lifting his feet with the regularity and slowness of the vibrations of a seconds pendulum, as if counting and measuring one-two-three, holding himself steady against the gusty wind, and giving separate attention to each little step, he gained the foot of the cliff, while I was on my knees leaning over to give him a lift should he succeed in getting within reach of my arm.  Here he halted in dead silence, and it was here I feared he might fail, for dogs are poor climbers.  I had no cord.  If I had had one, I would have dropped a noose over his head and hauled him up.  But while I was thinking whether an available cord might be made out of clothing, he was looking keenly into the series of notched steps and finger-holds I had made, as if counting them, and fixing the position of each one of them in his mind.  Then suddenly up he came in a springy rush, hooking his paws into the steps and notches so quickly that I could not see how it was done, and whizzed past my head, safe at last!

And now came a scene!  “Well done, well done, little boy!  Brave boy!” I cried, trying to catch and caress him; but he would not be caught.  Never before or since have I seen anything like so passionate a revulsion from the depths of despair to exultant, triumphant, uncontrollable joy.  He flashed and darted hither and thither as if fairly demented, screaming and shouting, swirling round and round in giddy loops and circles like a leaf in a whirlwind, lying down, and rolling over and over, sidewise and heels over head, and pouring forth a tumultuous flood of hysterical cries and sobs and gasping mutterings.  When I ran up to him to shake him, fearing he might die of joy, he flashed off two or three hundred yards, his feet in a mist of motion; then, turning suddenly, came back in a wild rush and launched himself at my face, almost knocking me down, all the time screeching and screaming and shouting as if saying, “Saved! saved! saved!” Then away again, dropping suddenly at times with his feet in the air, trembling and fairly sobbing.  Such passionate emotion was enough to kill him.  Moses’ stately song of triumph after escaping the Egyptians and the Red Sea was nothing to it.  Who could have guessed the capacity of the dull, enduring little fellow for all that most stirs this mortal frame?  Nobody could have helped crying with him!

But there is nothing like work for toning down excessive fear or joy.  So I ran ahead, calling him in as gruff a voice as I could command to come on and stop his nonsense, for we had far to go and it would soon be dark.  Neither of us feared another trial like this.  Heaven would surely count one enough for a lifetime.  The ice ahead was gashed by thousands of crevasses, but they were common ones.  The joy of deliverance burned in us like fire, and we ran without fatigue, every muscle with immense rebound glorying in its strength.  Stickeen flew across everything in his way, and not till dark did he settle into his normal fox-like trot.  At last the cloudy