Sigurd Our Golden Collie, and Other Comrades of the Road

by Katharine Lee Bates · English · Gutenberg #33134 · 424,174 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Sigurd Our Golden Collie, and Other Comrades of the Road

Author: Katharine Lee Bates

Release date: July 11, 2010 [eBook #33134]
Most recently updated: January 6, 2021

Language: English

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SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE
AND
OTHER COMRADES OF THE ROAD

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

FAIRY GOLD
THE RETINUE AND OTHER POEMS

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

[Illustration: JOY OF LIFE AND SIGURD]

SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE

AND

OTHER COMRADES _of the_ ROAD

By KATHARINE LEE BATES

NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 FIFTH AVENUE

_First printing November, 1919_
_Second printing March, 1920_

Printed in the United States of America

Transcriber's Note: In this e-text letters with macrons are preceded by
an equal sign and enclosed in brackets, such as [=a] and [=o].

INSCRIBED

THE ONE WHOM SIGURD LOVED BEST

A few of the sketches and poems in this volume have already appeared
in print. Acknowledgments are due to _The Christian Endeavor World_,
_Life_, _The Outlook_ and _Scribner's Magazine_.

CONTENTS

SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE

PAGE

_Vigi_ 3

PUPPYHOOD 5

_The Dogs of Bethlehem_ 28

GROWING UP 30

_Laddie_ 55

THE CALL OF THE BLOOD 57

_Sigurd's Meditations in the Church Porch_ 89

ADVENTURES 90

_The Heart of a Dog_ 120

HOME STUDIES 121

_The Pleaders_ 144

COLLEGE CAREER 146

_To Sigurd_ 174

FAREWELLS 177

_To Joy-of-Life_ 215

OTHER COMRADES OF THE ROAD

_The Pinegrove Path_ 218

ROBIN HOOD 219

_Why the Spire Fell_ 246

AN EASTER CHICK 248

_How Birds Were Made_ 270

TAKA AND KOMA 272

_Warbler Weather_ 288

SUMMER RESIDENTS AT A WISCONSIN LAKE. BY KATHARINE
COMAN 290

_The Jester_ 304

EMILIUS 305

_Hudson's Cat_ 322

CATASTROPHES 324

_To Hamlet_ 349

HAMLET AND POLONIUS 350

SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE
AND
OTHER COMRADES OF THE ROAD

SIGURD OUR GOLDEN COLLIE

VIGI

Wisest of dogs was Vigi, a tawny-coated hound
That King Olaf, warring over green hills of Ireland, found;
His merry Norse were driving away a mighty herd
For feasts upon the dragonships, when an isleman dared a word:

"From all those stolen hundreds, well might ye spare my score."
"Ay, take them," quoth the gamesome king, "but not a heifer more.
Choose out thine own, nor hinder us; yet choose without a slip."
The isleman laughed and whistled, his finger at his lip.

Oh, swift the bright-eyed Vigi went darting through the herd
And singled out his master's neat with a nose that never erred,
And drave the star-marked twenty forth, to the wonder of the king,
Who bought the hound right honestly, at the price of a broad gold ring.

If the herddog dreamed of an Irish voice and of cattle on the hill,
He told it not to Olaf the King, whose will was Vigi's will,
But followed him far in faithful love and bravely helped him win
His famous fight with Thorir Hart and Raud, the wizard Finn.

Above the clamor and the clang shrill sounded Vigi's bark,
And when the groaning ship of Raud drew seaward to the dark,
And Thorir Hart leapt to the land, bidding his rowers live
Who could, Olaf and Vigi strained hard on the fugitive.

'Twas Vigi caught the runner's heel and stayed the windswift flight
Till Olaf's well-hurled spear had changed the day to endless night
For Thorir Hart, but not before his sword had stung the hound,
Whom the heroes bore on shield to ship, all grieving for his wound.

Now proud of heart was Vigi to be borne to ship on shield,
And many a day thereafter, when the bitter thrust was healed,
Would the dog leap up on the Vikings and coax with his Irish wit
Till 'mid laughter a shield was leveled, and Vigi rode on it.

PUPPYHOOD

"Only the envy was, that it lasted not still, or, now it is past,
cannot by imagination, much less description, be recovered to a
part of that spirit it had in the gliding by."

--Jonson's _Masque of Hymen_.

Sigurd was related to Vigi only by the line of Scandinavian literature.
The Lady of Cedar Hill was enjoying the long summer daylights and
marvelous rainbows of Norway, when word reached her that her livestock
had been increased by the advent of ten puppies, and back there came
for them all, by return mail, heroic names straight out of that
splendid old saga of _Burnt Njal_.

But this is not the beginning of the story. Indeed, Sigurd's story
probably emerges from a deeper distance than the story of mankind.
Millions of glad creatures, his tawny ancestors, ranged the Highlands,
slowly giving their wild hearts to the worship of man, and left no
pedigree. The utmost of our knowledge only tells us that Sigurd's sire,
the rough-coated collie Barwell Ralph (pronounced R[=a]fe), born
September 3, 1894, was the son of Heather Ralph, a purple name with
wind and ripples in it, himself the son of the sonorous Stracathro
Ralph, whose parents were Christopher, a champion of far renown, and
Stracathro Fancy; and of lovely Apple Blossom, offspring of Metchley
Wonder and Grove Daisy. Ralph's mother of blessed memory was Aughton
Bessie; her parents were Edgbarton Marvel, son of that same champion
Christopher and Sweet Marie, and Wellesbourne Ada, in proudest Scotch
descent from Douglas and Lady.

Sigurd's mother, Trapelo Dora, born May 16, 1900, was also a sable and
white rough collie. Her sire, Barwell Masterpiece, son of Rightaway and
Caermarther Lass, had for dashing grandsires Finsbury Pilot and
Ringleader, and for gentle grandams, Miss Purdue and Jane. Her mother,
Barwell Queenie, came of the great lineage of Southport Perfection and
numbered among her ancestors a Beauty, a Princess and a Barwell Bess.

Those ten puppies, poor innocents, had something to live up to.

But their sire, Ralph, cared nothing for his distinguished progenitors,
not even for that prize grandmother who had sold for eight hundred
pounds, in comparison with the Lady of Cedar Hill, whom he frankly
adored. His most blissful moments were those in which he was allowed to
sit up on the lounge beside her, his paw in her palm, his head on her
shoulder, his brown eyes rolling up to her face with a look of liquid
ecstasy. He had been the guardian of Cedar Hill several years when Dora
arrived. Shipped from those same Surrey kennels in which Ralph uttered
his first squeal, her long journey over sea and land had been a
fearsome experience. When the expressman dumped a travelworn box,
labeled _Live Dog_, in the generous country house hall, and proceeded
with some nervousness to knock off the slats, the assembled household
grouped themselves behind the most reassuring pieces of furniture for
protection against the outrush of a ferocious beast. But the delicate
little collie that shot forth was herself in such terror that even the
waiting dish of warm milk and bread, into which she splashed at once,
could not allay her panic. From room to room she raced, hiding under
sofas and behind screens, finding nothing that gave her peace, not even
when she came up against a long mirror and fronted her own reflection,
another scared little collie, which she tried to kiss with a puzzled
tongue against the glass. Then in sauntered the lordly Ralph, whose
indignant growl at the intruder died in his astonished throat as Dora
confidingly flung herself upon him, leaping up and clinging to his
well-groomed neck with grimy forelegs quivering for joy. Ralph was a
dog who prided himself on his respectability. Affronted, shocked, he
shook off this impudent young hussy, but homesick little Dora would not
be repelled. Here, at last, was something she recognized, something
that belonged to her lost world of the kennels. Let Ralph be as surly
as he might, he had her perfect confidence from the outset, while the
winsome Lady of Cedar Hill had to coax for days before Dora would make
the first timid response to these strange overtures of human
friendship.

As for Ralph, he decided to tolerate the nuisance and in course of time
found her gypsy pranks amusing, even although she treated him with
increasing levity. As he took his prolonged siesta, she would frisk
about him, biting first one ear and then the other, till at last he
would rise in magnificent menace and go chasing after her, his
middle-aged dignity melting from him in the fun of the frolic, till his
antics outcapered her own.

Dora's wits were brighter than his. If the Lady of Cedar Hill, after
tossing a ball several times to the further end of the hall, for them
to dash after in frantic emulation and bring back to her, only made a
feint of throwing it, Ralph would hunt and hunt through the far corners
of the room, while Dora, soon satisfying herself that the ball was not
there, would dance back again and nose about the hands and pockets of
her mistress, evidently concluding that the ball had not been thrown.
Or if a door were closed upon them, Ralph would scratch long and
furiously at its lower edge, while Dora, finding such efforts futile,
would spring up and strike with her paw at the knob.

The date made momentous by the arrival of the ten puppies was August
20, 1902. The Lady of Cedar Hill, home from the Norland, found Dora
full of the prettiest pride in her fuzzy babies, while Ralph, stalking
about in jealous disgust, did his best to convey the impression that
those troublesome absurdities were in no way related to him. This was
not so easy, for they, one and all, were smitten with admiration of
their august father and determination to follow in his steps. No sooner
did Ralph, after casting one glare of contempt upon his family, stroll
off nonchalantly toward the famous Maze, the Mecca of all the children
in the neighboring factory town, than a line of eager puppies went
waddling after. Glancing uneasily back, Ralph would give vent to a
fierce paternal snarl, whereat squat on their stomachs would grovel the
train, every puppy wriggling all over with delicious fright. But no
sooner did Ralph proceed, with an attempt to resume his careless
bachelor poise, than again he found those ten preposterous puppies
panting along in a wavy procession at his very heels.

Only one of the puppies failed to thrive. Fragile little Kari,
inappropriately named for one of the most terrible of the Vikings, died
at the end of three months. But Helgi and Helga, Hauskuld and
Hildigunna, Hrut, Unna and Flosi, Gunnar and Njal, waxed in size,
activity and naughtiness until, in self-defense, the Lady of Cedar Hill
began to give them away to her fortunate friends. Joy-of-Life was
invited over to make an early choice. As Wellesley is not far from
Cedar Hill, whose mistress she dearly loved, she went again and again,
studying the youngsters with characteristic earnestness. They were
nearly full-grown before she drove me over to confirm her election. The
dogs were called up to meet us, and the lawn before the house looked to
my bewildered gaze one white and golden blur of cavorting collies.

"Are they all here?" I asked, after vain efforts to count the heads in
that whirl of perpetual motion.

"All but the barn dog," replied the Lady of Cedar Hill. "He is kept
chained for the present, until he gets wonted to his humble sphere, but
we will go down and call on him."

He saw us first. An excited bark made me aware of a young collie,
almost erect in the barn door, tugging madly against his chain. The
Lady of Cedar Hill, with a loving laugh, ran forward to release him.
His gambol of gratitude nearly knocked her down, but before she had
recovered her balance he was too far away for rebuke, romping,
bounding, wheeling about the meadow, such a glorious image of wild
grace and rapturous freedom that our hearts gladdened as we looked.

"But he is the most beautiful of all," I exclaimed.

"Oh, no," said the instructed Lady of Cedar Hill, "not from the
blue-ribbon point of view." And she went on to explain that Njal, the
biggest of the nine, was quite too big for a collie of such
distinguished pedigree. His happy body, gleaming pure gold in the sun,
with its snowy, tossing ruff, was both too tall and too long. His
white-tipped tail was too luxuriantly splendid. The cock of his shining
ears was not in the latest kennel style. His honest muzzle was a trifle
blunt. He was, in short, lacking in various fine points of collie
elegance, and so, while his dainty, aristocratic brothers and sisters
were destined to be the ornaments of gentle homes, Njal was relegated
to a life of service, in care of the cattle, and to that end had been
for the month past kept in banishment at the barn.

But Njal had persistently rebelled against his destiny. He declined to
explore the barn, always straining at the end of his chain in the
doorway, watching with wistful eyes the frolics of his mother, hardly
more than a puppy herself, with her overwhelming children. She seemed
to have forgotten that Njal was one of her own. He would not make
friends with the dairymen nor with the coachman, and though he showed
an occasional interest in the horses, he utterly ignored the cows and
calves whose guardian he was intended to be. Even now, in defiance of
social distinctions, he dashed into the house, which, as we came
hurrying up behind him, resounded with the reproachful voices of the
maids.

"Njal, get out! You know you're not allowed in here."

"Njal, jump down off that bed this minute. The impudence of him!"

"Njal, drop that ball. It doesn't belong to you. Be off to the barn."

The maids, aided by Njal's brothers and sisters, who struck me as
officious, had just succeeded in chasing him out as we came to the
door, but he flashed past us, tail erect, enthusiastically bent on
greeting his glorious sire, who was majestically pacing up to
investigate this unseemly commotion.

"Poor Njal! Even more than the rest, he idolizes his father," said the
Lady of Cedar Hill, as Ralph met his son with a growl and a cuff.

Crestfallen at last, Njal trotted back to his mistress and stood gazing
up at her with great, amber eyes, that held, if ever eyes did, wounded
love and a beseeching for comfort. She stroked his head, but bade one
of the maids fetch a leash and take him back where he belonged.

I glanced at Joy-of-Life. That glance was all she had been waiting for.

"Njal is my dog," she said.

"What! Not Njal!" protested the Lady of Cedar Hill. "Why, in the count
of collie points----"

"But I'm not looking for a dog to keep me supplied with blue ribbons. I
want a friend. Njal has a soul."

The Lady of Cedar Hill bent a doubtful glance on me.

"Oh, we've just settled that," smiled Joy-of-Life. "She would rather
have him than all the other eight."

So it was that on the last day of June, 1903, we drove again to Cedar
Hill to bring our collie home.

"It's a queer choice," laughed our hostess, as she poured tea, "but at
least you need not put yourselves out for him. He is used to the barn,
and a box of straw in your cellar will be quite good enough for Njal."

She rang for more cream. No maid appeared. Surprised, she rang again,
sharply. Still no response. One of the ever numerous guests rose and
went out to the kitchen. She came back laughing.

"All the maids are kneeling around Njal, disputing as to whose ribbon
becomes him best and worshiping him as if he were the golden calf. And
really William has given an amazing shine to that yellow coat of his.
It is astonishing what a splendid fellow the barn-puppy has grown to
be."

In came Jane with the cream, blushing for her delay, but lingering to
see what reception would be given the collie who walked politely a step
or two behind.

Groomed till he shone, his new leather collar adorned with a flaring
orange-satin bow, Njal entered with the quiet stateliness of one to
drawing-rooms born, widely waving his tail in salutation to the entire
company. But it was to the Lady of Cedar Hill that he went and against
her side that he pressed close, while his questioning eyes passed from
face to face, for he seemed already aware of an impending change in his
fortunes.

The phaeton was brought to the door. Joy-of-Life and I took our places,
and the Lady of Cedar Hill, who gave her puppies away right royally,
passed in a new leash and complete box of brushes. Then the coachman
lifted Njal, an armful of sprawling legs, and deposited him at our
feet. The collie sat upright, making no effort to escape. But as his
mistress perched on the carriage step to give him a good-bye hug, his
eyes looked back into hers so wistfully, and yet so trustfully, that
one of the maids in the background was heard to sniff.

"Be a good doggie," the beloved voice adjured him, "and don't give your
new ladies any trouble on the long drive."

If he promised, he certainly kept his word. All the way he sat quietly
where he had been put, erect and alert, watching the road and bestowing
a very special regard on every dog and cat we passed. When we reached
our modest home, he jumped out at our bidding, entered the open door
and proceeded steadily from room to room, looking long out of each
window as if hoping to find a familiar view. We had been warned that
strange surroundings would probably affect his appetite, but Njal was
far too sensible a collie to disdain a good dinner. He took to his
puppy-biscuit and gravy with such a relish that, in an incredibly short
period, the empty dish was dancing on the gravel under the hopeful
insistence of his tongue. Homesickness, however, came on with the dusk.
He gazed longingly from the piazza down the road, and when we attempted
to introduce him to the cellar and his waiting box of plentiful clean
straw, he resisted in a sudden agony of fright.

Njal had known nothing of cellars, and the terror with which that
unnatural, lonesome hollow under ground affected him lasted for two
full years. Then a visiting nephew, boy-wise in the ways of animals,
romping with him, purposely scampered back and forth through the
cellar, running in at one door and out at the other, so that the dog,
in the ardor of the chase, had traversed that realm of awful chill and
gloom before he realized where he was. Later on, one torrid afternoon,
I carried a bone down cellar and, sitting on a log beside it, chanted
its praises until, tempted beyond endurance, Njal came tumbling
headlong downstairs and fell upon it. For a little while longer, he
would not stay in the cellar without companionship, but at last his
dread was so entirely overcome that, in the midsummer heats, the
cellar, and especially, to our regret, the coal bin, was his favorite
resort.

