"It seemed to me I had only slept a moment when I began to dream of icebergs, and then I was waked up suddenly by some one's pulling all the bedclothes off from me. Then a hand snatched up Lassie, and before I could realize what was happening Lady Jane's voice, very fresh and wide-awake, said: 'Now, Tom, don't feel badly, but you know I must have Lassie, and I've come after her. I'll send you something nice in her place, my boy,' and before I could say a word she was out of the door and my little dog was gone.
"There was no time for thinking. Like a flash I was out of bed and into my clothes and rushing along the road to the pier where Lady Jane's boat lay, trying to keep back the big tears as I went. But it was too late. Just as I came up to the landing the boat sailed slowly out of the harbor, and there in the stern was Lady Jane standing, waving her handkerchief to the people on the shore, and under one arm I could see a little shaggy head and a pair of bright eyes that seemed to look at me with a sad farewell look, and my little dog went sailing away on the unknown sea, and I burst into tears with my heart breaking, for I never expected to see her again."
"And did you?" I asked, eagerly. "Is this dog--"
"Ah, that's the strange part of the story," said Mr. MacAlpine. "Janie is the one who can tell that. Janie, tell Aunt Katharine the rest."
Janie's rosy Scotch face dimpled, and smiling up at her father, she went on:
"Well, you know that was always our favorite story, about when papa was a little boy in the Hebrides, and about the little dog he lost, but we always wanted to hear the end of it. We wanted to know what became of Lassie after Lady Jane took her, and if the Queen liked her, and if she did her tricks; but Lady Jane died soon after she went back to Balmoral, and papa's father went to Canada and took papa with him, and so we could only guess about Lassie, and make papa make up what happened to her.
"And then one time mamma and Isa and Fédie and I were going home from England, and mamma and the maid were so seasick they had to stay down in the cabin, but we children sat in steamer chairs on the deck, so miserable, and with nothing to do to amuse ourselves. And then a little bit of a dog that belonged to the lady sitting in a chair next ours jumped down from her lap and came over and stood in front of us, and stood up on her hind legs and began to sneeze. We all began to laugh, and then we said how exactly she was like papa's little dog that he used to tell us about, and she used to sneeze too, and they were the only dogs we had ever heard of that did. And then we said we wished we knew what the dog's name was, and the lady it belonged to said it was Lassie, and then we couldn't help but cry out,'Oh, how strange!' Then the lady asked us what was strange, and we told her about our Lassie, and she told us about her Lassie, and we found out that hers was the granddaughter of ours. And this lady, who had been one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting herself, could remember when Lady Jane brought Lassie there.