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It all seemed as vividly real as though she could still feel the friendly contact. On the next morning, Ruloff alone of all the village's population went to work. For it was Labor Day. Ruloff did not believe in holidays, either for himself or for his family.
At her embrace, the collie's tension relaxed. He turned his back on the jabbering Ruloff, and looked pantingly up into the child's excited face. Then, whimpering a little under his breath, he licked her cheek; and made shift to wag his plumed tail in reassurance. After which, having routed the enemy and done what he could to comfort the rescued, Laddie moved heavily over to the veranda.
And, one likes to think, there is no other punishment in the next world so severe as that meted out to the torturers of little children. For this hope's basis there is the solemn warning voiced by the All-pitying Friend of children; a threat which, apparently, was unfamiliar to Ruloff. Down upon the weepingly prostrate Sonya bore the man.
For all his age, Lad was a terrible and terrifying figure as he stood guard over the helpless waif. Ruloff hesitated an instant, taken aback by the apparition. Sonya ceased shrieking. Lad was here to protect her. Over her frightened soul came that former queer sense of safety. She got up, tremblingly, and pressed close to the furry giant who had come to her rescue.
Then, pausing in his climb, he shook his fist down at the collie, who was circling the tree in a vain attempt to find some way of climbing it. Chattering, mouthing, gibbering like a monkey, Ruloff shook an impotent fist at the dog that had treed him; and squalled insults at him and at the hysterically delighted child. Sonya rushed up to Lad, flinging her arms around him and trying to kiss him.
This, and the knowledge that Ruloff would most assuredly punish her clumsiness, made her break out in shrill weeping. Among the cascaded peaches she lay, crying her eyes out. Up the hill toward her scrambled Ruloff; basket on shoulder; yelling abuse better fitted for the ears of a balky mule than for those of a hurt child. "Get up!" he bawled. "Get up, you worthless little cow!
All night, in her sleep, in the stiflingly hot loft of her father's hovel, which served her and the five other Ruloff children as a dormitory, Sonya was faintly aware of that bright memory. Her first waking thought was of the shaggy shoulder pressed so protectingly against her side; and of the reassuring thrust of Lad's muzzle into her cupped palm.
But, yelling with fright, Ruloff fended him off; and twisted and writhed out of reach; bunching his feet under him and, in a second, staggering up and racing for the shelter of the nearest tree. Up the low-stretching branches the man swarmed, until he was well out of reach.
At the hammock, he looked back: Ruloff was shinnying down from the tree; on the far side. All the fight, all the angry zest for torturing, seemed to have gone out of the man. Without so much as glancing toward Sonya or the dog, he made his way, in a wide detour, toward the barn and lunch. Sonya ran up on the veranda after Lad.
So, up the hill, she toiled; at top speed. Ruloff had finished filling another basket, and he prepared to follow her. This completed the morning's work. His lunch-pail awaited him at the barn. With nobody to keep tabs on him, he resolved to steal an extra hour of time, in honor of Labor Day at his employer's expense. Sonya pattered up the rise and around to the corner of the house.
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