stiff and chilled, but he was rested and had had his sleep, and he was just as ready for fun as he always was.  He didn’t understand that sneaking.  Why they didn’t all jump and race and bark as he wanted to, he couldn’t see; but he was too polite to do otherwise than as they did, and so he sneaked after them; and one would have thought he knew, as well as the rest, the hellish mission on which they were bent.

Out of the woods they went, across a little branch, and there the big cur lay flat again in the grass.  A faint bleat came from the hill-side beyond, where Satan could see another woods—­and then another bleat, and another.  And the cur began to creep again, like a snake in the grass; and the others crept too, and little Satan crept, though it was all a sad mystery to him.  Again the cur lay still, but only long enough for Satan to see curious, fat, white shapes above him—­and then, with a blood-curdling growl, the big brute dashed forward.  Oh, there was fun in them after all!  Satan barked joyfully.  Those were some new playmates—­those fat, white, hairy things up there; and Satan was amazed when, with frightened snorts, they fled in every direction.  But this was a new game, perhaps, of which he knew nothing, and as did the rest, so did Satan.  He picked out one of the white things and fled barking after it.  It was a little fellow that he was after, but little as he was, Satan might never have caught up, had not the sheep got tangled in some brush.  Satan danced about him in mad glee, giving him a playful nip at his wool and springing back to give him another nip, and then away again.  Plainly, he was not going to bite back, and when the sheep struggled itself tired and sank down in a heap, Satan came close and licked him, and as he was very warm and woolly, he lay down and snuggled up against him for a while, listening to the turmoil that was going on around him.  And as he listened, he got frightened.

If this was a new game it was certainly a very peculiar one—­the wild rush, the bleats of terror, gasps of agony, and the fiendish growls of attack and the sounds of ravenous gluttony.  With every hair bristling, Satan rose and sprang from the woods—­and stopped with a fierce tingling of the nerves that brought him horror and fascination.  One of the white shapes lay still before him.  There was a great steaming red splotch on the snow, and a strange odor in the air that made him dizzy; but only for a moment.  Another white shape rushed by.  A tawny streak followed, and then, in a patch of moonlight, Satan saw the yellow cur with his teeth fastened in the throat of his moaning playmate.  Like lightning Satan sprang at the cur, who tossed him ten feet away and went back to his awful work.  Again Satan leaped, but just then a shout rose behind him, and the cur leaped too as though a bolt of lightning had crashed over him, and, no longer noticing Satan or sheep, began to quiver with fright and slink away.  Another shout rose from another direction—­another from another.