he denied, with much fervor. “I was leading up in a persuasive yet scholarly way to my explanation. You knew Bernhardt wasn’t dying. Yet you cried. Mac knows that toad is as harmless as they make them. Yet he is fighting a spectacular duel with it. You entered into the spirit of a play. He’s entering into the spirit of a perilous jungle adventure. You cried because an elderly Frenchwoman draped herself on a sofa and played dead. He is all het up, because he’s endowing that toad with a blend of the qualities of a bear and a charging rhinoceros. That’s the collie of it. Collies are forever inventing and playing thrillingly dramatic games. Just as you and I are always eager to see thrillingly dramatic plays. It isn’t really silly. Or if it is, then what are people who pay to get thrills out of plays they know aren’t true and out of novels that they know are lies? On the level, I think Mac has a bit the best of us.”

“Why doesn’t he bring the sterling drama to a climax by annihilating the toad so we can get past?” she demanded, adding, “Not that I’d let him. That’s why I’m waiting here,[60] while he blocks the path, instead of going around him.”

[60]

“If that’s all you’re waiting for,” he reassured her, “your long wait has been for nothing. No rescue will be needed. Mac will never touch the toad.”

“Does Mac know he won’t, though?”

“He does,” returned Vail, with finality. “Every normal outdoors dog, in early puppyhood, undertakes to bite or pick up a toad. And no dog ever tried it a second time. A zoölogy sharp told me why. He said toads’ skins are covered with some sort of chemical that would make alum taste like sugar, by contrast. It’s horrible stuff, and it’s the toad’s only weapon. No dog ever takes a second chance of torturing his tongue with it. That’s why Mac keeps his mouth shut, every time he noses at the ugly thing. The toad is quite as safe from him as Bernhardt was from dying on the elaborate Camille sofa. Mac knows it. And the toad knows it. If toads know anything. So nobody’s the worse for the drama.... One side there, Mac! You’re a pest.”

At the command, the collie gave over his harrowing assault, and wandered unconcernedly down the path ahead of them, his plumed tail[61] gently waving, his tulip ears alert for some new adventure.

[61]

“Remember old Chubb Beasley?” asked Thaxton. “He lived down on the Lee Road.”

“I do, 

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