As a rule, before going to sleep for the night, Lad used to spend much time in licking those same snowy forepaws into shining cleanliness.

The paws were his one gross vanity; and he wasted more than an hour a day in keeping them spotlessly white.
But tonight he was too depressed to think of anything but the whimpering little dog imprisoned down in the tool-house.
After a while, he fell asleep.
A true watchdog sleeps with all his senses or the very edge of wakefulness.

And when he wakens, he does not waken as do we humans;--yawningly, dazedly, drunk with slumber.

At one moment he is sound asleep.

At the next he is broad awake; with every faculty alert.
So ever it was, with Lad.