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".