ture of loneliness and the new interest in his home,
he felt less the need for wet conviviality and for drugging his fits of
melancholy.

The memory of Chum's grieving repulsion somehow stuck in Ferris's mind.
And it served as a brake, more than once, to his tavernward impulses.
Two or three times, also, when Link's babyish gusts of destructive bad
temper boiled to the surface at some setback or annoyance, much the
same wonderingly distressed look would creep into the collie's
glance--a look as of one who is revolted by a dear friend's failure to
play up to form. And to his own amused surprise, Ferris found himself
trying to curb these outbursts.

To the average human, a dog is only a dog. To Ferris, this collie of
his was the one intimate friend of his life. Unversed in the ways of
dogs, he overestimated Chum, of course, and valued his society and his
good opinion far more highly than the average man would have done.
Thus, perhaps, his desire to stand well in the dog's esteem had in it
more that was commendable than ludicrous. Or perhaps not.

If the strange association did much for Link, it did infinitely more
for Chum. He had found a master who had no social interests in life
beyond his dog, and who could and did devote all his scant leisure
hours to association with that dog. Chum's sagacity and individuality
blossomed under such intensive tutelage, as might that of a clever
child who is the sole pupil of its teacher.

Link did not seek to make a trick dog of his pet. He taught Chum to
shake hands, to lie down, to "speak" and one or two more simple
accomplishments. It was by talking constantly to the collie, as to a
fellow human, that he broadened the dog's intelligence. Chum grew to
know and to interpret every inflection of Ferris's voice, every simple
word he spoke and every gesture of his.

Apart from mere good fellowship the dog was proving of great use on the
farm. Morning and night, Chum drove the sheep and the cattle to their
respective pastures and then back to the barnyard at night. At the
entrances to the pastures, now, Ferris had rigged up rude gates with
"bar catch" fastenings--simple contrivances which closed by gravity and
whose bars the dog was readily taught to shove upward with his nose.

It was thus a matter of only a few days to teach Chum to open or close
the light gates. This trick has been taught to countless collies, of
course, in Great Britain, and to many here. But Link did not know t