But on this first night he would have none of it. We were reluctant to
use force and compromised on the bathroom. Here he obediently lay down
and bore his lot in silence till dead of night, when at last the rising
tide of desolation so overswelled his puppy heart that a sudden wail,
which would have done credit to a banshee, woke everybody in the house.

The second evening he made his own arrangements. Our academic home was
simple in its appointments,--so simple that Joy-of-Life and I often
merrily quoted to each other the comment of a calling freshman:

"When _I'm_ old, I mean to have a dear little house just like this one,
all furnished with nothing but books."

The barn-dog inspected our chambers and promptly decided that only the
best was good enough for him. This approved bower was then occupied by
the Dryad, over whose couch was appropriately spread a velvety green
cover, a foreign treasure of her own, marvelous for many-hued
embroidery. As bedtime came on, Njal disappeared and was nowhere to be
found, until the Dryad's pealing laugh brought us to her room, where a
ball of golden collie, even the tail demurely tucked in, was sleeping
desperately hard in the middle of the choice coverlet. One anxious eye
blinked at us and then shut up tighter than ever. Njal was so
determined not to be budged that the tender-hearted Dryad took his part
and pleaded against our amateur efforts at discipline.

"Poor puppy! Let him be my room-mate tonight. He's so new and scared.
He can sleep over there on the lounge under that farthest window and he
will not bother me one bit."

Njal consented to this transfer, but in the small hours homesickness
again swept his soul and he jumped up beside the Dryad, to whom he
nestled close. The night was excessively hot, and the morning found a
pallid lady snatching a belated nap on the lounge under the far window,
while Njal remained in proud possession of the bed.

Joy-of-Life thereafter insisted on leashing him at night in the lower
hall, where we would spread out for him the Thunder-and-Lightning Rug,
an embarrassing gift for which we had never before been able to find a
use. There he would contentedly take his post, the conscious guardian
of the house, his white and yellow in vivid contrast to the black and
scarlet of the rug, and his blue-figured Japanese bowl of water within
easy reach. This disposition of our problem worked both well and ill,
since Njal found distraction from his diminishing attacks of nostalgia
in trying with his sharp white teeth the toughness of the leashes which
succeeded one another in costly succession. But as a watch dog he took
himself most seriously, though not greatly to the furtherance of our
repose. From the depths of slumber he would leap up with a dynamic
bark, accompanied by a bass growl, as if there were two of him,
spinning around and around upon his leash, until we all rose from our
beds, grasping electric torches, and sped downstairs to behold a fat
beetle scuttling off across the floor or to hear the receding scamper
of a mouse behind the wainscot. On the night before the Fourth,
outraged by such a racket as he had never heard before, our
ten-months-old protector succeeded in making more noise than all the
horns, torpedoes and firecrackers in our patriotic neighborhood.

We celebrated the national holiday by changing his name, which sounded
in the mouth of the mocker too much like _miaul_, to that of the
shining hero of the _Volsunga Saga_. Joy-of-Life hesitated a little
lest the Lady of Cedar Hill should deem her own Norse hero, Burnt Njal,
"gentle and generous," treated with discourtesy, but I pleaded that in
all likelihood our home would never again be blessed with anything so
young and so yellow, so altogether fit to bear the honors of the Golden
Sigurd. The collie readily accepted his new name, but never forgot the
old, and even to the last year of his sunny life, if the word Njal were
spoken, however softly, would glance up with bright recognition.

Sigurd bore himself through that first July with such civility and
dignity that we did not dream how homesick he really was,--that
towering puppy, who looked absurdly tall as we took him out to walk on
his latest leash. He submitted to this needless indignity as he
submitted to the long chain that bound him to the piazza railing, with
magnanimous forbearance. We had used a rope at first, but he felt it a
point of honor to gnaw this apart, coming cheerfully to meet us with a
section of our clothesline trailing from his collar. Through these
first weeks he had much to occupy his mind and tax his fortitude in the
engine whistles and rumble of trains, the whirr of electric cars,
Cecilia's energetic broom that threatened to brush him off the piazza,
the manners of the market-man, who, unlearned in Norse mythology,
injuriously called him Jigger, and divers other perils and excitements.
His ears were forever on the cock and his tail busy with the agitated
utterance of his changing emotions. When we ventured, after a little,
to let him run loose, he investigated the immediate territory but kept
within call, bounding to meet us as we came out to look for him. The
first time that he actually ventured off on an independent quest, he
came tearing back after forty minutes' absence as if he had been
putting a girdle round the earth, insisting on a complete and repeated
family welcome as well as a second breakfast. My first vivid sense of
the comfort of having a dog smote me on the edge of a tired evening,
when, trudging home from a long day in one of the Boston libraries, a
sudden nose was thrust into my hand and a gleaming shape leapt up out
of the roadside shadows in jubilant welcome. So we supposed our collie
was light-hearted.

But one after-sunset hour, when we had feloniously sallied out to strip
the flower-beds of an absent neighbor, Sigurd, in amiable attendance,
suddenly started, wheeled and was off down the hill like a shimmering
arrow of Apollo. How was he aware of her at that distance, in that
dusk, the Lady of Cedar Hill? He flung himself like a happy avalanche
upon her and poured out all the bewilderment and yearning, the
lonesomeness and love of his loyal soul, in a shrill, ecstatic tremolo
that we came to designate as "Sigurd's lyric cry." It was reserved for
a favored few, objects of romantic devotion; it was rarely vouchsafed
to the commonplace members of his own household; but it never failed
the Lady of Cedar Hill, though months might elapse between her visits.

On this her first coming, his joy was touching to see. He pressed close
to her side as she walked up the hill and after she had seated herself
in a piazza chair he tried to climb into her lap as in his fuzzy
puppyhood, and succeeded, too, though he hung over her knees like a
yellow festoon, his feet touching the floor on either side and his
plumy tail fanning her face. Yet when she went away, he made no effort
to follow. He watched her intently from the piazza steps as she passed
down the hill and turned the corner. When she was out of sight, tail
and ears drooped and he came in of his own accord, soberly lying down
on the Thunder-and-Lightning Rug, beside his leash. Feelings were all
very well in their way, but duty was supreme. He had a house to guard
from beetles and other bugbears of the night.

Sigurd was so big and strong that he needed plenty of exercise. Before
he came, a spacious "run" had been provided for him on the wild bank,
hardly yet redeemed from the forest, back of the house, but this he
promptly repudiated for all purposes of frolic. He seemed to regard it
as a singing-school, for, dragged out there "to play," he would sit on
his haunches and practice dirge-music in howls of intolerable crescendo
until a decent respect for the opinions of the neighbors obliged us to
bring him in. We called him our gymnasium, walking and romping with him
all we could, but our utmost was not enough. So we would drive out,
once or twice a week, along the less frequented roads, though
automobiles were not so many then, to give the boy a "scimper-scamper."
He delighted to accompany the carriage, running alongside with brief
dashes down the bank for water or into the woods after a squirrel. When
he was tired, he would run close and look up, asking for a lift, but
after a few minutes of panting repose, lying across the phaeton in
front of our feet, nose and tail in alarming proximity to the wheels,
he would want to scramble out and race again.

The first time that we took him back to Cedar Hill was a thrilling
event for Sigurd. He had been running most of the way and jumped in
just before we reached familiar landmarks. As soon as these appeared,
all his weariness vanished. Standing erect, eyes shining, ears pricked
up, nose quivering, his tail thumping the dashboard with louder and
louder blows, he sent his lyric cry like a bugle through the air,
heralding our approach so well that all his kindred yet remaining on
the estate, as well as his original mistress, her guests and her maids,
were drawn up on the lawn and steps to receive us. Sigurd sprang out
before the horse had stopped and tore up with a special squeal of
filial devotion to greet his sire, Ralph the Magnificent, who was
barely restrained by a circle of strenuous hands on his collar from
hurling himself in fury on this most obnoxious of his sons. Dora
trotted up and sniffed at him with coquettish curiosity, as if
wondering who this golden young gallant might be, but her bearing could
by no stretch of language by styled maternal. Gunnar, a puppy with
every mark of high descent, now installed on the estate as crown
prince, was so infected by his father's rage that they both had to be
shut up during our stay. Sigurd pranced rapturously all over the place,
visiting every scene of his childhood with the conspicuous exception of
the barn. He disdained to recognize the cows and gave but a
supercilious curl of his tail even to the most affable of the dairymen.
A cattle-dog, indeed! He invited himself to tea in the drawing-room and
had the further impertinence to take a snooze on Dora's own cushion,
close to the skirts of the Lady of Cedar Hill. She doubted whether he
would be willing to go back with us, but when the phaeton was driven to
the door, Sigurd rushed out to meet it and leapt into his place before
we had finished our more ceremonious farewells. We knew then that he
was really ours.

THE DOGS OF BETHLEHEM

Many a starry night had they known,
Melampo, Lupina and Cubil[=o]n,
Shepherd-dogs, keeping
The flocks, unsleeping,
Serving their masters for crust and bone.

Many a starlight but never like this,
For star on star was a chrysalis
Whence there went soaring
A winged, adoring
Splendor out-pouring a carol of bliss.

Sniffing and bristling the gaunt dogs stood,
Till the seraphs, who smiled at their hardihood,
Calmed their panic
With talismanic
Touches like wind in the underwood.

In the dust of the road like gold-dust blown,
Melampo, Lupina and Cubil[=o]n
Saw strange kings, faring
On camels, bearing
Treasures too bright for a mortal throne.

Shepherds three on their crooks a-leap
Sped after the kings up the rugged steep
To Bethlehem; only
The dogs, left lonely,
Stayed by the fold and guarded the sheep.

Faithful, grim hearts! The marvelous glow
Flooded e'en these with its overflow,
Wolfishness turning
Into a yearning
To worship the highest a dog may know.

When dawn brought the shepherds, each to his own,
Melampo, Lupina and Cubil[=o]n
Bounded to meet them,
Frolicked to greet them,
Eager to serve them for love alone.

GROWING UP

"His years were full; his years were joyous; why
Must love be sorrow, when his gracious name
Recalls his lovely life of limb and eye?"

--Swinburne's _At a Dog's Grave_.

Now that we realized not only that we had adopted Sigurd but that
Sigurd had adopted us, we entered into an ever deepening enjoyment of
our dog. Be it understood that we were teachers, writers, servants of
causes, boards, committees, mere professional women, with too little
leisure for the home we loved. Had our hurried days given opportunity
for the fine art of mothering we would have cherished a child instead
of a collie, but Sigurd throve on neglect and saved us from turning
into plaster images by making light of all our serious concerns. No
academic dignities impressed his happy irreverence.

"What is Sigurd slinging about there on the lawn?" I asked on his first
Commencement morning. "It looks as if he had a muskrat by the tail."

Joy-of-Life glanced apprehensively from the window to the bed, on which
she had carefully laid out a dean's glistening regalia.

"My cap!" she ejaculated and dashed downstairs and out of the door and
away over the grass after a frolicsome bandit who knew of no better use
for a mortar-board--perhaps there is none--than to spin it around by
its gilt tassel.

He had no regard for manuscript, after a thorough investigation had
convinced him that it was not good to eat, and made no scruple of
breaking in on our most absorbed moments with an insistent demand for
play. Whatever the game might be, he infused it with dramatic quality,
turning every romp into a thrilling adventure. He liked to pretend that
he was Jack the Giant-Killer and would crouch and growl and bristle and
finally hurl himself upon some ogre of a wastepaper basket,
overthrowing it in the first onslaught and then worrying its scattered
contents with mimic fury. For punishment, we would clap the basket
tight over his head, and he would back into a corner, indulging in all
sorts of profane remarks while he pawed and shook that insulting helmet
off, but carefully, for he clearly understood that, though what it held
was subject to his teeth, the basket itself must not be harmed. He
pretended to be bitterly outraged by this treatment, but no sooner was
the basket in position beside the desk again than he would caper up and
gleefully knock it over, promptly presenting his ruffled head to have
his punishment repeated.

Apart from our enjoyment of his crimes, it was difficult to punish him,
because his sunny spirit turned every fresh experience into fun. He
reminded me of a family tradition of an incorrigible baby uncle, whose
clerical father, in despair at the child's ability to find amusement
under all penal circumstances, stripped him naked and shut him into an
empty room to repent of his sins. But when the parental eye
condescended to the keyhole, it beheld a rosy cherub with puffed-out
cheeks dancing merrily about and blowing a bewildered fly from one end
of the chamber to the other.

Sigurd loved nothing better than make-believe discipline,--to be
whacked with the feather-duster, "blown away" with the bellows, rolled
up in the Sunday newspaper, anything that gave him an excuse for
frisking, barking, dodging, scampering, kicking, rolling, tumbling, and
rushing in at the last for a hug of assured understanding. We could
keep him quiet for hours at a time by putting a cooky or any bit of
sweet into a small pasteboard box, tying it up and fitting it into as
many more, of increasing sizes, as time and material allowed. Sigurd
would watch the process with sparkling eyes and then, taking the packet
between his forepaws, settle down to the long task of getting at that
cooky. Sometimes he would sigh with weariness or sink his yellow head
to the floor in momentary despair. But he never gave up, though he
often paused long enough to restore his energies by a nap. Taking the
ragged bundle to another part of the room, as if his labors might be
assisted by some special quality in a different rug, he would fall upon
his puzzle again and not desist until the goal of all that patient
endeavor, one morsel of sweetness, gave its brief delight to his
triumphant tongue. This device of the boxes was a great resource when
rough weather kept us in, for the youngster, who did not yet venture
far without us, was incessant in his search for occupation. When this
led him into genuine mischief and brought upon him actual rebuke, he
took it so to heart that no member of the household, in kitchen or
study, could get on with her work for the next half-day, for Sigurd
would trot from one to another, with imploring eyes, insisting on
shaking paws and being forgiven over and over again.

A most affectionate little fellow he was, and would sit still at my
knee by the hour so long as he was occasionally patted and addressed by
what he instantly recognized as a pet name,--Opals, or Blessed
Buttercup, or Honey of Hybla, or Sulphur of my Soul. Epithets failing,
he would touch my foot at intervals with a reminding paw. Then,
absorbed in my work, I would absent-mindedly, on the edges of my
consciousness, conjure up more titles for him,--Yellowboy, Crocus,
Sunflower, Topaz, Mustard, Nugget, Starshine, his appreciative tail
thumping the floor at every one. He wanted to be good and was aided by
a happy disposition that, when one line of activity was cut off, found
prompt solace in another. After a few trials had convinced him that
bones, though polished in his most masterly manner and disposed behind
doors and under sofa pillows with engaging modesty, were not acceptable
ornaments of the house, he so rejoiced in the new-found art of burying
them in the earth that, for a time, all his dainties went the same way,
and the gardener's hoe would turn up petrified pieces of sponge cake
and gingerbread at which Sigurd would sniff in embarrassed
reminiscence.

Day by day the puppy was learning not only the ways of the house, but
what he considered a proper demeanor toward our variety of callers. He
took up the domestic routine almost at once and developed such an exact
sense of time that we used to call him our four-o'clock. At this merry
hour we would drop pens, shut books and take Sigurd to walk,--a duty
that he by no means allowed us to forget. At the exact moment his
_Woof, Woof_ rang out like a bell into "the still air of delightful
studies" and upon his protesting playmates Sigurd would burst like a
thunderbolt, catching at our dresses and literally dragging us away
from our desks. At mealtimes, too, with inexorable punctuality he
herded the family to the dining room. But most of the day he was doing
sentry duty on the doorsteps, incidentally offering his comment on
every happening of the road and neighborhood. Tramps he abominated and,
not content with driving them from our own premises, roared them away
from every back door on the hill. His prejudice had to do, apparently,
less with their looks and even their smell than with something stealthy
and furtive in their approach. Skulking he abhorred. On one occasion he
brought pink confusion to the cheeks of a little seamstress who was
passing in a bundle at the door while her sheepish young escort hid in
the shrubbery. It did not take Sigurd thirty seconds to drive that gawk
from cover. To a recognized friend our collie would act as master of
ceremonies, bounding down the walk to give him welcome, barking sharply
to save him the trouble of ringing the bell, dashing in ahead with the
glorious news of the arrival and then scampering back to thrust into
the visitor's palm a cordial, clumsy paw, wagging that plumy tail
meanwhile with an impetuous swing that sometimes swept before it small
articles from cabinet or tea-table. Sometimes he would take a fancy to
an utter stranger and greet him as an angel from the blue, singing
love-at-first-sight to him at the top of his funny squeal, a
four-legged troubadour. College girls he regarded as his natural chums
and would frisk about them or leap upon them as the mood took him;
middle-aged folk, like his mistresses, were all very well in their
serviceable way; but the romance of life centered for Sigurd in old
ladies. The whiter the hair, the more beautiful. For them he would
spring up on his hind feet and rest his forepaws on their shoulders,
pressing his face against their cheeks with such ardor that once, when
such an encounter occurred on the street, a gentleman rushed from
across the road, with upraised cane, to the rescue.

