And David barked twice.
"Oh," groaned Jonathan, "that's what my worrying meant! I always find there's reason for it when I have to worry. They'll take you, David—see if they don't! Your poor old master is too poor to help it. . . . I should think you'd be ashamed of him, David. Ain't you?"
By this time the dog was whimpering like a child. He stood up and put his fore paws about the old man's neck and began to kiss passionately.
"Yes or no?" quavered Jonathan. "Ashamed of me, David? Yes or no?"
Then David punctuated the air with staccato barks, single and sharp—No! No! No!
"If I were the Almighty," protested Jonathan Perch, "or if I were the Town, I wouldn't do such a thing, not if I died for it, David!"
He lifted his trembling hands from the dog's neck and put the tips of his fingers together (as one sees them in the great picture). Was he praying to God? or to the Town? In the mind of the old village pensioner the two may have been a little confused.
"Say your prayers, David," commanded Jonathan Perch. "Guess they're worth as much as most Christians'. Maybe He's the kind of a God would hear a dog's prayer—no telling, David. If you don't want 'em to take you away from your master, say your prayers, sir!"
The dog dropped, put his fore paws upon his master's knee, and his chin upon them. The old man still sat with his trembling hands raised—the tips of the fingers put together. Tears were storming down his cheeks. He spoke in a low and solemn tone.
"Lord," said Jonathan Perch, "I haven't got anything but this dog. I'm convinced they're going to take him away from me. I can't bear it—I can't bear it anyway in the world. Lord, I'm a poor old fellow. Life has gone pretty hard. It's beaten me. I'm not enough of a man now to pay his taxes. I haven't got anybody else to talk to but this collie and You—that is, Thee. I'm rather a lonesome old man. I couldn't begin to tell You—I mean Thee,—Lord, how I feel about my dog David. . . . I haven't been much of a praying man. I don't excuse myself. That's my fault, too. I don't know how to express myself . . . to a Person like You—Thee. But if there is any Thou, Lord God who made man-love and dog-love . . . it appears to me as if some attention would be paid to this matter—"Jonathan paused. "Amen," he said, abruptly.
At the sound of the word David sprang from his knees (as he had been taught), and looking now quite happy, stood to his hind feet once more and replaced his arms about his master's neck. As he did so he kissed the tears from the old man's wet cheek.
The two were in this position when a clattering team stopped in front of the house. Its driver, a man in a soiled seersucker coat, threw the reins over the dashboard of the wagon, and came up the walk towards the porch with an impatient step.
At the sound of the first advancing footfalls a portentous change took possession of the collie. His hair bristled; his ears shot backwards; he planted himself before his master, fore paws firmly fixed, back arched, head lowered; in his eyes a slumbering rage, like that of a man with a cherished enmity, waked fiercely. He made no effort to approach the visitor, either in greeting or in hostility; the dog had the attitude of a garrison.
"Hello!" cried the man in the soiled coat. "I've come after your dog."
David's upper lip wrinkled wickedly; he made no other reply.
"The blamed critter got away from me," complained he of the seersucker. "He chewed his rope and put, lickity-split. The Town don't allow that sorter thing. When I get a critter into my Pound I expect him to stay there. Come here, you darned deserter, you! You won't get away this time, you bet!"
From some hitherto unexplored depth in David's throat issued a formidable sound,—he was not a growling dog; neither he nor his master knew that he was capable of a roar like that.
"Better be a little careful," quavered Jonathan Perch. "I never knew him do anybody any harm—but he doesn't seem to like you exactly. I can't answer for the consequences if you got too near."
David echoed this feeble protest with another mighty roar; this one came from
