Across the lawn and door-yard and around the end of the stables
thundered Lad. With the speed of a charging bull he came on.
Before he reached the burning shack, he knew more of his mate's
plight and peril than any human could have known.

Around the small building he whirled, so close to it that the
flames at its base seared his mighty coat and blistered and
blackened his white paws.

Then, running back a yard or so, he flung his eighty-pound weight
crashingly at the fastened door. The door, as it chanced, was
well-nigh the only solid portion of the shack. And it held firm,
under an impact that bruised the flying dog and which knocked him
breathless to the fire-streaked ground.

At sound of her mate's approach, Lady had ceased wailing. Lad
could hear her terrified whimpers as she danced frantically about
on the red-hot boards. And the knowledge of her torture drove him
momentarily insane.

Staggering up from his fall, he flung his splendid head back and,
with muzzle to the clouded skies, he tore to shreds the solemn
silences of the spring night with a wolf-howl; hideous in its
savage grief, deafeningly loud.

As though the awesome yell had cleared his brain, he sprang to
his feet amid the stinging embers; steady, alert, calm; with no
hint of despair or of surrender.

His smarting eyes fixed themselves on the single dusty window of