Yet, barely three days later, Titus Romaine bore down upon The Place, before breakfast, breathing threatenings and complaining of slaughter.
He was waiting on the veranda in blasphemous converse with The Place's foreman, when the Master came out. At Titus's heels stood his "hired man"--a huge and sullen person named Schwartz, who possessed a scarce-conquered accent that fitted the name.
"Well!" orated Romaine, in glum greeting, as he sighted the Master. "Well, I guessed right! He done it, after all! He done it. We all but caught him, red-handed. Got away with four of my best sheep! Four of 'em. The cur!"
"What are you talking about?" demanded the Master, as the Mistress, drawn by the visitor's plangent tones, joined the veranda-group. "'Bout that ugly big dog of your'n!" answered Romaine. "I knew what he'd do, if he got the chance. I knew it, when I saw him runnin' my poor sheep, last week. I warned you then. The two of you. An' now he's done it!"
"Done what?" insisted the Master, impatient of the man's noise and fury.
"What dog?" asked the Mistress, at the same time.
"Are you talking about Lad? If you are----"
"I'm talkin' about your big brown collie cur!" snorted Titus. "He's gone an' killed four of my best sheep. Did it in the night an' early this mornin'. My man here caught him at the last of 'em, an' drove him off, just as he was finishin' the poor critter. He got away with the rest of 'em."
"Nonsense!" denied the Master. "You're talking rot. Lad wouldn't touch a sheep. And----"
"That's what all folks say when their dogs or their children is charged with doin' wrong!" scoffed Romaine. "But this time it won't do no good to----"
"You say this happened last night?" interposed the Mistress.
"Yes, it did. Last night an' early in the mornin', too. Schwartz, here----"
"But Lad sleeps in the house, every night," objected the Mistress. "He sleeps under the piano, in the music room. He has slept there every night since he was a puppy. The maid who dusts the downstairs rooms before breakfast lets him out, when she begins work. So he----"
"Bolster it up any way you like!" broke in Romaine. "He was out last night, all right. An' early this morning, too."
"Five o'clock," volunteered Schwartz, speaking up, from behind his employer. "I know, because that's the time I get up. I went out, first thing, to open the barnyard gate and drive the sheep to the pasture. First thing I saw was that big dog growling over a sheep he'd just killed. He saw me, and he wiggled out through the barnyard bars--same way he had got in. Then I counted the sheep. One was dead,--the one he had just killed--and three were gone. We've been looking for their bodies ever since, and we can't find them."