ing
into the spread of embers; and he opened his mouth to order Lad back.
But there was not time.

For once, the wise dog took no heed of even the simplest caution. His
lost and adored deities had called him and were awaiting him. That was
all Lad knew or cared. They had come back for him. His horrible vigil
and loneliness and his deadly peril were ended.

Too insanely happy to note where he was treading, he sprang into the
very center of the belt of smoldering coals. His tiny white
forefeet--drenched with icy water--did not remain among them long
enough to feel pain. In two more bounds he had cleared the barrier and
was dancing in crazy excitement around the Mistress and the Master;
patting at them with his scorched feet; licking their eagerly caressing
hands; "talking" in a dozen different keys of rapture, his whimpers and
growls and gurgles running the entire gamut of long-pent-up emotions.

His coat and his feet had, for hours, been immersed in the cold water
of the lake. And, he had fled through the embers at express-train
speed. Scarce a blister marked the hazardous passage. But Lad would not
have cared for all the blisters and burns on earth. His dear gods had
come back to him,--even as he had known they would!

Once more,--and for the thousandth time--they had justified his divine
Faith in them. Nothing else mattered.

CHAPTER IX. Old Dog; New Tricks

A mildewed maxim runs: "You can't teach an old dog new tricks."

Some proverbs live because they are too true to die. Others endure
because they have a smug sound and because nobody has bothered to bury
them. The one about old dogs and new tricks belongs in both categories.
In a sense it is true. In another it is not.

To teach the average elderly dog to sit up and beg, or to roll over
twice, or to do other of the asinine things with which humans stultify
the natural good sense of their canine chums, is as hard as to teach a
sixty-year-old grave-digger to become a musical composer.

But no dog with a full set of brains is ever past learning new things
which are actually needful for him to learn. And, sad to say, many an
old dog, on his own account, picks up odd new accomplishments--exploits
which would never have occurred to him in his early prime. Nobody knows
why. But it has happened, numberless times.

And so it was with Sunnybank Lad.

Laddie had passed his twelfth birthday; when, by some strange freak, he
brought home one day a lace parasol.