Yet, as on former years, there was no question of leaving him at
home. Where the Mistress and the Master went, he went, too;
whenever such a thing were possible. He was their chum. And they
would have missed him as much as he would have missed them.
Which, of course, was an absurd way for two reasonably sane
people to regard a mere dog. But, then, Lad was not a "mere" dog.
Thus it was that he took his place, by invitation, in the car's
tonneau, amid a ruck of hand-luggage; as the camp-ward pilgrimage
began. Ten miles farther on, the equipment truck halted to take
aboard a guide named Barret, and his boy; and their
professionally reliable old Irish setter.
This setter had a quality, not over-common with members of his
grand breed; a trait which linked his career pathetically with
that of a livery-plug. He would hunt for anybody. He went through
his day's work, in stubble or undergrowth, with the sad
conscientiousness of an elderly bookkeeper.
Away from the main road, and up a steadily rising byway that
merged into an axle-snapping mountain-track, toiled the cars; at
last coming to a wheezy and radiator-boiling halt at the foot of
a rock-summit so steep that no vehicle could breast it.
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