"Kindly let us alone, sir," crisply rebuked the Lovely Object, her
bonnet askew but her face beaming. "This dog and I understand each
other and we want no interference."

When a company of callers were seated, Sigurd, in a rapture of
hospitality, would hurry again and again around the circle, shaking
paws with each in turn and uttering a continuous, soft quaver of
welcome, pleasure and pride. Then he would lie down contentedly in the
very center of the group, now and then rolling over on his back in the
hope that it would occur to somebody to slap his fluffy breast.

At first he often made mistakes in his office of sentinel. It was funny
to see him rush madly to the door at a suspicious step and then,
abashed by the jocular greeting of some household familiar, drop the
role of heroic defender and, waving his tail affably but with a certain
reserve, push by on the pretense that he was just coming out to take a
squint at the weather.

Of sensitive and generous nature, our golden collie was quick to feel
the difference between an intentional hurt and an accident. He had been
with us only a few weeks when a college colleague, then brightening our
table with her presence, started to play stick with him before dinner.
Sigurd's way of playing stick was to bring you anything from a
clothespin to a beanpole and coax you to throw it for him, holding it
up lightly between his teeth for you to take. This time he had a piece
of board with jagged ends, and our friend, whose own dog, a monstrously
ugly and therefore supremely choice Boston Bull, would hang on to a
stick with iron jaws while she tried in vain to wrench it from him,
mistook the game. Sigurd held up his stick by one end, deftly balancing
it in the air, and she, supposing that he would maintain his grip,
rammed it suddenly down his throat. But Sigurd, eager for his run, at
once let go, with the result that his throat was rather badly cut. He
was surprised into one scream of pain and then silently tore about in
circles, his tail low and rigid. His would-be playmate, grieved to the
heart, had hurried for his Japanese water-bowl, but Sigurd would touch
nothing that she brought. He went, instead, to a natural basin in the
rock, always his favorite drinking-cup, where he lapped away at a
prodigious rate, leaving a red stain on the water. After this he hid in
the bushes, and it was not until dinner was nearly over that Sigurd
came trotting in, ears and tail still depressed. Joy-of-Life, with the
voice that was healing in itself, called him to her, but he passed us
both by, going straight to the comparative stranger who had innocently
hurt him. Settling on his haunches beside her chair, Sigurd gazed up
mournfully but understandingly into her eyes and offered his
magnanimous paw.

"You know I didn't mean to, and you came in to say so and to forgive
me, you perfect little gentleman," she exclaimed, shaking the proffered
paw as deferentially as if it had been the hand of Socrates. And that
was the end of it. Sigurd coughed up a little blood and a few splinters
that night, but he always met this lady, on her frequent comings, with
a special, quiet courtesy, though he never invited her to a game of
stick again.

Sigurd had one playmate who shamefully imposed upon his noble
disposition. Nellie was an ancient spaniel, whose black curls were
turning a dingy gray. She was our next neighbor and Sigurd's first
love. Nellie was too fat and wheezy to romp, but she would sit,
blinking approval, the center of a circle whose circumference was made
by the golden gambols of our infatuated puppy. Around and around her he
would caper, while she yawned and scratched--she was always a vulgar
old thing--and took her exercise by proxy. We did not allow Nellie
inside the house, to Sigurd's grieved surprise, but his dinner-dish was
regularly set out of doors, by the back steps, and Nellie, every now
and then, when her own rations had not been satisfactory or when Sigurd
had peculiarly toothsome viands on his plate, would take advantage of
his chivalry to play on him a low-down trick. Out of sight on the other
side of the house, she would raise a wail of feigned distress,
whereupon our gallant Volsung, just in the first enjoyment of his food,
would lift his head, listen, even drop the piece of meat in his mouth
and speed away to her rescue, running down one hill and up another in a
vain endeavor to discover the villain of whom she had complained.
Meanwhile Nellie, puffing with detestable delight, would waddle around
to the doorsteps and gobble up the best of Sigurd's dinner. When she
heard him bounding back, she discreetly shuffled off, so that Sigurd's
ideal remained unspotted. Dear, faithful lad! To the last of her
disgraceful days, he was old Nellie's champion and dupe.

All the while his development was going on apace. When he came to us he
was already, like his brothers and sisters, proficient in giving the
right paw, and could also, under protest, stand on his hind legs in a
corner and "go roly-poly," a senseless performance, that he detested,
on floors, but a natural and joyful gymnastic on the grass. He soon
added to these accomplishments the agile arts of jumping over a stick
and leaping through a hoop, though his tribulations with the hoop were
many. He would brandish it over his head, run with it and trip in it,
get his legs and body all wound up in it, and finally throw himself
upon it and bite it into docility. He readily learned to catch, but his
tastes were not extravagant and he would disdainfully drop in the
thickets the rubber balls that were bought for him and grub up for
himself some crooked branch or tough old chip that suited his purpose
better.

Being educators ourselves, we did not think much of education as such
and gave little attention to teaching him artificial tricks.
Joy-of-Life was in favor of vocational training and decided that he
must learn to guard. Her efforts nearly achieved success. For one proud
fortnight Sigurd would, at the word of command, lie down and, resisting
every temptation to leave his post, watch over a handkerchief or glove
or parasol until he was called off by the same voice that had imposed
the duty on him. It was I who ruined this excellent attainment by
setting him, beside a pansy-bed agleam with sympathetic twinkles, to
guard a hoptoad. To Sigurd's dismay and annoyance that brownie of the
garden refused to play the game. How could a puppy remain at his post
if his post would not remain at the puppy? Sigurd tried to paw the toad
back into place, he remonstrated with it in a series of shrill barks
and at last, when he heard us laughing at him, he indignantly
repudiated, and forever, the whole business of guarding. It was then
that Joy-of-Life accused me of being a demoralizing influence and for
Sigurd's good reminded me of what I had quite forgotten and he had
never known,--that he was not "our puppy" but hers.

"I want," said Joy-of-Life, bending her earnest look upon us both,
"that Sigurd should grow up into a good dog, and how can he be a good
dog if you turn duty into a joke?"

I felt so guilty that Sigurd hurried over to lick my hand.

"Whose dog are you, Gold of Ophir?" I asked, and Sigurd, with an
impartial flourish of his tail, lay down exactly between us.

This delicate question was ultimately decided by no less an arbiter
than Mother Goose. In pursuance of the theory that her immortal
nonsense songs were written by Oliver Goldsmith--this is what is known
as Literary Research--I had obtained leave from a Boston librarian, an
indulgent spirit now gone to his reward, to take home for comparison
with an accumulation of other texts a unique copy, exquisitely printed
on creamy pages with wide margins and choicely bound in white and gold.
It was an extraordinary grace of permission and, even in the act of
passing that gem of a volume over, the librarian hesitated.

"It must not come to harm," he said, "for it is irreplaceable; but I
know how you value books and I believe there are no children, to whom
this might be a temptation, under your roof."

"Unfortunately, no; only a puppy."

"We will risk the puppy," he smiled,--but he did not know Sigurd.

I carried that book home as carefully as if it had been a nest of
humming-bird's eggs. As I used it that evening at my desk, I propped it
up at a far distance from any possible spatter of ink. Then I slipped
it into a vacant space on the shelf of the revolving bookcase close at
hand and, resolving to return it the next morning, turned to a
good-night romp with the Volsung. We tried several new games without
winning much popular applause. He was a failure as Wolf at the Door,
because he barked so gleefully for admittance to the room where
Joy-of-Life was brushing her mother's beautiful white hair and was so
welcome when he came bursting in; nor did he shine as Mother Hubbard's
dog, for his friend in the kitchen, Cecilia, who never let her cupboard
go bare, had just filled the doughnut jar. So we practiced in secret
for a few minutes on "a poetic recital" of Hickory Dickory Dock and
then came forth to electrify the household. Taking a central seat, I
repeated those talismanic syllables, at whose sound Sigurd jumped upon
me, climbed up till his forepaws rested on the high top of the chair,
in graphic illustration of the way the mouse ran up the clock, emitted
an explosive bark when, shifting parts at a sudden pinch, he became for
an instant the clock striking one, and then scrambled down with
alacrity, a motion picture of the retreating mouse. This was no small
intellectual exercise for a collie, and at the end of our one and only
public performance he broke away and squeezed himself under the sofa,
where he lay rubbing his poor, overwrought noddle against the coolest
spot on the wall.

His mental energies had revived by morning and apparently he wanted to
review his _Hickory Dickory Dock_, for he was in my study earlier than
I and there, from all the rows of books on all the open shelves, he
must needs pick out _Mother Goose_, even that unique copy _de luxe_.
When I came in, there was Sigurd outstretched on his favorite rug,
beside my desk, with the book between his forepaws, ecstatically
engaged in chewing off one corner.

My gasp of horror brought Joy-of-Life speedily to the scene, and
Sigurd, instantly aware that he had committed a transgression beyond
precedent, slid unobtrusively away, his penitent tail tucked between
his legs. We were too keenly concerned over the injury done to remember
to punish him, but no further punishment than our obvious distress was
needed. Never again would Sigurd touch a book or anything resembling a
book. He had discovered, once for all, that he had no taste for
literature.

"What can you do?" asked Joy-of-Life, distractedly trying to wipe that
pulpy corner dry with her napkin. "This rich binding is ruined, but the
margins are so broad that Sigurd--O _Sigurd_!--has not quite chewed
through to the print."

"Nothing but make confession in sackcloth and ashes and pay what I have
to pay," I answered gloomily. Then a wicked impulse prompted me to add:

"Of course, since it's _your_ dog that has done the damage----"

"Sigurd is _our_ dog," hastily interposed Joy-of-Life. "I give you half
of him here and now, and we'll divide the damage."

So as I went in to inflict this shock upon the kind librarian I was not
without a certain selfish consolation, for if I should have to pay over
all my bank account, I would be getting my money's worth. The librarian
bent his brows over that mangled volume, listened severely to my abject
narration and not until his eye-glasses hopped off his nose did I
realize that he was convulsed with laughter.

"What can I do?" I asked, too deeply contrite to resent his mirth.

He wiped his eyes, replaced his glasses, examined the book once more.

"Well!" he replied in a choking voice. "If it were possible to replace
this volume, I should have to require you to do so at whatever cost.
But there is no other copy to be had. Its aesthetic value is gone beyond
repair. The text, fortunately, is intact. We shall have to cut the
pages down to the print and bind them into plain covers. A pity, but it
can't be helped. The circumstances do not seem to call for a fine, but
the rebinding will cost you, I regret to say, twenty-five cents."

Choosing to deal generously with Joy-of-Life, I paid it all.

Although Sigurd's golden coat seemed but the outer shining of the
gladness that possessed him, he had his share of the ills that flesh is
heir to, the most serious being a well-nigh fatal attack of distemper.
With human obtuseness, we did not realize at first that our collie was
sick. We heard him making strangling sounds and thought he had
swallowed too big a piece of bone. We started out, that Sunday
afternoon, on a seven-mile walk, partly for the purpose of exercising
Sigurd, and were a bit hurt by his most unwonted lack of enthusiasm.
Instead of multiplying the miles by his usual process of racing in
erratic circles around and around us and dashing off on far excursions
over the fields on either side, he trotted soberly at heel, like the
well-trained dog he never was. He moped, tail hanging, ears depressed,
and soon began to fall behind. At the halfway turn he lay down and, for
a time, flatly refused to budge. We laughed at his new game of Lazy Dog
and relentlessly whistled him along. We were almost home, having passed
through the village square, Sigurd lagging far in the rear, when a
notorious bloodhound, out for his weekly constitutional, broke away
from the steel chain by which his master was holding him and charged on
our big puppy. Sigurd ran for his life, but the fleeter hound was close
upon him. There were knots of men loafing about the square and, waiting
for the next trolley car, there stood among them an old dame gayly
attired in the colors of her native Erin. Sigurd's limited range of
experience had led him to regard men either as secondary creatures who
did what they were bid by the all-potent Lady of Cedar Hill or as
parlor and piazza, ornaments enveloped in an unpleasant odor of
tobacco. His peril called for strong protection, so, as we were still
too distant, he took refuge behind the voluminous sea-green skirts of
that decent Irish body and, dodging skillfully as she twirled and
whirled, kept her as a buffer between himself and his enemy. Screeching
to all the saints for deliverance, she was still striving in vain to
escape from her awful position, when the owners of the dogs came
panting up. The bloodhound's master collared him, none too soon, and
beat him so savagely with the chain that we turned away from the sight
to sympathize with Sigurd's involuntary defender and help her adjust
her grass-green bonnet and veil. As for Sigurd, he had flashed out of
the picture, but we found him at home, lying inert, exhausted, refusing
water and biscuit, indifferent to bones. He sniffed regretfully at his
Sunday dinner, but left it untasted.

An hour or two before dawn, simultaneously awakened by the sound of
desperate coughing, Joy-of-Life and I met on the stairs and hurried
down to find a croupy puppy, who, in his emergency, had again bitten
his leash in two and climbed into his favorite--because forbidden--easy
chair. As we leaned over him, Sigurd put up a paw to each of us, his
suffering eyes expectant of relief. But we could devise no effectual
help, and the veterinary, called in as early as we dared, regarded the
invalid as a dangerous animal and handled him so roughly that, the
moment Sigurd found himself released, he slipped out of the house and
across the road to Nellie. Sorely disappointed in us, he tried to hide
his yellow towering bulk on the other side of that grizzled little
spaniel and waited, an exile from home, until the doctor had driven
away.

For weeks we had a sick collie on our hands. He dreaded food and would
squeeze himself into all impossible places when he saw either one of us
coming with the prescribed "nourishment." As for medicine, he
contracted that autumn an aversion to bottles which he never overcame.
Years afterward, if Sigurd, about to enter a room, stopped short on the
threshold and turned abruptly away, we looked around for the bottle.

One morning the gasps were very feeble. The veterinary told us the end
was at hand. We took our earth-loving collie out from his dark
hospital-nook in the house and laid him down among the asters and
goldenrods on the wild land at the rear. The Lady of Cedar Hill had
come over to see him once more. He was lying so still that we thought
he would not move again, but at the sound of that beloved voice Sigurd
stirred a feeble tail and breathed a ghostly echo of his lyric cry.
Faint and hoarse though it was, there was the old glad recognition in
it, and his first mistress, forgetting her intended precautions for the
dogs at home, knelt down beside her Njal, comforting him with tender
strokes and soft, caressing words. From that hour he began to mend, but
so slowly that we were anxious about him all winter. Cruel pains would
suddenly dart through him and he could never understand where they came
from nor who did it. We would hear the sharp, distinctive cry that
meant one of those pangs and then see Sigurd stagger up from his rug or
cushion, look at it with deep reproach and cross to the furthest corner
of the room. Once such a shoot of pain took him as he was standing by
Joy-of-Life's gentle mother, his head propped on her knee, and the air
of incredulous grief with which he drew back and gazed at her smote her
to the soul. It was a matter of days before he could be coaxed to come
to her again.

One of the discoveries of Sigurd's illness was the heart of our Swedish
maid, Cecilia. Fresh from Ellis Island, buxom, comely, neat as a
scoured rolling-pin, she regarded us with no more feeling than did her
molding-board. We introduced her to the ways of an American household;
we helped her with the speaking of English; we paid her wages; we were,
in short, her Plymouth Rock, on which she stepped to her career in the
New World. Best of all, we were palates and stomachs on which to try
her sugary experiments, for it was her steadfast ambition to become an
artist in dough with the view of securing a lucrative position as a
pastry cook. However much we might further her own interests, her
imperturbable coolness made it clear that as fellow-creatures we were
nothing, but she humored every whim of that sick puppy, even letting
him lie in her immaculate pantry when the restless fancy took him. Her
love was lasting, too, for although, as soon as we had suffered her
apprenticeship and begun to enjoy her perfected craft, she ruthlessly
left us for "a hotel yob," she persisted for several years in sending
Sigurd a dog-picture postcard every Christmas. We always gave him the
cards, telling him they came from his friend Cecilia, and he pawed them
politely, but inwardly deemed them a poor substitute for the cakes,
tarts, puffs and crinkle-pastes of many curious flavors that had, for
one brief season, made our At Homes famous in our "little academe,"
dropping delicious flakes for a thrifty tongue to garner under the
table.

The distemper finally passed off in a trailing effect of St. Vitus'
dance, which, again, our afflicted collie could not understand. On our
springtide walks, his head, as he trotted in front, would suddenly be
twitched to one side, as if we had jerked it by a rein. Apparently he
thought we had, for invariably he came running back to see what we
wanted of Sigurd.

