It was suicide. But, oh, it was a glorious suicide! Compared to it the love-sacrifices of a host of Antonys and Abelards and Romeos are but petty things. Indeed, its nearest approach in real life was perhaps Moore's idiotically beautiful boast Through the fiery furnace your steps I'll pursue;To find you and save you:--or perish there, too!
The great dog gathered himself for the insane hero-deed. His shaggy body whizzed across the scarlet pattern of embers; then shot into the air. Straight as a flung spear he flew; hurtling through the flame-fringed billows of smoke.
Against the shut window he crashed, with the speed of a catapult.
Against it he crashed; and clean through it, into the hell of smoke and fire and strangulation inside the shack.
His head had smashed the strong cross-piece of wood and dried putty and had crumpled it like so much wet paper. His giant shoulders had ripped the window-frame clean of its screws. Into the burning room spun Lad, amid a hail of broken glass and splintered wood.
To the fire-eaten floor he was hurled, close to his cowering and whimpering mate. He reeled to his feet, and stood there, shoulder to shoulder with Lady. His work was done.
And, yet, it was not in Sunnybank Lad's nature to be such a fool as is the usual melodrama hero. True, he had come to share Lady's fate, if he could not rescue her. Yet, he would not submit tamely to death, until every resource had been tried.
He glanced at the door. Already he had found by harsh experience that his strength availed nothing in the battering down of those strong panels. And he peered up, through the swirling red smoke, toward the oblong of window, whereby he had made his tumultuous entrance to the death-trap.
Again, he must have known how hopeless of achievement was the feat he was about to try. But, as ever, mere obstacles were not permitted to stand in Lad's way.
Wheeling, he seized Lady by the nape of the neck. With a mighty heave, he swung her clear of the hot floor. Gathering all his fierce strength into one sublime effort, he sprang upward toward the window; his mate hanging from his iron jaws.
Yes, it was a ridiculous thing to attempt. No dog, with thrice Lad's muscular strength, could have accomplished the impossibility of springing out through that high, narrow window, carrying a weight of fifty pounds between his teeth.
Lad's leap did not carry him half the distance he had aimed for.
Back to the floor he fell, Lady with him.
Maddened by pain and by choking and by stark terror, Lady had not the wit to realize what Lad was attempting. All she knew was that he had seized her roughly by the neck, and had leaped in air with her; and had then brought her bangingly down upon the torturing hot boards. And her panic was augmented by delirious rage.
At Lad's face she flew, snarling murderously. One slash of her curving eyetooth laid bare his cheek. Then she drove for his throat.
Lad stood stock still. His only move was to interpose his shaggy shoulder to her ravening jaws. And, deep into the fur and skin and flesh of his shoulder her furious teeth shore their way.
It would have been child's play for him to have shaken her off and to have leaped to safety, alone, through the sash-less window.
Yet he stood where he was; his sorrowful eyes looking tenderly down upon the maddened youngster who was tearing into him so ferociously.
And that was the picture the Master beheld; as he flung open the door and blinked gaspingly through the smoke for the dog he had locked in.
Brought out of bed, on the jump, by Lad's unearthly wolf howl, he had smelt the smoke and had run out to investigate. But, not until he unbarred the tool-house door did he guess that Lady was not the burning shack's only prisoner.
"It'll be another six months before your wonderful coat grows out again, Laddie dear," observed the Mistress, next day, as she renewed the smelly wet cloths on Lad's burned and glass-cut body.
"Dr. Hopper says so. But he says the rest of you will be as well as ever, inside of a fortnight. And he says Lady will be well, before you will. But, honestly, you'll never look as beautiful, again, to me, as you do this very minute. He--he said you look like a scarecrow. But you don't. You look like a--like a--a-What gorgeously splendid thing DOES he look like, dear?" she appealed to her husband.
"He looks," replied the Master, after deep thought, "he looks like LAD. And that's about the highest praise I know how to give him;--or give to anyone."
