Seeing none, he once more started forward.
This was the last meadow, and the farm was at the end of it, and Gregory was quite close to the farm, when suddenly there appeared, right in his path, with a challenging tail in air, a large dog--a collie.
Gregory stopped and the collie stopped, and the two looked at each other carefully.
Gregory remembered all that he had ever heard about collies being treacherous and fierce.
He advanced a step; the collie did not move.
He advanced another step; and then, to his horror, the collie began to advance too, lifting his feet high and dangerously.
Gregory forced himself to say, "Good dog!" but the collie still advanced.
Gregory said, "Poor fellow, then!" and the collie at once did something perfectly awful: he growled.
Gregory had no courage left.

His tongue and lips refused to obey him.
He felt his knees turning to water.
How he wished he had let Mary come too! Dogs always liked her.

Why was it that dogs liked some people and not others?
he asked himself.
Ridiculous! No one liked dogs better than he, if this ass of a collie only knew it.
Meanwhile, the collie, still growling, drew nearer, and Gregory felt himself pricking all over.

Where would it bite him first?
he wondered.
But just as he had given up all hope, a voice called out sharply, "Caesar, come here!" and the collie turned and ran to where a tall, red-faced man was standing.
"What do you want ?" the man then said to Gregory, with equal sharpness.
"You're trespassing." Gregory was frankly crying now--with relief; but he pulled himself together and said he wanted to see the farmer.
"I'm the farmer," said the man.

"What is it ?" Gregory explained what he had come for.
"No," said the farmer, "not on my land." Gregory said that other farmers had said yes.
"I don't care," said the farmer, "I say NO." Gregory longed to ask if there was another way back, but he had not the courage, and he turned and made again for the gate of the bullock meadow.
The bullocks were still near the path, so he climbed softly over the gate, as he feared they might hear him, and crept round by the hedge to the next gate without attracting any notice.
Had he only known, he might have gone safely by the path, for one bullock was saying to another: "There's that little duffer going all that long way out of his course just for fear of us.