The final, enduring result of this hard experience was an assured
devotion. Sigurd had genially accepted us from the first as his people,
but now, through the suffering and weakness, he had come to know us as
his very own. The lyric cry still belonged to high romance, but after
all those piteous weeks when he found his only comfort in lying close
beside our feet--even, in extremity, upon them--he reserved certain
welcomes and caresses for us alone. Ours was the long, silent pressure
of the golden head against the knee and, in time of trouble, the swift
touch of the tongue upon clouded faces, and ours the long, shining,
intimate gaze that poured forth imperishable loyalty and love.

LADDIE

Lowly the soul that waits
At the white, celestial gates,
A threshold soul to greet
Beloved feet.

Down the streets that are beams of sun
Cherubim children run;
They welcome it from the wall;
Their voices call.

But the Warder saith: "Nay, this
Is the City of Holy Bliss.
What claim canst thou make good
To angelhood?"

"Joy," answereth it from eyes
That are amber ecstasies,
Listening, alert, elate,
Before the gate.

_Oh, how the frolic feet
On lonely memory beat!
What rapture in a run
'Twixt snow and sun!_

"Nay, brother of the sod,
What part hast thou in God?
What spirit art thou of?"
It answers: "Love,"

Lifting its head, no less
Cajoling a caress,
Our winsome collie wraith,
Than in glad faith

The door will open wide,
Or kind voice bid: "Abide,
A threshold soul to greet
The longed-for feet."

_Ah, Keeper of the Portal,
If Love be not immortal,
If Joy be not divine,
What prayer is mine?_

THE CALL OF THE BLOOD

"Come, brother; away!"

--Shakespeare's _Much Ado About Nothing_.

Sigurd was not the only representative of his family in our favored
town. His sister Hildigunna, who might well be described in the words
applied to Hildigunna of the saga as "one of the fairest," was given
to a comparatively remote household in Wellesley Hills from
which--alas!--she soon was stolen and spirited away to fates unknown.
But his brother Hrut, a name speedily changed by his new owners to
Laddie, took up his happy abode at The Orchard, not half a mile from
us. These owners, returning from one of their many holidays abroad,
had found on shipboard the Lady of Cedar Hill, on her way back from
Norway. Of course she told them about the ten puppies and of course
she promised them one.

Reared in the best traditions of New England, these travelers had
already achieved an ideal success as founders and directors of a famous
school for girls and had retired from active labors to a tranquil home
whose broad Colonial porches were screened with "white foam flowers" of
the clematis. They were Neighbors _par excellence_, so beloved, so
leaned upon, so beset with callers and "old girls," with church
committees and town committees, with causes and confidences, that they
literally had to go to Europe to secure an occasional rest. And it was
charming to see how their modest dignity and winsome graciousness
received due meed of honor the Old World over, from titled personages
of London to the very cab-drivers of Florence, whom they believed to be
"honorable men" and were undoubtedly cheated less for so believing.
Hard, shrewd faces of Paris pensions and Swiss hotels softened in their
presence, and even the severe old Scotch dame who rated them roundly
for gadding about the globe instead of having married and reared a
freckled family, like hers, was moved to add: "But I mak nae doobt ye
are mooch respectet where ye cam fram." She would have been confirmed
in this amiable concession if she could have seen how their return was
a village jubilee and how all our accumulated joys and sorrows trooped
in at once through their open doors. They were Ladies of rare and
precious quality, with a touch of precise, old-fashioned elegance,
which made one frank admirer exclaim: "But they are like finest china,
like porcelain, like _Sevres_. There is nothing so exquisite left on
earth. They are classics." Most eminently of all, they were Sisters. A
childhood of strange peril and suffering, in which their hearts clung
so close together that they grew into one, had fitted naturally
dissimilar natures into an utter harmony of desire and deed. Nobody
ever thought of one without the other. Not Castor and Pollux shine with
a more closely related and serener light.

The Sisters hardly waited for our first tumult of greetings to subside
before, on a September afternoon as quietly radiant as their own faces,
they drove over to Cedar Hill to see what they described as "ten little
fluffy balls, only just large enough to wriggle." The choice of their
collie they left to the giver. It was not determined then, but early in
April they had a message setting the day on which they were to "come
for Hrut." I presume they kissed the telephone. At all events, they
went with glad alacrity. As the door opened to admit them, a beautiful
little collie, pure white save for touches of a rich golden brown on
the ears, on the fall of the tail and on the top of his nobly carried
head, ran to meet them and sprang into the outstretched arms of the
foremost, cuddling there as if he knew that he had found his Earthly
Paradise.

His mistress had followed directly after him, aglow with pride in the
grace of his welcome.

"But this one cannot be ours,--he is _too_ lovely," exclaimed the
Sister who was already clasping him tight.

"Yes," smiled the Lady of Cedar Hill, "this one is yours," and the
puppy acquiesced with wagging tail and lapping tongue and every collie
courtesy.

From the first a delicate little fellow, the long drive back made him
ill, but he never gave, then or later, the least sign of homesickness,
settling at once with aristocratic ease into the comforts and
privileges of his new environment and lavishly returning love for love.

The Sisters, as well as the elder Cousin who dwelt with them, were
"lovers of all things alive," from bishops and other dignitaries, who
paid them appreciative homage, to the South Sea Islanders, of whose
costumes they disapproved but to whom, from babyhood up, they had
helped send missionaries. The grimiest urchin in town would grin
confidentially as he touched his cap to them, and their sympathy
overflowed all local limits to childhood everywhere. Little cripples
were the special objects of their care and tenderness. Of birds and
beasts they were spirited champions. No man dared whip his horse if
they were in sight. One of the Sisters had a magic pen, and many of her
stories, whimsical and wise, carried an appeal for human gratitude
toward the domestic animals who spend their patient strength in human
service, and for friendliness toward all these sensitive
fellow-creatures, our brief companions on a whirling star. The
quadrupeds must have passed on from one to another the glad tidings of
these Ladies of Lovingkindness, for many a hungry and thirsty cur
sought the hospitalities of their kitchen, and stray cats, forsaken by
selfish owners on vacation, used their piazza and even their parlor as
a summer hotel. Early one July morning I was starting out for the
college grounds on the search for a wretched mongrel that, having
appeared from nowhere in the spring term, as dogs will, had become a
cheerful hobo of the campus, living sumptuously through unlimited
attendance on the out-of-door luncheon parties of the village students.
A Commencement auto had broken one of his legs and frightened him into
hiding, and now the ebb of all that girl life which had fed and petted
him and the disappearance of chance bones from the closed back doors of
the dormitories had brought upon the college, I was informed by special
delivery letter from an indignant alumna, "the disgrace of leaving one
of God's creatures to suffer slow starvation." Old experience led me,
before setting forth to the rescue, to telephone the Sisters and ask if
they had any news of this divine vagabond.

"Yes, indeed," rang back a cheery voice. "He is breakfasting with us
now on the porch. He came limping up the walk just as the bell rang,
exactly as if he had been invited. Such a pleasant dog in his manners,
though dreadfully thin and--it's not his fault, poor dear--_so_ dirty!
I have just been calling Dr. Vet. to come and see what can be done for
that poor leg."

Of course Laddie was not their first dog. The checks of the school are
still stamped with the head of Don, their black Newfoundland, who had a
passion for attending the morning service in the school hall and
nipping the heels of the kneeling girls. In the repeating of the Lord's
Prayer he would join with a subdued rumble, doubtless acceptable to his
Creator, but when shut out from the sacred exercises, he would howl
under the windows an anthem of his own that offended both Heaven and
earth.

In the inexorable process of the years, Don grew old, becoming a very
Uncle Roly-Poly, but he was only loved the more. A cherished legend of
the school relates how he was sleeping on his rug by the bed of one of
his mistresses on a winter night, dreaming a saintly dream of chasing
cats out of Paradise, when some real or fancied noise awoke him and,
the faithful guardian of the school, he rushed through the low, open
window and out upon the piazza roof, barking his thunderous warning to
all trespassers. But he was still so bewildered with sleep that his
legs ran faster than his mind and, before he knew it, he had pitched
off the edge of that icy roof and was floundering in the snow beneath,
the most astonished dog that ever bayed the moon. What happened to him
then is supposed to have been related by Don himself:

"My howls dismayed the starry skies,
The Great and Little Dippers, _O!_
Till came an angel in disguise,
In dressing gown and slippers, _O!_
I staggered up the steepy stair;
She pushed me from behind, _Bow wow!_
She tended me with mickle care,
O winsome womankind! _Bow wow!_
She bathed my brow and bruised knee.
I only whined the louder, _O!_
She murmured: 'Homeopathy!
I'll give dear Don a powder,' _O!_
And may I be a pink-eyed rabbit
If she chose not from her stock, _Bow wow!_
FOR PERSONS OF A GOUTY HABIT
WHO'VE HAD A NERVOUS SHOCK. _Bow wow!_"

Other dogs had come after, notably Cardigan, a stately St. Bernard, who
made the fatal mistake of biting a pacifist, but Laddie, the only real
rival of Don in the Sisters' affections, was the crown of their delight
in doghood.

Sigurd had been with us only a few days when we took him over to see
his brother, already for nearly three months a resident at The Orchard.
We found Laddie, slender, white and dainty, quite at home on the
luxurious drawing-room sofa.

"I'm stronger than you," growled Sigurd, but Laddie, always the
gentlest and sweetest tempered of collies, acquiesced so pleasantly
that it was an amicable meeting. At the first hint of a second growl,
Laddie gave up the place of honor to his guest.

Of course we remonstrated, admonished Sigurd and urged the
accommodating host, whose good manners delighted the Sisters, to jump
back, which he did, tucking himself unobtrusively into the further
corner of the sofa. Sigurd immediately claimed that corner, which
Laddie yielded to him with unruffled magnanimity, crossing over to the
other. Sigurd promptly changed his mind again, pushing Laddie, this
time a little inclined to demur, down to the floor. Unable to devise a
plan by which he could curl into both corners at once, Sigurd stretched
himself out at full length, doing his best to reach from end to end of
the sofa, while Laddie, closely copying the attitude of this arrogant
big brother, lay along the rug below. Scandalized by Sigurd's conduct,
we would have removed him from his usurped throne in short order, but
the Sisters, rejoicing in the perfection of Laddie's social graces and
secretly convinced of their collie's moral superiority to ours, would
not allow any interference with the visiting puppy's comfort.

That freedom of the sofa was precious to Sigurd's pride and by repeated
efforts he tried to convince his obtuse mistresses that he was entitled
to the same privilege at home. But Joy-of-Life, who did not believe in
"pampering pets," stood firm. There was one evening, in particular,
when Sigurd jumped up on our living-room lounge some score of times,
keeping all the while a challenging eye on her, and just as many times
was ignominiously tumbled off. When she finally took possession
herself, laughing at his discomfiture, he banged his way out into the
kitchen and went down with a thump on the bare floor, hoping that we
would hear how hard it was and realize how sorely poor Sigurd was
abused. Finding that no apologies were forthcoming, he bounded to the
front door, barked his orders to have it opened and shot out into the
dark. Within five minutes the familiar tinkle called us to the
telephone and over the wire flowed the blithe voice of one of the
Sisters.

"I _must_ tell you what a lovely call we are having from dear Sigurd.
He barked to come in only a minute ago and went right up to the sofa
and took it all for himself--oh, yes, our Cousin had been sitting there
with Laddie, but they didn't mind at all--and there he is now, making
himself so charmingly at home, the beautiful boy. I _do_ wish you
could see him."

"_We will_," responded Joy-of-Life, and off we started to chastise
Young Impudence, whom we had begun to suspect of being a trifle
self-willed; but when we arrived the Sisters would by no means consent
to his overthrow. So there, while the chat went on, Sigurd lolled and
sprawled, yawning, stretching himself to an incredible length, rolling
over on his back with paws held high as if to applaud his victory and
continually turning up to Joy-of-Life eyes of such sparkling glee that
her purposes of discipline melted in mirth.

None the less, she was a match for him, resorting to strategy when she
was forbidden the exercise of force. Calling Laddie to her, she began
to stroke his nestling head. Instantly Sigurd, with a multitudinous
flourish of legs that might have moved a centipede to envy, flung
himself off the sofa and roared imperiously at the front door:

"Open this, Somebody, and be quick about it, too. Time to be off. Oh,
come along, Folks. You've no need to pat any dog but me. Good-night,
Lovely Ladies. S'long, Lad. See you tomorrow in the gloaming."

And unless we kept a strict watch, so he would. How often, while
surveying from our west porch, with Sigurd demurely sitting up between
us, the last faint flushes of the sunset sky, from across the road
there would be suddenly visible against the dusk a presence like a
celestial apparition, so white and hushed it was, the shining figure,
the lifted, listening head! And in the fraction of a second, even while
we were catching at his collar, off would go Sigurd with a great leap,
and away the brother collies would tear on a mighty run that kept two
households anxious far into the night. There was nothing celestial
about their behavior.

These lawless excursions often culminated in garbage-pail raids,
debauches from which the young prodigals would sneak home, abashed with
nausea. Once in a Commencement season we returned late in the evening,
with a guest, from the high solemnity of the President's Reception, to
find our hall strewn with Jonah strips of ham-rind and junks of
pumpkin. Our guest was a brilliant, worldly being, a very dragon-fly of
swiftness and gleam, and there she stood, exquisitely gowned in
rose-red under lace whose color was that of moonlight seen through thin
clouds, beholding our culprit, who an hour before had been exultantly
ranging a world of mysterious and infinite adventure, flattened
contritely in the midst of his enormities.

"How human!" was her only comment.

Often they came back injured, with bitten ears, scratched faces,
bleeding feet, and pretended to be worse off than they were, so as to
divert our reproaches into pity. Sigurd limped home one dawn with a
cruelly torn claw and lay all day in a round clothes-basket, to which
he had taken a fancy, curled up like a yellow caterpillar and sleeping
like a dormouse. But when I was sitting on the piazza steps that
evening, putting a fresh bandage on the claw, while Sigurd, almost too
feeble to stir, watched the process with pathetic eyes, a blanched
sprite glistened by, only a white motion through the dark, and in an
instant the invalid had sped away, bandage trailing, to be wicked all
over again.

No matter how often the four mistresses agreed that discipline required
doors to be shut against the truants till daybreak, on these nights of
their escapes ours were light slumbers that a pleading whine too easily
broke and many were the tiptoe journeys down derisively creaking stairs
to let the wanderers in. The next day such lame, dirty, subdued,
meek-minded stay-at-homes as our collies were! It was hard to scold
them properly when they rolled over on their backs and presented aching
stomachs to be comforted. But sometimes these stampedes took place by
day, for whenever they met out-of-doors these brothers, otherwise
fairly obedient, would disregard all human commands for the
authoritative call of the blood and dart away side by side like arrows
shot from a single bow. The sins that neither would commit alone they
reveled in without scruple when they were together. From all over town
we heard of our paragons as chasing cats, jumping at horses' heads,
over-running gardens and upsetting children. One sedate young woman on
whom they leaped, entreating her to play with them, sent in a
substantial bill to "the owner of the dog that tore my dress." When we
inquired whether it was the golden collie or the white that did the
damage she coldly replied that "the animals were so mixed up" she
couldn't tell whether it was "the brown one or the drab,"--to such a
condition had a bath of mud brought our dandies. One mother sternly
confronted us with a weepy little boy who complained that "zem two dogs
made me frow sticks for 'em all the way home from school an' my arm's
most bwoke with tiredness."

I remember clearly one typical escapade. It had snowed for three
successive days and nights. Joy-of-Life was away in Washington, reading
a learned paper before some convention of economists. Her mother passed
the shut-in hours patiently by the fireside, meditating with
disapproval on Dante's _Inferno_ which I was reading to her, at
intervals, for cheer during her daughter's absence. Sigurd was spoiling
for a romp. At last, in desperation, he amused himself by eating
everything he came across,--a tube of paste, a roll of tissue paper,
one of his own ribbons. I saw the latter end of the ribbon disappearing
into his mouth and sprang to seize it, meaning to drag the rest out of
his inner recesses, but Sigurd secured it by a furious gulp and capered
away in triumph. At last the flakes had ceased falling, the snow plow
had struggled through and, yielding to the big puppy's desperate
urgency, I took him out to walk, following after the plow between
glittering walls as high as my shoulder. At a turn in the road, I
caught sight, across the level expanse, of the Younger Sister
exercising an invisible Laddie. Suddenly there appeared above the
parapet the tips of two golden-brown ears, pricked up in eager inquiry.
Sigurd, overtopped by our own wall, could not have seen them, but with
one tremendous lurch he was up and out, wallowing madly through the
drifts to meet Laddie, who, like a miniature snow plow, was already
breaking a way toward him. The collies touched noses and, ranging
themselves side by side, plunged off into that blank of white, utterly
deaf to the human calls that would check the onward impulse of their
sacred brotherhood.

