A strange thing then happened.  The other dogs became suddenly quiet, and every eye was on the yellow cur.  He sniffed the air once or twice, gave two or three peculiar low growls, and all those dogs except Satan lost the civilization of centuries and went back suddenly to the time when they were wolves and were looking for a leader.  The cur was Lobo for that little pack, and after a short parley, he lifted his nose high and started away without looking back, while the other dogs silently trotted after him.  With a mystified yelp, Satan ran after them.  The cur did not take the turnpike, but jumped the fence into a field, making his way by the rear of houses, from which now and then another dog would slink out and silently join the band.  Every one of them Satan nosed most friendlily, and to his great joy the funeral dog, on the edge of the town, leaped into their midst.  Ten minutes later the cur stopped in the midst of some woods, as though he would inspect his followers.  Plainly, he disapproved of Satan, and Satan kept out of his way.  Then he sprang into the turnpike and the band trotted down it, under flying black clouds and shifting bands of brilliant moonlight.  Once, a buggy swept past them.  A familiar odor struck Satan’s nose, and he stopped for a moment to smell the horse’s tracks; and right he was, too, for out at her grandmother’s Dinnie refused to be comforted, and in that buggy was Uncle Billy going back to town after him.

Snow was falling.  It was a great lark for Satan.  Once or twice, as he trotted along, he had to bark his joy aloud, and each time the big cur gave him such a fierce growl that he feared thereafter to open his jaws.  But he was happy for all that, to be running out into the night with such a lot of funny friends and not to know or care where he was going.  He got pretty tired presently, for over hill and down hill they went, at that unceasing trot, trot, trot!  Satan’s tongue began to hang out.  Once he stopped to rest, but the loneliness frightened him and he ran on after them with his heart almost bursting.  He was about to lie right down and die, when the cur stopped, sniffed the air once or twice, and with those same low growls, led the marauders through a rail fence into the woods, and lay quietly down.  How Satan loved that soft, thick grass, all snowy that it was!  It was almost as good as his own bed at home.  And there they lay—­how long, Satan never knew, for he went to sleep and dreamed that he was after a rat in the barn at home; and he yelped in his sleep, which made the cur lift his big yellow head and show his fangs.  The moving of the half-breed shepherd and the funeral dog waked him at last, and Satan got up.  Half crouching, the cur was leading the way toward the dark, still woods on top of the hill, over which the Star of Bethlehem was lowly sinking, and under which lay a flock of the gentle creatures that seemed to have been almost sacred to the Lord of that Star.  They were in sore need of a watchful