elease the tiny flock from their barnyard fold and send them out to
graze.

Link opened the fold gate, one hand on Chum's collar. Out billowed the
sheep in a ragged scramble. Chum quivered with excitement as the woolly
catapults surged past him. Eagerly he looked up into his master's face,
then back at the tumbling creatures.

"Chum!" spoke Ferris sharply. "Leave 'em be! Get that? LEAVE 'EM BE!"

He tightened his hold on the collar as he gave the command. Chum ceased
to quiver in eagerness and stood still, half puzzled, half grieved by
the man's unwonted tone.

The sheep, at sight and smell of the dog, rushed jostlingly from their
pen and scattered in every direction, through barnyard and garden and
nearer fields. Bleating and stampeding, they ran. Link Ferris blinked
after them, and broke into speech. Loudly and luridly he swore.

This stampede might well mean an hour's running to and fro before the
scattered flock could be herded once more. An hour of panting and
blasphemous pursuit, at the very outset of an overbusy day. And all
because of one worthless dog.

His father had been right. Link saw that--now that it was too late. A
dog had no place on a farm. A poor man could not afford the silly
luxury of a useless pet. With whistle and call Ferris sought to check
the flight of the flock. But, as every farmer knows, there is nothing
else on earth quite so unreasonable and idiotic as a scared sheep. The
familiar summons did not slacken nor swerve the stampede.

The fact that this man had been their protector and friend made no
difference to the idiotic sheep. They were frightened. And, therefore,
the tenuously thin connecting line between them and their human master
had snapped. For the moment they were merely wild animals, and he was a
member of a hostile race--almost as much as was the huge dog that had
caused their fright.

A wistful whine from Chum interrupted Link's volley of swearing. The
dog had noted his master's angry excitement and was seeking to offer
sympathy or help.

But the reminder of Chum's presence did not check Link's wrath at the
unconscious cause of the stampede. He loosed his hold on the collar,
resolving to take out his rage in an unmerciful beating should the dog
seek to chase the fleeing sheep. That would be at least an outlet for
the impotent wrath which Ferris sought to wreak on someone or something.

"Go get 'em then, if you're so set on it!" he howled at the collie,
waving a windm