They had another glorious run two days later, when the snow was frosted
and could bear their weight. Mad with mischief, they raced miles on
miles,--to Oldtown and beyond, barking at every man they met and
leaping at every horse; they dashed into Waban Way and out over the
spacious Honeymoon estates; they scampered hither and thither across
the three hundred acres of the campus; they careered back and forth
over the frozen lake and challenged the college girls to a
rough-and-tumble in the snow. Meanwhile the Younger Sister and I,
seriously alarmed lest some nervous horse, startled by their antics,
should bring about disaster, had taken a sleigh and gone forth in
pursuit. Disquieting news of them kept coming to us as we drove.

"Two young collies? I should say so. I met them an hour ago, way over
in Dover. They both jumped at my old Dobbin's head, barking all
Hallelujah."

"O yes, I've seen two runaway dogs. Shepherds, white and fawn. They
were chasing an express team down by Eliot Oak. The driver was standing
up and whipping out at them for all he was worth."

Presently we came on their fresh tracks in the snow, tracks of running
feet always side by side, until at last we overtook the truants. There
they were, barking in duet, hoarse but happy, trying to scramble up an
icy telephone pole after a spitting cat. They bounded to greet us and
followed the sleigh home like lambs. The Sister, secretly condemning
Sigurd as the dangerous misleader of her angel Laddie, assured them
firmly that they were _never_ to play together again.

Sigurd still had so much frolic in him that, when we had arrived at our
own door, he coaxed me to stay outside and throw sticks for him from
the piazza into the drifts. But soon I noticed red touches on the snow
and, bringing him in, found that his feet were ice-cut and bleeding. I
told him sternly that such were his just deserts and he rolled over on
his back, holding up his paws to be healed. While I was anointing them
with vaseline, a vain remedy because of the avidity with which Sigurd
licked it off, I discovered that he had lost, in his wild whirl, the
ornamental blue-bead collar, wrought for him by a student devotee at
the cost of many patient hours. When I had done what he would let me
for his feet and he had curled up cosily in his basket, I solemnly set
about my duty of rebuking him, but the youngster was too tired for
rhetoric. With an apologetic grunt, he instantly fell fast asleep.
Being inwardly persuaded that Laddie was chiefly to blame, I left my
misguided innocent to his repose.

The next afternoon he limped demurely down the hill and, in about two
minutes, was on The Orchard porch, exchanging vociferous greetings with
Laddie, but for once his effrontery failed of its effect. Steeling
their hearts, the Sisters refused to let the outside collie in or the
inside collie out. Sigurd, always most dignified when his feelings were
hurt, rose against one of the drawing-room windows, took a long look at
the sofa and vanished into the early winter twilight, not to be seen
again by our anxious eyes for thirty-six hours. It was just on the
silver edge of the third day that a wistful _woof_ on our porch sent
four hastily slippered feet skurrying to the door. Such a famished,
unkempt, exhausted collie as stood wagging there! His coat was grimy,
his ruff gray and tangled, and from his collar, drawn cruelly tight,
dragged a cumbrous length of iron chain. The Sisters, who, suffering
all the pangs of contrition, had been no less eager than we in
prosecuting the search, hurried over (without Laddie) straight from
their breakfast table, and one of them, flinging her arms about Sigurd
as he nestled in the forbidden easy-chair--for he never missed the
opportunity to wrest some special privilege out of any emotional
crisis--sobbed with relief. Spent as he was, the collie licked her
cheek, forgiving and consoling, even while his happy, love-beaming eyes
could hardly hold themselves open. If an attempt had been made to
kidnap him, Sigurd's strength and often proved cleverness in
extricating himself from bonds had stood him in good stead. More
fortunate than his sister Hildigunna and than another high-spirited
sister, Unna, likewise supposed to have been stolen--though in the saga
Unna ran away from her home (and husband),--Sigurd, if he could not
break the chain of captivity, had managed to pull it out of its staple
and lug it along with him back to freedom.

By an assiduous use of the telephone to the effect, "We are taking
Laddie for a walk. Will you please keep Sigurd in?" or "Sigurd has just
started off in your direction. Where's Laddie?" we kept a certain check
on their escapades for the rest of that winter, but they contrived to
meet at some secret rendezvous in apple-blossom time and came home
panting and jubilant, with pink and white blossoms all over their
coats. Sigurd apparently liked the effect, considering himself a King
of the May, for no sooner were those petals brushed off than he frisked
out and rolled over in the tulip-bed to accumulate some more. On the
few occasions when our runaways, oozing through the merest cracks of
doors, gave us the slip, we dropped all minor occupations and hunted
them down, calling in the aid of an amused liveryman, an Irish neighbor
whose white hairs thatched a pate where wit and kindliness kept house
together.

"It's the goolden dog y'are to me," he would say to Sigurd. "Many's the
good dollar I've made out o' yez thraipsin's and throublin's."

The Lady of Cedar Hill had given away to appreciative friends all the
puppies save Gunnar, but several of them had homes nearby and she
thought it would be pleasant to have a family reunion once a year, on
their common birthday. One such gathering proved enough for all time.

On a delectable autumn afternoon we set forth, just after luncheon, in
a roomy surrey, The Sisters, Joy-of-Life, my nephew--then a wide-eyed
small boy, now a surgeon working for the wounded in France,--and I,
with Sigurd and Laddie racing alongside, to attend Gunnar's birthday
party. Six or seven of his brothers and sisters were assembled, but at
this distance of time I cannot call the roll. Among them were probably
Helga, who, becoming Lady Gwendolyn, lived to a reverend age; certainly
Flosi, who returned from the new owner to Cedar Hill, where his
frolicsome years were nine; perhaps Hauskuld, dearly beloved, who, like
Sigurd, was tormented in hot weather by the aristocratic ailment of
eczema, and perhaps Helgi, who, as far as the family record is known,
outlived all his generation, dying at the ripe age, for a high-bred
collie, of thirteen. There was no receiving line and never a moment
that afternoon when it was easy to distinguish them, for it was all one
glorious scrimmage from arrival to departure.

Ralph, growing more and more inhospitable with the years, had been
locked up as a precaution against tragedy, and resplendent young
Gunnar, the host of the day, assailed his guests so violently that he,
too, had to be put on his chain, where he alternately strained and
sulked all the afternoon. No wonder he never gave another party. But
Dora, always bewitching in her ways, found the occasion entertaining
and tolerated her children, if she could not be said to welcome them.
Meanwhile, by unremitting vigilance on the part of masters and
mistresses, the guests were restrained from too furious attacks on one
another, until the banquet, consisting of a row of extraordinarily big
and marrowy bones, was served. Each dog was instantly prompted by the
Evil One to covet his neighbor's bone, but after a really magnificent
display of authority on the part of their respective guardians, the
raging bunch of white and sable was disentangled. Separated by wide
distances, the collies, graceful figures lying on green lawn and bank,
fell to their crunching in comparative peace, while Gunnar, spurning
his own birthday dinner, roared grace from the end of his chain, with
Ralph's gruff _amen_ coming down from the open windows of his prison
chamber. I blush to record that Sigurd, having polished off his bone at
top speed, proceeded without ceremony to appropriate Laddie's. This was
rescued and returned to its gentle owner, already so bewildered by
these social excitements that, when a game of toss-and-catch followed
the feast, Laddie bit the leg of the short-trousered small boy, my
nephew, not unnaturally mistaking that long, thin, flourishing object
for a stick. This regrettable incident, as the Dog Gazette would put
it, broke up the party, but the distressed Sisters made such ample
amends to the victim that he came to consider, as birthdays and
Christmases rolled around, that scar on his calf one of his best
assets.

During the period of Sigurd's distemper and convalescence we took the
utmost care, of course, to shut him away from Laddie, whose bonny brown
head often appeared on the outside of one window or another, the
shining eyes wistful for his playmate.

On one occasion the contagious element in the disease stood us in good
stead. Sigurd was better, but still so weak that the least of walks
tired him out. We kept him off the highways, lest any germs yet
lingering about him might bring disaster on other puppies, but thought
we were safe in the woods behind the house. On a certain Sunday
afternoon I had coaxed Sigurd, by short stages, further than before. He
had spent his little stock of strength and, with his usual eye for
becoming effects, had disposed himself to sleep under a
white-blossoming wild cherry,--that exquisite springtide delight which
the campaign against browntail and gypsy moth is fast banishing from
eastern Massachusetts. Suddenly a group of young roughs from a
neighboring factory town burst through the brush, attended by a gaunt
mastiff, and for the fun of the thing, jovially deaf to my
remonstrances, proceeded to get up a dog fight, though the betting was
monotonously one-sided. "Buster," obedient to command, approached
growling and bristling, and Sigurd, who was never one to turn the other
ear, trotted out with gallant readiness to meet an opponent who would
have made an end of him with the first clinch.

"Very well!" I said, blazing at those boyish rowdies, who may, by this
time, have bloomed out into heroes and won the _croix de guerre_. "If
you want your dog to sicken and probably die of distemper, set him on.
This collie is full of it and will infect him at the first touch."

Without staying to question my scientific accuracy, the hoodlums
hastily called off their champion, threatened me in uncivil terms with
the police and the jail for bringing a distempered dog abroad and took
themselves off to look for safer holiday sport. Sigurd thought he had
frightened them away and swaggered home with a marked revival of
spirits.

When Dr. Vet at last pronounced all danger of contagion over, the
Sisters, leaving Laddie behind, made a congratulatory call on our
invalid, whose lyric cry, albeit hoarse and squeaky, shrilled to the
Dogstar as he welcomed them, now climbing up to their shoulders in
fervent embrace, now modulating his roundelay to the plaintive note as
he tried his best to tell them what "Poor Sigurd" had suffered. _They_
were sympathetic; _they_ were intelligent; and tumbling into the
forbidden easy chair, Sigurd made it clear to them, and they in turn
made it clear to his dull mistresses, that his swollen throat could
nowhere be so comfortable as here, where the chair-arm supported the
chin. It was then that our last shred of arbitrary discipline gave way.
Sigurd had won the throne of his ambition. In course of time, this
became Sigurd's Chair, given over to his exclusive occupancy, scratched
and rubbed and shabby, the most disreputable and, to his mind, the most
enjoyable of our furnishings.

Laddie escaped the distemper, but of other mischances he had more than
his share. He was scalded by his own dear Annie, against whom he had
unluckily run when she was carrying a pitcher of boiling water; he was
shot through the leg, as he was assisting in a midnight serenade given
by the dogs of the neighborhood to a belle shut up in the house of her
bad-tempered master; but the sorest pang of all was the departure of
his mistresses for another year abroad. The Elder Cousin had gone on a
longer journey; the corner by the hearth was lonely for the lack of
that small gray figure, the hands so busy with their knitting, the face
so shrewd and kindly; and all we village-folk called to express our
sympathy and remained to burden theirs with long recitals of our
various tribulations until the Sisters, utterly worn out, had again to
seek solitude overseas.

What to do with Laddie? Gunnar, disgusted enough at having Flosi back
again, flatly avowed that he would not put up with another brother on
the premises. Ralph, in the fullness of years, and little Dora,
prematurely, had slipped away to Shadowland, bequeathing the care of
Cedar Hill to Gunnar, who was keenly alive to his responsibilities.
From one of our recent visits Sigurd had come back with a bleeding ear
and a red blotch on the top of his head. So the farmhouse of the estate
opened its doors to Laddie, but he had other views and, running away
the first afternoon, made a valiant effort to get back to the Sisters.
He took one wrong turn and was lost for a night and a day, but his rare
beauty and appealing charm won him a friend who allowed him to follow
her home, fed him, read his collar and soon made telephone connection
with his distressed mistresses, already resolved to let their steamer
go without them rather than sail in ignorance of Laddie's fate. They
were stout-hearted enough, however, when they knew that he was found,
to ask the Cedar Hill farmer to go and reclaim the stray, denying
themselves and Laddie another farewell.

We hoped that in the year's separation the two brothers would forget
each other or, at least, outgrow their propensity to revert to the wild
together. It seemed the more likely because Laddie, always fragile, had
suffered a severe attack of pneumonia at the farmhouse, and came back
to the Sisters looking more like a white spirit than ever. But he took
time, on arrival, only to greet his household saints and indulge in a
brief nap on the sofa before dashing off to find Sigurd. Away they went
on an impassioned run, from which, seven hours later, Laddie came
drooping home, and even Sigurd spent the next day curled up in his
green easy chair, subdued and quiescent, looking like an illustration
for "After the Ball."

Although we kept what guard we could upon them, they managed to elude
us several times that autumn, but after the first wild spurt they would
run more slowly, Sigurd slackening his natural speed in order to keep
side by side with Laddie, whose hard panting could be heard above the
rustling of the autumn leaves through which they raced. The worry cow
hooked us badly on Christmas day. Laddie, who had coughed all night,
had to be coaxed to come out for a little walk after breakfast and was
dragging behind the Younger Sister when, turning the corner of a bright
barberry hedge, they came upon Sigurd, gorgeous in his new, upstanding
bow of holly ribbon. Hey, presto! Off they shot like young wolves on
the trail. Under the starlight our truant returned, a damp wisp hanging
from his collar. That white, wavy front of his, so carefully groomed
for the festal day, was all red and green from the holly ribbon that he
had been chewing up for his Christmas dinner. As for poor Laddie, he
was ill for a week, but rallied again, and, despite our doubled and
redoubled vigilance, the brothers had still two or three runs together
before the end of February brought with it the end of Laddie's life.

Beautiful being that he was, he had gladdened earth for five and a half
years. If it is hard to believe in immortality, it is harder to
understand how his Maker could cast away a spirit of such pure
sweetness as Laddie's. Perhaps he ranges the celestial meadows now and
has found out what King Lear wanted to know,--"the cause of thunder."
For thunder was Laddie's terror. He could be quieted only by the
Younger Sister, who, going to the piano, would play her loudest, while
the trembling collie crouched against her feet.

This second attack of pneumonia was relentless. Laddie was not allowed
to suffer it to the end, but was tenderly put to sleep. Shortly after,
Sigurd trotted over to The Orchard of his own impulse and, without any
of the customary lurking and looking for Laddie, went straight in to
the Sisters, licking their hands and pressing close against their
knees.

That afternoon a few of Laddie's closest friends--though all the town
loved Laddie--gathered about a little grave on The Orchard lawn, while
the delicate Elder Sister, wrapped in a white shawl, with Sigurd,
wearing a white ribbon, close beside her for comfort, looked down on
the scene from an open chamber window. In the group below, one of us
after another quietly spoke of Laddie's gentleness and gladness and
affection, of the happiness he had given and received. The Younger
Sister read a lyric good-bye that the Elder Sister had written and
thanked God, as simply as if He were standing in our midst, for all the
joy of Laddie. Then we lowered the box, dropping upon it the white
rosebuds that the Dryad had sent and the white carnations that Jack's
mistress had brought. When the earth went in, one voice said softly,
"Dust to dust," but another responded clearly, "Love to love." All the
while Sigurd's intent eyes and golden head peered from the window above
and once he gave a short, troubled bark.

SIGURD'S MEDITATIONS IN THE CHURCH-PORCH

The gaze of a dog is blind
To splendors of summit and sky,
Ocean and isle,
But never a painter shall find
The beautiful more than I
In my lady's smile.

The thought of a dog is dim.
Not even a wag he deigns
To the wisest book.
Philosophy dwells for him
In loving the law that reigns
In voice, in look.

The heart of a dog is meek.
He places his utter trust
In a mortal grace,
Contented his God to seek
In a creature framed of dust
With a dreaming face.

The human is our divine.
In the porch of the church, I pray
For a rustling dress,
For those dear, swift steps of thine,
Whose path is my perfect way
Of holiness.

ADVENTURES

"_Puntarvolo._ Is he religious?

_Gentleman._ I know not what you call religious, but he goes
to church, I am sure."

--Jonson's _Every Man out of his Humour_.

The zest, the fun, the excitement Sigurd infused into our human humdrum
outwent all expectation. I think it added a relish even to
Joy-of-Life's devotions at the early service of St. Andrew's that a
suppressed yelp and a vehement scamper might at any second denote
Laddie's appearance and Sigurd's instant reversion from her pious
attendant in the vestibule to a wild creature of enraptured speed. He
opened our eyes to a new vision of the most familiar things. What we
had considered merely gray squirrels were revealed, through his
glorious campaign against them, as goblin banditti bent on insult and
robbery. For on those enchanted autumn days, when we would be wandering
through the rich-colored, spicy woods, where winds laughed among the
branches and chased leaves bright as jewels down the air, these
impertinent squirrels were always scolding overhead and dropping acorns
on us. I remember one such stroll, when a falling chestnut smacked
Sigurd soundly on the nose. He at once attributed the indignity to the
squirrels--quite unjustly this time--and made off in pursuit of a wily
old fellow that whisked in and out among the slender birch boles and
led him, as if for the mere sport of it, on a far chase. I was absorbed
meanwhile in altruistic combat with a troop of ants, a foraging party
returning to their hill-castle with a company of belated beetles as
booty. As often as I brushed the ranks into confusion with a spray of
goldenrod, it was astonishing to see how quickly the discomfited ants
would rally and how immediately every one of the madly skurrying
beetles--for their pitiless captors had deprived them of their
wings--would be again a prisoner, surrounded in close formation by a
marching escort. Looking up from this insect tragedy, I saw Sigurd
tearing back with something in his mouth that, for one horrified
instant, I thought was the slaughtered squirrel. It turned out to be my
hat, which, blowing merrily away from the bramble whereon it was hung,
had been captured by my friend in need, who proudly restored it,
somewhat the worse for the manner of its rescue. Later on, in the
hushed Indian summer noons, Joy-of-Life and I would take our luncheon
out into the woods, where our golden collie would roll over and over in
a rustling bed of leaves much of his own color or of brown, fragrant
pine-needles, his bright eyes always on the watch for any aggression
from the peering citizens of the trees.

