new him to fight, to snap at anything, or to get angry; after
lovableness, it was politeness. If he wanted something to eat, if he
wanted Dinnie to go to bed, if he wanted to get out of the door, he
would beg--beg prettily on his haunches, his little red tongue out and
his funny little paws hanging loosely. Indeed, it was just because Satan
was so little less than human, I suppose, that old Satan began to be
afraid he might have a soul. So the wicked old namesake with the Hoofs
and Horns laid a trap for little Satan, and, as he is apt to do, he
began laying it early--long, indeed, before Christmas.

When Dinnie started to kindergarten that autumn, Satan found that there
was one place where he could never go. Like the lamb, he could not go to
school; so while Dinnie was away, Satan began to make friends. He would
bark, "Howdy-do?" to every dog that passed his gate. Many stopped to rub
noses with him through the fence--even Hugo the mastiff, and nearly all,
indeed, except one strange-looking dog that appeared every morning at
precisely nine o'clock and took his stand on the corner. There he would
lie patiently until a funeral came along, and then Satan would see him
take his place at the head of the procession; and then he would march
out to the cemetery and back again. Nobody knew where he came from nor
where he went, and Uncle Carey called him the "funeral dog" and said he
was doubtless looking for his dead master. Satan even made friends with
a scrawny little yellow dog that followed an old drunkard around--a dog
that, when his master fell in the gutter, would go and catch a policeman
by the coat-tail, lead the officer to his helpless master, and spend the
night with him in jail.

By and by Satan began to slip out of the house at night, and Uncle Billy
said he reckoned Satan had "jined de club"; and late one night, when he
had not come in, Uncle Billy told Uncle Carey that it was "powerful
slippery and he reckoned they'd better send de kerridge after him"--an
innocent remark that made Uncle Carey send a boot after the old butler,
who fled chuckling down the stairs, and left Uncle Carey chuckling in
his room.

Satan had "jined de club"--the big club--and no dog was too lowly in
Satan's eyes for admission; for no priest ever preached the brotherhood
of man better than Satan lived it--both with man and dog. And thus he
lived it that Christmas night--to his sorrow.

Christmas Eve had been gloomy--the gloomiest of Satan'