And he
knew from long experience the meaning of the word, "Find!"
Countless times that word had been used in games and in earnest.
Its significance, now, was perfectly plain to him. The Master
wanted him to hunt for the obnoxious child who so loved to annoy
and hurt him.
Lad would rather have found anyone else, at the Master's behest.
But it did not occur to the trained collie to disobey. With a
visible diminishing of his first eager excitement, but with
submissive haste, the big dog stepped out on to the veranda and
began to cast about in the drifts at the porch edge.
Immediately, he struck Cyril's shuffling trail. And, immediately,
he trotted off along the course.
The task was less simple than ordinarily. For, the snow was
coming down in hard-driven sheets; blotting out scent almost as
effectively as sight. But not for naught had a thousand
generations of Lad's thoroughbred ancestors traced lost sheep
through snowstorms on the Scottish moors. To their grand
descendant they had transmitted their weird trailing power, to
the full. And the scent of Cyril, though faint and fainter, and
smothered under swirling snow, was not too dim for Lad's
sensitive nostrils to catch and hold it.
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