hat.
He felt like another Columbus or Edison, at his own genius in devising
such a scheme; and he felt an inordinate pride in Chum for learning the
simple exploit so quickly.

Of old, Link had fretted at the waste of time in taking out the sheep
and cows and in going for them at night. This dual duty was now a thing
of the past. Chum did the work for him, and reveled in the excitement
of it. Chum also--from watching Link perform the task twice--had
learned to drive the chickens out of the garden patches whenever any of
them chanced to stray thither, and to scurry into the cornfield with
harrowing barks of ejection when a flock of crows hovered hungrily
above the newly-planted crops.

All of which was continual amusement to Chum, and a tremendous help to
his owner.

Link, getting over his initial wonder at the dog's progress, began to
take these accomplishments as a matter of course. Indeed, he was
sometimes perplexed at the otherwise sagacious dog's limitations of
brain.

For example, Chum loved the fire on the chilly evenings such as creep
over the mountain region even in midsummer. He would watch Link
replenish the blaze with fresh sticks whenever it sank low.

Yet, left to himself, he would let the fire go out, and he never knew
enough to pick up a stick in his mouth and lay it on the embers. This
lack of reasoning powers in his pet perplexed Ferris.

Link could not understand why the same wit which sent Chum half a mile,
of his own accord, in search of one missing sheep out of the entire
flock, should not tell him that a fire is kept alive by the putting of
wood on it.

In search of some better authority on dog intelligence, Link paid his
first visit to Hampton's little public library. There, shamefacedly, he
asked the boy in charge for some books about dogs. The youth looked
idly for a few minutes in a crossindex file. Then he brought forth a
tome called "The Double Garden," written by someone who was evidently
an Eyetalian or Polack or other foreigner, because he bore the
grievously un-American name of "Maeterlinck".

"This is all I can find about dogs," explained the boy, passing the
linen-jacketed little volume across the counter to Link. "First story
in it is an essay on 'Our Friend, the Dog,' the index says. Want it?"

That evening, by his kitchen lamp, Ferris read laboriously the Belgian
philosopher's dog essay. He read it aloud--as he had taken to thinking
aloud--for Chum's benefit. And there wer