The winter, however, was Sigurd's heroic season. He had the soul of a
helper, not of a pet, and longed for occupation, responsibility,
service. His sentry duty at night, his guardianship in our walks, his
herding of the family into the dining-room three times a day with
punctual solicitude, these were not enough. It was amusing and yet, in
a way, touching to see with what strenuous earnestness he took upon
himself the task of driving the squirrels away from the bird boxes. For
our neighbors, the "shadowtails," as the Greeks called them, were so
obtuse as to appropriate to their own comfort and convenience every
provision we made for the flying folk. We had put up in the trees near
the house a few bird palaces, variously named, according to the
dominant interest of those whose respective windows overlooked them,
Toynbee Hall, the Tabard Inn, the Waldorf-Astoria, the Mermaid Tavern;
but their bluebird tenants were soon ejected, and families of baby
squirrels, for whose repose their parents busily chewed up mattresses
of leaf and bark, were reared in those proud abodes. To this Sigurd had
to submit, though he would lie for hours on the piazza, his chin on his
paws, wondering why the Collie Creator, whom he probably took to be
much like his adorable father Ralph, only a thousand times as big--for
had not Sigurd heard in the skies the thunder of his bark?--denied to
dogs the gift of climbing trees. But their attack on the food-boxes
brought these pirates almost within Sigurd's reach.

From several of the upper windows had been built out simple and
practical feeding-shelves,--shallow wooden boxes partitioned off by
cross-pieces into some six or eight compartments. Here we would put out
marrowbones, suet, shreds and scraps from the dinner-plates, nuts,
acorns, pinecones, grains, crumbs, fragments of cheese, and here, all
the long winter through, our welcome guests were chickadees,
nut-hatches, tree sparrows, downy woodpeckers, juncos, with an
occasional fox sparrow or purple finch or flock of Canadian crossbills.
Our unwelcome guests were English sparrows, of whom, however, we had
but few and those of rather subdued deportment; blue jays, who would
fly away with big pieces of meat or cocoanut, and the gray squirrels,
who would come stealing softly down the edge of the casement and
suddenly leap into the box. Here they would sit up on their haunches,
defying us through the pane with hard, black eyes, and gobble till they
could gobble no more. Then they would stuff their elastic cheeks almost
to bursting and make off with their plunder only to be back again
before the little birds, so long and so patiently waiting on the snowy
branches of the nearest tree, had really settled down to enjoy the
leavings.

Sigurd instinctively understood that the little birds were guests--to
the English sparrows he gave the benefit of the doubt--and that the
blue jays and squirrels were intruders. On a keen winter day, when the
boxes had been freshly filled, he was indeed an overworked collie,
scampering from room to room and window to window, barking furiously at
the raiders. This vociferous warning that no trespassers were allowed
sufficed for the blue jays, who would flap sullenly away, but the
squirrels were quick to learn that a bark was not a bite. Shadowtail
would only drop his nut and sit up erect and alert, his little fists
pressed to his heart, his beady eyes staring straight against the dog's
honest, indignant gaze. Seeing that his loudest roar had lost its
terrors, Sigurd would leap up toward the window and give it a
resounding thump with his paw. At first this new menace put the
squirrels to precipitate retreat. Off they went, nor stood upon the
order of their going. A few minutes later, one shrewd little gray face
after another would peer around the casement edge, but at the first
view of that upright, shining figure, with the flowing snow-white ruff,
mounting guard on chair or hassock, the goblin faces vanished. Sigurd
was immensely proud of himself during this epoch of the warfare. A very
Casabianca in his firm conception of duty, only the most imperative
summons could call him from his post. But when the squirrels had
learned that the barrier between the collie and themselves was, though
transparent, an effective screen, and would, as before, saucily plant
themselves in the middle of the box and resume the stuffing and
pillaging process more diligently than ever, under his very eyes,
Sigurd, frantic with fury, would beat an utterly tremendous tattoo upon
the pane. Three times one January he crashed through the glass in one
of my chamber windows, cutting his face and paws and subjecting the
room to a more Arctic ventilation than I cared for. On these occasions
the squirrels saved themselves by prodigious leaps into the nearest
tree and did not venture back while that jagged gap remained,--so
satisfactory a result, from Sigurd's point of view, that he marveled at
my folly in calling in a glazier to repair the damage. As the man was
working at the window, Sigurd would look from him to me with a puzzled
and reproachful expression accentuated by the long strips of court
plaster across his nose.

He had a vigorous ally in my mother, who brought her own bright wits to
bear on the circumvention of the enemy. She knitted a little bag,
filled it with nutmeats and hung it from the middle sash outside the
window, so that it dangled halfway down in the open space which gave
the squirrels no footing but delighted our winged pensioners. It was
fun to see two spirited fluffs squaring at each other atop a lump of
suet for the best chance to rise at the bag, till another plumy midget
came fiercely down upon them and drove them, chirping remonstrance, off
to the outer edges of the box. Then the newcomer, bristling with
victory, flew up and secured the most desirable position on that
swinging dinner-pail, while the others, nudging and scrambling, sought
for a footing on the further side. But the squirrels studied the
situation from above and from below and presently learned to run up the
blind, make a sidelong leap to the bag and cling to it with all four
legs and feet, while they gnawed through the threads until the goodies
literally poured into their mouths. There they would cling and feast,
while on the other side of the glass my mother and Sigurd, both of them
sharply protesting and angrily rapping the pane, held a Council of War.
As a result, my mother bought two iron sink-mops, wired them together
and triumphantly fashioned a bag which even the strong teeth of the
furry burglars, for all their persevering and ingenious efforts, could
not bite open. But the happy chickadees and nut-hatches would perch
there, by relays, all day long, thrusting their bills through the iron
interstices and drawing out, bit by bit, the finely broken nutmeats.

The blue jays were routed quite by accident. The support of my box, a
strip of wood running from the underside of that little feeding table
to the house wall, had loosened its lower nail, and one day, when some
passing touch of grippe kept me in bed, with Sigurd sitting upright on
a chair beside me, playing nurse, a plump jay lit heavily upon the edge
of the shelf and screeched with fright as it shook and slid beneath
him. He took to his glossy wings and, within five minutes, the oak hard
by was alive with our whole colony of blue jays, all eying that box and
deep in agitated discussion. At last one venturesome fellow struck
boldly out and lit on it, only to feel it sway and sag and, with a
shriek rivaling that of his predecessor, flapped up just in time to
save himself, as he believed, from a terrific disaster. This
performance was repeated twice more and then the whole blue jay crew
abandoned, for the rest of the winter, not only their attacks on my
particular bird box, though its support was promptly made secure, but
on all the bird boxes of the house. Sigurd and I were well content as
we heard them croaking to one another, "A trap! Jam my feathers, a
hateful, human trap! But they couldn't hoodwink _us_. Yah, yah, yah!"

The squirrels, however, continued to be Sigurd's chief household care.
Out of doors, too, he was forever chasing them, but never, to my
knowledge, so much as brushed the tail of one. In his sleep, he often
seemed to be dreaming of a squirrel hunt, his feet running eagerly even
while his body lay at full stretch upon the rug, and his breath coming
in short pants. Sometimes he would howl in nightmare slumbers, but
generally he appeared elate, climbing, perhaps, the trees of Dreamland,
less slippery than our icy oaks, and driving out his enemies from their
loftiest fastness.

Sigurd bore no grudges and when, as the pussy-willows, anemones and
violets, the robins and the orioles were bringing in the spring, he was
called upon to adorn a blue jay funeral procession, he wore his black
ribbon with decorum. The chief mourner, a little lad by name of
Wallace, was one of our nearest neighbors and most honored friends. He
had been much perturbed in spirit over the perils of the blue jay brood
whose nursery, so reckless were their parents, tilted precariously on a
pine branch that overhung a ledge just beyond one end of Wallace's
porch. He feared every wind would overthrow that nest, but when the
shocking old mother, apparently in a fit of temper, deliberately pushed
her children out herself, and they fell, one by one, to instant death
on the rock below, Wallace's grief and horror were too great for a
child's good. His resourceful father therefore proposed a grand
funeral, as the only testimony of regard and regret that we could offer
to the unlucky fledgelings, and Wallace, who was much preoccupied with
his future career, having at one time planned to be a dentist in the
forenoon, a musician in the afternoon, and an editor at night, entered
with enthusiasm upon the duties of undertaker, sexton, and clergyman.
Called upon for an anthem, I responded with a lament which Wallace
found "too sad" to hear more than twice. On the second occasion it was
intoned at the tiny grave, above which Sigurd drooped a puzzled head,
not understanding a game that had in it neither romp nor laughter.

Though fond of Wallace, our collie's bearing toward small boys in
general was not conspicuous for cordiality. Women he accepted as
essential to the running of the universe; men--except for those
vindictive monsters perched on express teams with long whips in
hand--he regarded with amiable indifference; but about small boys he
was dubious. Some of our rougher little neighbors had stoned and
snowballed the new puppy. At Christmas we met that situation by
converting Sigurd into Santa Claus,--dressing him up in holly ribbon
and sleighbells and hanging on him the little gifts which we were in
the way of taking about to the children on our hill. The immediate
effect was excellent. Sigurd was thanked and patted and, in his
pleasure at such appreciation, he would magnanimously lick the boyish
hands that had been so often raised against him. One urchin was so
impressed by a toy fire-engine that, at least through January, he
touched his cap to "Mr. Sigurd" whenever they met; but with Fourth of
July and Hallowe'en our troubles were all renewed. Firecrackers and
torpedoes are so disconcerting to collie nerves that no normally bad
boy could resist setting them off under Sigurd's very nose,
somersaulting with ecstasy to see his instantaneous bolt for home;
while on Hallowe'en all the youngsters on the hill would call in a
troop, weirdly disguised, swinging Jack-o'-Lanterns and banging,
scraping, whistling, piping, on strange instruments not of music. On
these distracting occasions Sigurd was ready to tear those giggling
spooks to bits, and either Joy-of-Life or I had to hold him tight,
while the other passed the cookies and candies for which our
supernatural visitants had come.

May Day was better fun for Sigurd. He quickly understood that the
Maybasket chase was only a game and played it with a vim. But in
general he did not care for festivals nor for any variation of the
usual round. Just everyday living was joy enough for him. If Sigurd had
made the calendar, the week would have been all Mondays. Even Christmas
puzzled more than it pleased him. Such a confusion of brown paper and
tissue paper, such a flourishing of queer, lumpy stockings, such
tangles of string, such excitement over objects that had no thrill for
his inquiring nose! And for himself, the rubber cats with gruesome
squeaks inside them, the mechanical beetles that shook his courage as
they charged at him across the floor! He could not make it out. Once
when all the people present were shouting with mirth over a new,
preposterous game of cards, Sigurd quietly picked up from under the
table a pack not yet called into service and carried it out into the
kitchen, where he was presently discovered with one forefoot set on the
cards tumbled about before him, while he gazed dejectedly down at them
in a defeated effort to find out why they were amusing. And the
Christmas parties, for which he had to be scrubbed until he shone like
an image of white and gold! And if it happened that, between his toilet
and the party, he whizzed off with Laddie, what unpleasantness on his
return!

"Sigurd was especially invited for to-night and I promised Wallace to
bring him. But he's too dirty now and he hasn't had his dinner."

"All his own doing. He shall come dirty and dinnerless and learn to be
ashamed of himself."

Not that he felt ashamed at all, but very tired and lame, hobbling
behind his family into a bright, chattering room, where everybody
wanted to pet him and where all he wanted was to be let alone to sleep
his frolic off. Why must he be waked up with foolish laughter because
that glittering tree, which he had not been allowed to investigate for
squirrels, had given, in his name, a toy ship to Wallace, whose father,
Professor Wit, must needs observe: "How like dear Sigurd, to present
his neighbors with his _barque_!" And though for him the Christmas
tree bore a chocolate caramel in the inmost box of a nest of boxes, he
would, to the disappointment of the company who had heard of his skill
in opening parcels, yawn and fall asleep over each box in turn. At his
best, he bit drowsily into the pasteboard and pushed at the string more
clumsily than usual with a pair of grimy paws from which the circle of
silken skirts would draw away. Christmas, indeed, and an inaccessible
chocolate caramel for dinner!

Sigurd's most thrilling adventures, naturally, had to do with dogs, but
cats were an interesting side issue. The self-protective qualities of
the feline race I realized on our first Sunday walk with the puppy,
when a gray kitten bobbed up in our path. Sigurd romped forward,
Joy-of-Life caught him by the collar, and I, for my sins, picked up the
kitten. It looked so tiny, helpless and soft; it felt like a frame of
steel and wire, every little muscle tense, while its claws flashed out
like daggers and ripped up the back of my hand. In due time Sigurd
learned how formidable a cat may be. If she ran, he pelted after until
she took refuge up a tree, but if she proved to be some shrewd old
grimalkin who held her ground he suddenly slackened his pace and
sauntered casually by, trying to look as if he did not see her.

His one constant dog friend was Laddie. Their escapades were the top of
all adventure,--such orgies of wild joy that I would gladly lie awake
again listening for the hoarse bark of our returning prodigal. But with
other dogs of his own sex, acquaintance, however affably begun, would
soon ripen into a fight, unless the new comrade were too small and weak
or had reasons of his own for declining the test of battle. With Gyp,
across the way, a sly little black and tan, well-named, for his
ancestors must have run with the Romany folk and bequeathed to him a
genius for thievery, Sigurd did not take the trouble to quarrel. Gyp,
always skulking about our premises, would make off with any of our
lighter possessions carelessly left on porch or lawn. We had suffered
these losses without redress--for to the dog's master, only too ready
to beat poor Gyp cruelly on the least provocation, we would not make
complaint--till Sigurd came. He had been with us barely a week when,
one afternoon, as we were reading under the trees, Joy-of-Life reached
a hand behind her for her parasol. It was not there. As we both
exclaimed, questioned and looked about under the shrubbery where the
wind, had there been a wind, could not possibly have blown it, our new
guardian stood watching our

"unsuccessful pains
With fixed considerate face,
And puzzling set his puppy brains
To comprehend the case."

Suddenly he caught sight of Gyp trying with guilty haste to get a long
object, balanced in his jaws, through a favorite hole in his backyard
fence. It was never done, for Sigurd was upon him in a twinkling, had
shaken him thoroughly and brought back the parasol essentially
unharmed. Several times again he recovered our goods and chattels,
invariably giving the culprit a vigorous shaking, but otherwise keeping
on neighborly terms with the little scamp, till life ended for Gyp in a
kick from his drunken master's boot.

With another neighbor, black Rod, a noble St. Bernard, the initial
friendship was soon broken. The two dogs were of about the same age and
had many a frisk together that first summer, but when Rod tried to join
us on our walks, Joy-of-Life, who thought one big puppy enough for
amateurs to handle, would sternly bid Rod, "Go home." Sigurd would
promptly spring to enforce the command, and Rod would slowly and
sulkily retreat. After a few of these experiences, Rod ceased to follow
us, but he never forgave any one of the three. Thenceforth for the rest
of their lives the two dogs, who knew themselves almost equally matched
in size and strength, passed each other, often a dozen times a day,
with bristling backs and low, cautious growls, while never could my
friendliest greetings, even when I was alone, win the least wiggle of a
wag from Rod's rigid, remembering tail. He was so fortunate as to live
in a household of children, for whom he made the most faithful of
protectors, and often, on a sparkling winter day, I have met him
coasting with them, racing down the hill abreast of the sled, tail
waving, eyes gleaming, but the instant he became aware of my obnoxious
presence and observation, the tail would stiffen and the eyes would
cloud. His hostility was a genuine hurt to me, so much did I like and
respect the dog, but even in his old age, when pain and weakness lay
heavy on him, and the children--did he understand?--were teasing their
mother to have him chloroformed so that they might have in his place a
stylish young Boston bull, he would accept from me no comfort of touch
or tone. Another unhappy result of these early rebuffs was that Sigurd
got it firmly fixed in his yellow noddle that the words _Go home_ were
the profanest of curses, and whenever he was so addressed, especially
by one of us, his aspect of grief and horror was ludicrous to behold.
Besides, he did not go.

