The collie brain,--though never the collie heart,--is wont to
flash back, in moments of mortal stress, to the ancestral wolf.
Never in his own life had Sunnybank Lad set eyes on a wildcat.
But, in the primal forests, wolf and bob-cat had perforce met and
clashed, a thousand times. There they had begun and had waged the
eternal cat-and-dog feud, of the ages.
Ancestry now told Lad that there is perhaps no more murderously
dangerous foe than an angry wildcat. Ancestry also told him a
wolf's one chance of certain victory in such a contest.
Ancestry's aid was not required, to tell him the mortal peril
awaiting this human child who had so grievously and causelessly
tormented him. But the great loyal heart, in this stark moment,
took no thought of personal grudges. There was but one thing to
do,--one perilous, desperate chance to take; if the child were to
be saved.
The wildcat sprang.
Such a leap could readily have carried it across double the space
which lay between it and Cyril. But not one-third of that space
was covered in the lightning pounce.
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