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 that. 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.