Through Sigurd our circle of fellowship was widened for all time. Here
we had been living on, half stifled in biped society, well-nigh unaware
of the jubilant dog world bounding about our feet, but in a few months
our own collie had made us acquainted with a democratic variety of
canine types. And still I would almost rather meet a new dog than a new
poet. A certain Norwegian lake is twice as dear to memory for the
courteous Great Dane that did the honors of the bank and shared our tea
cakes there; the only duchess to whose boudoir, at the heart of a
frowning Border castle, we were ever invited, impressed us less than
the three pompous poodles, their snowy curls so absurdly like her own,
that squatted on the edges of her flowing heliotrope morning-gown and
were simultaneously upset whenever one of her Ladyship's energetic
impulses brought her to her feet.

Sigurd's acquaintances were legion. To only a few may space be given
here. There was Teddy, a black spaniel who aspired to the high standard
of manners held by his master, a retired army officer, and, following
example, would punctiliously rise as ladies entered or left the room.
There were twin dachshunds, who daily drove abroad in a limousine and
enraged Sigurd by looking down on him, short-legged that they were,
from the window opened hardly wide enough to let them thrust their
black noses through the crack. There was the lean, forlorn old hound
whom all the dog-clubs blackballed and who, in consequence, had to
satiate his yearning for fellowship by keeping company with the
minister's cow. Every summer morning a silver-headed saint whose pulpit
labors were done escorted his Mulley down our hill and tethered her in
the broad green pasture below. At a respectful distance would follow
the homeless hound, who had picked up during the night what sustenance
he could from the neighborhood garbage pails. And hard of heart we
deemed that neatest of our housewives who, to keep his meddling muzzle
away, used to scatter a profusion of red pepper over her garbage. All
day long the hound would stay in the meadow close to the cow, who,
uneasy at first under his attentions, came to accept them with bovine
placidity. Indeed, there was, we thought, a certain coquetry in her
carriage as, a person of importance, she came sedately stepping up the
hill at sunset, the old clergyman on one side and the old dog on the
other. Her friendship with the happy hound grew to be as famous in our
local annals as, in the realm of books, is that of the horse and hen
related by White (in his _Natural History of Selbourne_), or that of
the swan and trout so poignantly told by Hudson (in his _Adventures
Among Birds_).

Certain dogs Sigurd would bully shamelessly, like amiable old Bounce,
on whom he would hurl himself in Bounce's own yard and sit on top of
him, growling most offensively, until we pulled him off. To the
subsequent scolding Sigurd would listen as long as it interested him
and then press up against us and offer his paw, as if to say, "All
right; enough of that; let's be friends again."

On the other hand, he had such a liking for our Professor Far-Away that
he stretched his regard to cover her successive dogs, Chum and Jack,
though he was born too late to know her beautiful black collie,
Wallace. He would even allow Chum, an adopted stray, a nondescript
animal of preposterous awkwardness, to drink from his own Japanese
bowl, spattering the water, in Chum's uncouth fashion, half across the
hall, while Jack, an Irish terrier,

"With the soul in the shining eyes of him,"

ranked in Sigurd's esteem next after Laddie. Professor Far-Away, whose
perilous joy it was to traverse, with Jack, unexplored tracts of China
and Thibet, attended by a train of coolies, would, when dull destiny
called her back to the class room, effect brief escapes by way of
bicycle runs through the wood roads, attended by a train of dogs. When
her cavalcade swept by our hill, Sigurd would leap up as if at the call
of the Wild Huntsman and rush forth to fall in. Through her long
absences in foreign lands he never ceased to listen for her gypsy
whistle, and once, at least, he was literally her first caller on her
return. He came tearing back to his own family, in high excitement,
with a traveler's tag waving from his collar. The tag was penciled over
with the Wanderer's greeting, adding "how dear it was of Sigurd" to be
barking at her door within ten minutes after she and Jack had crossed
their threshold. When Professor Far-Away writes _The Junketings of
Jack_, there will be a book worth reading.

Although our puppy had several times returned with a scratched face,
after encounters with veteran cats, his first fight was with Major, a
rugged brindle bull, who lorded it over all the dogs in town. We had
been warned of Major and when, one September morning, I went to the
door in answer to the now familiar _woof_, I knew, even without the
uplift of Sigurd's eloquent look, what had happened. He was dripping
with blood, his own and Major's, and dragged one hind leg painfully,
yet he had an air of expecting congratulations. We bathed and
disinfected his wounds as well as our inexperience could--in the course
of the next few years we became experts at canine first aid--but the
injury to the leg looked so serious that we called in Dr. Vet, who
found that one of Major's tusks had penetrated the joint. The leg was
packed in an antiphlogistic clay until it looked more like an
elephant's leg than Sigurd's and was secured from the investigation of
his own inquisitive teeth by broad bands of plaster and innumerable
yards of bandages. The proud sufferer, who, claiming that he was now
entitled to all sick privileges, had insisted on taking to my bed, lay
there on a fresh rug, anxiously watching every movement of the doctor's
hands but enduring even the probing without protest.

After AEsculapius had gone and the rest of the family were gathered
about the invalid, who, despite all smarts and aches, keenly relished
being the center of attention, Joy-of-Life and I sallied forth to
inquire for Major. That redoubtable little ruffian, cuddled into his
basket, rolled up doleful eyes from a gory lump that bore but small
resemblance to his massive, wrinkled, pugnacious head. A beholder of
the battle reported that as Sigurd was trotting innocently across a
vacant lot, a brighter spot of yellow weaving its path through the
goldenrod, Major, after his wonted manner of attack, came sneaking up
behind and gripped him by the joint of a hind leg. Sigurd wheeled,
catching and crushing Major's head between his own powerful jaws, and
then the two dogs, locked in furious combat, spun round and round, a
snarling whirligig, gathering a vociferous group of ineffective
dissuaders, until a grocer's boy, jumping down from his delivery wagon,
came rushing up with a packet of pepper, hurling its contents into
Sigurd's nostrils and, through his literally open countenance, into
Major's. In a spasm of sneezing, the circle of dog broke apart, and
each dilapidated fragment made for home. Sigurd was a week or more in
getting well and he limped for a month after, but the scars on Major's
head were in evidence longer yet. They never matched prowess again,
though the language that they would use to each other, especially with
a wide road between them, is not fit for print.

Every evening of that first week our hero was carried or helped
downstairs and put to bed on the piazza, but every morning he crawled
and scrambled up again, crying out like a child as his injured leg,
trailing behind him, suffered jar or bump. Nobody could resist his
pleading to be lifted back to the bed and allowed to play hospital a
little longer, and Cecilia, more than ever his devoted slave, delighted
in bringing him, to his enormous pride, his dinner on a tray. He always
barked for the family to come in and behold that glorious spectacle,
and he barked, too, whenever the door bell rang, requesting the caller
to come up at once and pay respects to the Happy Warrior. Apart from
these red-letter events, his great diversion was trying to rid his
muffled leg of the bandages and plaster,--an exercise in which he soon
became only too proficient.

In Sigurd's last fight--with a gallant old mastiff, Rex--one of his
forelegs, bitten in three places, was put out of action for two months,
but no fuss was made about it. We had grown hardened to Sigurd's
battle-wounds. Sulpho-naphthol and his own tongue worked the cure,
though it took no little ingenuity to extract from between Sigurd's
teeth the stray tufts of grizzled hair that he wanted to keep as
souvenirs of Rex, who, still feebly growling, had to be fetched off the
field in a wheelbarrow.

From first to last, Sigurd's adventures were too often misadventures.
As a youngster, he was continually getting into trouble. It seemed
unfortunate that he should have so many feet, for what with thorns,
tacks, broken glass, jagged ice and the like, one or another of them
was usually in piteous condition.

His name brought more than one fight upon him, as our call of _Sigurd!_
_Sigurd!_ when he started out to investigate a dog-stranger, was often
mistaken for _Sick 'em!_ _Sick 'em!_ and the dog's owner would
reciprocate in kind. Once an indignant father, a summer visitor in
the town, passionately charged us with setting our dog on his two
"motherless boys," whereas we had been doing our best to call Sigurd
off from a chase after those provoking little rascals, who had attacked
him with a shower of pebbles.

Restless with his waxing strength he took to roving in the woods, where
once he was caught in a trap and painfully dragged himself home with a
lacerated leg that he had torn free from the cruel grip of the steel.
In the West Woods he once had a narrow escape. He was seen by a
wandering botanist to plunge into a swampy hole for water, a beverage
that, in spite of our hygienic warnings, Sigurd seemed to prefer with a
flavor of dirt. The mire there has a quicksand quality, and Sigurd
sank, splashing in frantic struggle, until only his nose was barely
visible above the black ooze, but in that extremity he seemed to get a
momentary hold for his hind feet, perhaps on root or snag, and by a
desperate effort lurched himself up and out. He lay on the bank,
panting and trembling, a sorely spent collie, for thirty-five minutes
by the botanist's watch, before he revived sufficiently to roll over
and over in the ferns and rub off some of the mud. Even so, when he
reached home he was so smeared and malodorous with mire that, all
unwitting of the mortal peril from which he had emerged, we met him
with a scolding, scoured him off with newspapers and shut him out of
doors for the rest of the day.

We grew to dislike the progress of civilization, so much did trains,
trolleys, golf-balls and motors add to our anxiety, but his own supreme
aversion was, in his early years, the bicycle. On a certain summer day,
when a deeper trouble than Sigurd could understand brooded over the
house, he trotted down to the forbidden center of the town, The Square,
in quest of entertainment. As he was crossing, there came upon him from
one side a carriage and from the other a bicycle, whose rider, a
Canadian, turned in his flurry the wrong way. Out of the resultant
crash Sigurd sprang to the sidewalk, but the bicycle reeled after him
and, in falling, struck him so sharply as to leave a long black bruise
under one eye. An observer of the collision told us that Sigurd
"flashed off toward home like a streak of sulphur." As soon as the door
was opened in response to his frantic barking, he bolted upstairs and
took refuge under my bed. The household in its grieved pre-occupation
forgot all about him, and it was not until evening that he stole down
into the family circle. With a careless glance at the black mark, we
rebuked him for having a smutty face. The wistful look of the
misunderstood came into those amber eyes, but he comforted himself with
a belated dinner and waited for Time to tell his story. The bruise
lasted long and the fright still longer. More than a year later
Joy-of-Life and I were driving through the tranquillities of an Indian
summer afternoon, with Sigurd, by this time a strong and rapid runner,
far ahead. Suddenly we saw him tearing back in terror. Without waiting
for us to pull up, he bounded over the wheel into the phaeton and
pressed his shaking body close against our knees. As we drove on, we
looked to right and left for the hippogrif that had so appalled him,
and presently beheld it,--a riderless bicycle leaning against a garden
wall.

THE HEART OF A DOG

Where did they learn
The miracle of love,
These dogs that turn
From food and sleep at our light-whistled call,
Eager to fling
Their all
Of speed and grace into glad following?

Not the wolf pack
Taught savage instinct love,
For there to lack
The power to slay was to be hunger-slain;
Once down, a prey,
A stain
Of crimson on the snow, a tuft of gray.

Was it from us
They learned such loyal love
Magnanimous,
Meeting our injuries with trustful eyes?
Are we so true,
So wise,
So broken-hearted when love's day is through?

Where did they learn
The miracle of love?
Though beauty burn
In rainbow, foam and flame, these have not heard,
Nor trees and flowers,
That word.
Only our dogs would give their lives for ours.

HOME STUDIES

"Thou know'st whate'er I see, read, learn,
Related to thy species, friend,
I tell thee, hoping it may turn
To thine advantage--so attend."

--Caroline Bowles Southey's _Conte a Mon Chien_.

In pursuance of this curriculum, while Joy-of-Life sat on the floor
beside Sigurd for a good-night brush of his gleaming coat, I would read
to them from any canine classic that chanced to be at hand,--_Rab and
His Friends_, _Bobby of Greyfriars_, _My Dogs of the Northland_, _The
Call of the Wild_, _Bob_, _Son of Battle_, John Muir's vivid story of
his Stickeen, Maeterlinck's brooding biography of his Pelleas with the
bulging forehead of Socrates, or De Amicis' touching account of his
blessed mongrel, Dick. When Sigurd grew restless under his toilet and
wanted to jump up and play, we would tell him how the great dog Kitmer,
the only animal besides Balaam's ass and the camel that carried Mahomet
on his flight from Mecca to be admitted into the Moslem paradise, had
"stretched forth his forelegs" for three hundred years in the mouth of
a cave, mounting guard over the Seven Sleepers.

Joy-of-Life, who was an historian as well as an economist and had
written, despite the annoyance of being confined to the same set of
dates and dynasties, three histories of England, would reach down from
her book shelves some high authority and read us, perhaps, Plutarch's
report of the watchdog, Cipparus, who guarded the temple of AEsculapius
at Athens so well that when a thief slipped off with some of the
precious offerings, he went after in unrelenting pursuit. "First, the
man pelted him with stones, but Cipparus would not give up. When day
came, he kept at a little distance, but followed with his eye on the
man and, when the fellow threw him food, would not touch it. When the
man lay down, he spent the night by him; when he walked again, the dog
got up and kept following. Cipparus fawned on any wayfarers he met, but
kept barking at the thief. When the authorities, who were in chase,
heard of this from people who had met the pair and who described the
color and size of the dog, they pursued with yet more zeal, seized the
man and brought him back from Crommyon. The dog turned round and led
the way, proud and delighted, evidently claiming that _he_ had caught
the temple thief."

Another evening it would be Motley's account of the escape of the
Prince of Orange from a night raid sent out by the Duke of Alva, when
the Prince was encamped near Mons. "The sentinels were cut down, the
whole army surprised, and for a moment powerless, while, for two hours
long, from one o'clock in the morning until three, the Spaniards
butchered their foes, hardly aroused from their sleep, ignorant by how
small a force they had been thus suddenly surprised, and unable in the
confusion to distinguish between friend and foe. The boldest, led by
Julian in person, made at once for the Prince's tent. His guards and
himself were in profound sleep, but a small spaniel, who always passed
the night upon his bed, was a more faithful sentinel. The creature
sprang forward, barking furiously at the sound of hostile footsteps,
and scratching his master's face with his paws. There was but just time
for the Prince to mount a horse which was ready saddled, and to effect
his escape through the darkness, before his enemies sprang into the
tent. His servants were cut down, his master of the horse and two of
his secretaries, who gained their saddles a moment later, all lost
their lives, and but for the little dog's watchfulness, William of
Orange, upon whose shoulders the whole weight of his country's fortunes
depended, would have been led within a week to an ignominious death. To
his dying day, the Prince ever afterwards kept a spaniel of the same
race in his bed-chamber."

And well he might, and well, too, did the sculptors place a little dog
of marble or bronze at the feet of his royal statues hardly more silent
than himself, but what Sigurd and I clamored to know was whether, on
that wild night of September eleventh, 1572, the spaniel escaped with
his master or died with the servants and secretaries on Spanish steel,
and no historian, not even our own, could tell us. With the ancient
guile of teachers she would divert our attention from the question she
could not answer by relating something else,--how Denmark commemorates
a dog true to a deposed king in a high order of nobility whose motto
runs, _Wild-brat was faithful_. Or she would take down the first volume
of her well-worn _Heimskringla_ and excite Sigurd's young ambition by
the record of King Saur. For when Eyestein, King of the Uplands, had
harried Thrandheim and set his son over them, and they had slain the
son, then "King Eyestein fared a-warring the second time into
Thrandheim, and harried wide there, and laid folk under him. Then he
bade the Thrandheimers choose whether they would have for king his
thrall, who was called Thorir Faxi, or his hound, who was called Saur;
and they chose the second, deeming they would then the rather do their
own will. Then let they bewitch into the hound the wisdom of three men,
and he barked two words and spake the third. A collar was wrought for
him, and chains of gold and silver; and whenso the ways were miry, his
courtmen bare him on their shoulders. A high-seat was dight for him,
and he sat on howe as kings do; he dwelt at the Inner Isle, and had his
abode at the stead called Saur's Howe. And so say folk that he came to
his death in this wise, that the wolves fell on his flocks and herds,
and his courtmen egged him on to defend his sheep; so he leaped down
from his howe, and went to meet the wolves, but they straightway tore
him asunder."

On the whole, Sigurd preferred poetry, whose rhythm promptly put him to
sleep. It was all one to him whether Homer sang the joy-broken heart of
old Argus, over whom

"the black night of death
Came suddenly, as soon as he had seen
Ulysses, absent now for twenty years,"

or Virgil chanted the device whereby AEneas and the Sibyl baffled the
giant watch-dog of Hades.

