And a spot on the veranda, under the wide hammock, promised coolness.

Thither he went; walking more and more slowly.
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.

As he laid himself heavily down, under the hammock, she sat on the floor beside him; taking his head in her lap, stroking its silken fur and beginning to sing to him in that high-pitched crooning little voice of hers.
Laddie loved this.