
came into the Master's study, big-eyed and pale.
"He isn't anywhere around," she reported, frightened. "It's
dinner time. He's been gone in hour. Nobody's seen him. He isn't
on the Place. Oh, I wonder if--"
"H'm!" grumbled her husband. "He's engineering an endurance
contest, eh? Well, if he can stand it, we can."
But at sight of the deepening trouble in his wife's face, he got
up from his desk. Going out into the hall, he summoned Lad.
"We might shout our heads off," he said, "and he'd never answer;
if he's really trying to scare us. That's part of his lovable
nature. There's just one way to track him, in double time. LAD!"
The Master had been drawing on his mackinaw and hipboots as he
spoke. Now he opened the front door.
"Laddie!" he said, very slowly and incisively to the expectantly
eager collie. "Cyril! Find CYRIL! FIND him!"
To the super-wise collie, there was nothing confusing in the
command. Like many another good dog, he knew the humans of the
household by their names; as well as did any fellow-human.
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