"The three-mouthed bark of Cerberus here filleth all the place,
As huge he lieth in a den that hath them full in face;
But when the adders she beheld upon his crest up-borne,
A sleepy morsel honey-steeped and blent of wizard's corn,
She cast him: then his three-fold throat, all wild with hunger's lack,
He opened wide, and caught at it, and sank his monstrous back,
And there he lay upon the earth enormous through the cave."

Sigurd would softly thump his tail in cadence with the melancholy beat
of a dog elegy, whether Prior's tribute to the virtues of Queen Mary's
True, or Gay's ironic consolation to Celia on the death of her lap-dog
Shock, Cowper's impartial epitaphs for My Lord's pointer Neptune and My
Lady's spaniel Fop, Lehmann's memorial of his retriever, who

"Chose, since official dogs at times unbend,
The household cat for confidante and friend,"

Louise Imogen Guiney's lament for

"All the sweet wavy
Beauty of Davy,"

or Winifred Letts' apostrophe to the debonair collie Scott, or Hilton
Brown's tenderest of farewells to his Scotch terrier, Hamish.

"In the nether spaces
Will the soul of a Little Black Dog despair?
Will the Quiet Folk scare him with shadow-faces?
And how will he tackle the Strange Beasts there?
Tail held high, I'll warrant, and bristling,
Marching stoutly if sore afraid,
Padding it steadily, softly whistling;--
That's how the Little Black Devil was made."

Sigurd lived too early to take part in the Free Verse controversy, but
he evinced an open mind on matters metrical in that he liked Lord
Byron's inscription for his Newfoundland Boatswain no better than Lord
Eldon's for his Newfoundland Caesar. It was Sir William Watson's famous
quatrain, _An Epitaph_, that affected him most keenly, because it
invited emphasis on the one word that always brought him springing to
his feet.

"His friends he loved. His fellest earthly foes
--Cats--I believe he did but feign to hate.
My hand will miss the insinuated nose,
Mine eyes the tail that wagged contempt at Fate."

As Sigurd was duly shown _Canis Major_ in the ethereal heavens, so was
he introduced to certain starry dogs that shine in the skies of English
poetry,--the pampered "smale houndes" of Chaucer's Prioress, King
Lear's elegant little "Tray, Blanche, and Sweetheart," dear, clownish
Crab, and all that pack of rich-voiced hunting hounds whose "gallant
chiding" rings through Elizabethan literature. The boy Will Shakespeare
must often have hearkened to the hounds, "match'd in mouth like bells,"
coursing the Cotswolds, Silver and Belman and Sweetlips and Echo, their
heads hung "with ears that sweep away the morning dew," the "speed of
the cry" outrunning his "sense of hearing."

Sigurd was but mildly interested when we told him that in George
Eliot's novels there were over fifty dogs, ranging all the way from pug
to mastiff, nor did he care greatly for Dickens' dogs, not even
blundering, ill-favored, clumsy, "bullet-headed" Diogenes, Florence
Dombey's comforter, nor the bandy leader of Jerry's dancing troupe,
who, because of a lost half-penny, had to grind out Old Hundred on the
barrel-organ while his companions devoured their supper--and his; but
Scott's dogs, from fleet Lufra of _The Lady of the Lake_ to the Dandy
Dinmonts of _Guy Mannering_,--"There's auld Pepper and auld Mustard,
and young Pepper and young Mustard, and little Pepper and little
Mustard"--made him blink and prick up his ears. Thus encouraged, I
would tell him of Sir Walter's love for all his home dogs and most of
all for the tall stag-hound Maida; how Herrick wept for his spaniel
Tracy; how Southey grieved when his "poor old friend" Phillis, another
spaniel, was drowned; how Landor delighted in dogs from the boyhood
when he boxed with Captain behind the coach house door to the extreme
old age whose loneliness was solaced by two silky-coated Pomeranians,
first, in Bath, by the golden Pomero, who would bark an ecstatic
accompaniment to his master's tremendous explosions of laughter, and
then, in Florence, by Giallo, whose opinions on politics and letters
the snowy-bearded poet would quote with humorous respect; how Nero, a
Maltese fringy-paws, brightened the somber home of the Carlyles; and
how Pope's favorite dog was, as he bitterly suggests, not unlike
himself in being "a little one, a lean one, and none of the finest
shaped." If Sigurd seemed responsive, I might go on with accounts of
Mrs. Browning's Flush; of Hogg's Hector, "auld, towzy, trusty friend";
of Arnold's dachshunds, Geist, Max and Kaiser; of Gilder's Leo,

"Leo the shaggy, the lustrous, the giant, the gentle Newfoundland,"

of Lehman's "flop-eared" Rufus, and of Miss Letts' terrier Tim in his
"wheaten-colored coat."

Lest Sigurd should get the impression that the globe was populated
chiefly by poets, Joy-of-Life would strike in with anecdotes of the
little dogs that frisked about Frederick the Great, and Charles II, the
Merry Monarch, and tell how Edward VII's last pet, Caesar, a fox
terrier, trotted mournfully in the funeral procession behind Kildare,
the royal charger; or she would "unmuzzle her wisdom" to the point of
declaring that the kings of Babylon and Nineveh had their favorite
hunting hounds with tails curled up over the back and collars wrought
in the form of leafy wreaths. She would inform Sigurd, who took it
flippantly, that solemn burial honors had been paid to dogs in ancient
times, that the Egyptians held them sacred and religiously embalmed
their bodies, and that many a Celtic chief and Norland viking lies more
quiet beneath his cairn because his noblest deerhound slumbers at his
feet. Or perhaps she would relate, for our collie's ethical guidance,
celebrated deeds of hero dogs. Sigurd would grunt and grumble in
sympathy with her deep tones as she chanted the famous ballad of Beth
Gelert, that "peerless hound" whose fidelity cost him his life, or of
the twice-sung terrier, haunter of Helvellyn, who for three months kept
watch beside her master's body at the foot of the fatal precipice.
Sigurd did not care for Wordsworth as much as Wordsworth would have
cared for him, but he loved Little Music, striving in vain to save her
fellow Dart under whose speed the river-ice had broken.

On one of those fortunate evenings when we had the Dryad with us,
Sigurd would listen with waxing incredulity to legends of King Arthur's
hound Cavall, whose paw left its print on British rock; of Merlin's
demon dog, black with red ears, akin to the little black dog that
danced about Faustus, sending out flying flames from its feet; of
Fingal's Bran and his last chase after the enchanted snow-white hart;
and of Tristram's faithful Hodain, who licked the dregs from the cup of
love which the knight and Queen Iseult had quaffed together. Sigurd was
frankly skeptical about those

"Half a hundred good ban-dogs"

of Fountains Abbey, who, whistled to his help by the fighting friar,
gave Robin Hood and his archers not a little trouble.

"Two dogs at once to Robin Hood did go,
T'one behind, the other before;
Robin Hood's mantle of Lincoln green
Off from his back they tore.

"And whether his men shot east or west,
Or they shot north or south,
The curtal dogs, so taught they were,
They caught the arrows in their mouth."

But Petit-Crin, the fairy dog from Avalon that Tristram gave to Iseult,
was more than any honest collie could endure.

"No tongue could tell the marvel of it; 'twas of such wondrous fashion
that no man might say of what color it was. If one looked on the
breast, and saw naught else, one had said 'twas white as snow, yet its
thighs were greener than clover, and its sides, one red as scarlet, the
other more yellow than saffron. Its under parts were even as azure,
while above 'twas mingled, so that no one color might be distinguished;
'twas neither green nor red, white nor black, yellow nor blue, and yet
there was somewhat of all these therein; 'twas a fair purple brown. And
if one saw this strange creation of Avalon against the lie of the hair
there would be no man wise enough to tell its color, so manifold and
changing were its hues.

"Around its neck was a golden chain, and therefrom hung a bell, which
rang so sweet and clear when it began to chime Tristram forgot his
sadness and his sorrow, and the longing for Iseult that lay heavy at
his heart. So sweet was the tone of the bell that no man heard it but
he straightway forgat all that aforetime had troubled him.

"Tristram hearkened, and gazed on this wondrous marvel; he took note of
the dog and the bell, the changing colors of the hair, and the sweet
sound of the chimes; and it seemed to him that the marvel of the dog
was greater than that of the music which rang in his ears, and banished
all thought of sorrow.

"He stretched forth his hand and stroked the dog, and it seemed to him
that he handled the softest silk, so fine and so smooth was the hair to
his touch. And the dog neither growled, nor barked, nor showed any sign
of ill temper, however one might play with it; nor, as the tale goes,
was it ever seen to eat or to drink."

At this point, Sigurd rose, shook himself and stalked out to the
kitchen. He could bear a great deal from his pedantic mistresses, but
there were limits. Satiated with history and literature, he proposed to
relax his mind by a turn at psychology.

From Cecilia's successor, Ellen, Sigurd was taking a brief but vivid
course in psychics. To be sure, a _bona fide_ professor in that field
dwelt near us, her high-picketed fence enclosing a baker's dozen of
spaniels. It was understood, to the awe of the community, that by their
aid she investigated certain dark corners of her shadowy subject;
but Sigurd, embarrassed by the attentions thrust upon him by the
grandmother of the spaniel family, rested content with his unacademic
tutor.

"Poor Ellen," as she invariably called herself, was a small, wiry,
nut-brown Irish woman, whose gray hair rose erect, as if just
affrighted by pouke or pixy, from above a constantly wrinkling forehead
and a pair of snapping jet eyes. She must have been on the borders of
insanity, if not across, when she came to us. She was a furious worker,
cycloning about the house with mop and broom at all hours and not
hesitating to upbraid the college president herself, most benign and
punctilious of ladies, if her boots brought one speck of mud into "Poor
Ellen's clane hall." Her chief pride, however, was in her frugality, as
we discovered to our dismay on her second afternoon, when, as it often
happily chanced, the Dryad, then living on the campus, dropped in for a
call and consented to remain for dinner.

It was a simple matter, in our informal way of life, to call back from
the piazza through the hall to the figure setting the table in the
dining room:

"Lay another plate, please, Ellen. Our friend stays to dine with us."

But the wail that succeeded nearly slew our friend by throwing her into
an agony of suppressed laughter.

"Mother of God! Isn't that the burning shame! And me maning the three
chops should do us all!"

Ellen had been with us but a few days, though the house was already so
scoured and polished that we scarcely dared set foot on our own floors,
when a prolonged season of sultry weather broke in a tremendous
thunderstorm. These thunderstorms were always a challenge to Sigurd's
valor. At the first crash he would pluckily make for the porch, where,
flinging up his head, he would cast back one defiant bark to that
Superdog in the skies; then, scared by his own audacity, he would
usually bolt upstairs and take refuge under a bed. But this time he
fled, with the second shattering peal, to Ellen, who was rocking
herself, a crouching, huddled figure, to and fro on the cellar stairs,
screaming in a weird, blood-curdling chant:

"Mercy of God! Poor Ellen belaves in God the Father and in the Holy
Mother of God and in all the blissid saints of heaven. Oh, grace of
Mary! Poor Ellen belaves in thim all. Good Lord, you never kilt Poor
Ellen yet and you wouldn't be after doing it now whin her bones be old
and her heart a nest of sorrows. The Lord look down in pity on the
poor."

With Sigurd hugged tight, Ellen's shrieks gradually sank into sob and
moan, and from that hour he was her one confidante and comrade. Not
even in him would she allow the least untidiness, but would fly to meet
him at the threshold, picking up each paw in turn and manicuring it in
her apron, and would insist, despite our remonstrances, in squatting
down outside the back door and feeding his dinner to him, bit by bit,
lest "Gobble-mouth" drop crumbs and gravy on "Poor Ellen's clane
gravel."

Sigurd found this fellowship at his meals so entrancing that he would
eat even baked beans from Ellen's lean brown fingers and would take
advantage of her society to get twice as much dinner as was good for
him. When his dish was empty and polished bright, under Ellen's
approving eye, by his circling tongue, he would promenade dolefully
about the kitchen, peering with an air of deep dejection into coal hod
and wood basket, as if he were starved to a diet of cinders and
kindlings, well aware that behind his back Ellen was heaping his dish
anew. Her excess of thrift, from which our own table suffered, was
never brought to bear on Sigurd.

As he ate, she would tell him long stories of her childhood in hungry
Ireland and of her hard, bewildered, wandering life in the Land of
Promise. Only once was I guilty of pausing by the kitchen door to
listen.

"It was the place afore this, Darlint, or maybe the place afore that,
or maybe another, that Old Goldtooth wedded my widow woman and took her
to New York for the shows. He'd been drinking more than a drop the day
and he says, 'Let's bring Poor Ellen along, for the fun of it. You can
lend her your second-best bonnet, for there's money to buy more in New
York.' But it wasn't her second-best, nor yet her third, the comical
thing she set on me. To a hotel in New York he took us and a grand feed
he gave us. Thin off to the show they wint, and he put a newspaper in
my hand, and opened up at a page with niver a picture on it, and he
told me to sit there like a lady and read about Boarding Houses. So
there was Poor Ellen all that avening, and long it was as a rosary of
nights, holding up that paper, with the quare letters, all sizes,
dancing over it, and reading about Boarding Houses. But whin they came
back--O Darlint, the saints defind us!--he told me it was about the
Borden Murder I'd been reading, not Boarding Houses at all, and Poor
Ellen not sensing a scratch of it, or sure she'd been scared into a
fit. Don't let thim tache you to read their books, Darlint, for sure
there's no knowing what the black words might be saying."

But although this is the only outpouring of Ellen's confidence to
Sigurd at which I played eavesdropper, too often her mad screeches
would bring us pell-mell into the kitchen where we would find the two
of them wrought to a state of highest excitement. Once Sigurd, lying at
full length, was squeezing a hollow rubber ball between his lips,
making it emit harrowing squeaks that Ellen, hopping grotesquely up and
down, identified as the cries of an imprisoned banshee. Another time
she had one arm clasped about Sigurd's neck and with the other hand was
pounding her little alarm clock on the floor, entreating him, "Bite the
feaver whin it jumps out, Darlint. A year ago by this clock it was that
Poor Ellen had the feaver and died and she has been in the Fire ever
since."

Again we heard sounds of scuffling and struggle, punctuated by
desperate screams from Ellen and furious barks from Sigurd. The kitchen
was in a whirlwind, but Ellen was presently calmed enough to explain to
us in terrified gasps that the demons were trying to drag her away from
the throne of God and that she had set Sigurd on her tormentors. Our
gallant collie evidently drove off the fiends, for Ellen's passion of
resistance suddenly ceased and, sinking to the floor, she hid her
convulsed face in Sigurd's ruff, wailing, "But next time they'll get
me. Poor Ellen! Poor Ellen! It's a sore and sorry life she's had, and
to come to the Pain in the end!"

On the last night of Ellen's stay with us,--for we had arranged,
without telling her, to have the crazy old creature transferred to the
office of a friendly physician, where her prowess with the
scrubbing-brush would be appreciated and her mental peculiarities be
under wise and humane observation--an ear-splitting yell once more
summoned us post-haste to the kitchen. Sigurd, erect on rigid legs, was
staring with an uncanny fixity of gaze on vacancy, while Ellen, on her
knees, wringing her hands above her head, was alternately abjuring him
and Heaven.

"O Darlint, is it my death ye're after seeing now? Is it Poor Ellen
with the candles at head and feet? Och, let me go! I lave this house
to-night. It's not Poor Ellen will bide with a dog does be looking at
her own ghost."

"Nonsense, Ellen!" protested Joy-of-Life, interposing her strong,
wholesome presence between the distracted old woman and the outside
door. "There are no ghosts here. Sigurd is only looking at the wall.
Perhaps he heard a rat or a mouse in there."

"_Ouch!_" shrilled Ellen, dodging out of the door in a fresh paroxysm
of fright. "Rats and mice is it! Rats and mice do be the black spirits
come to gnaw out our brains. And here they've come for Poor Ellen's
wits. They chase Poor Ellen wherever she goes. But she'll give thim the
slip on the morrow."

While Joy-of-Life brought Ellen in, quieted her with malted milk and
sent her to bed, I puzzled over Sigurd, whose staring eyes and
bristling hair still gave evidence of something we could not discern.
Other observers of dog conduct have testified to occurrences of this
kind, as, very recently, the master of a red cocker spaniel (Walter E.
Carr in _The Story of Five Dogs_) and from far antiquity the Arabs, who
hold that a dog can see the wings of the Angel of Death hovering over
the one for whom Azrael has been sent.

Ellen came down in the morning, still determined on departure and
entirely content with the place we had secured for her. All that day
through she was her most cleanly, thrifty and cheerful self. Nothing
would do but she must sweep the whole house from attic to cellar,
especially scouring her own room until it was pure enough for Diana.
Pleased with the bustle of packing and getting off, evidently an
habitual state of things with Poor Ellen, she graced her farewell with
a flourish of economical courtesies. She presented Joy-of-Life with a
banana which she had blarneyed from our Italian fruit-vender, and gave
me a little jar of cream, begged or bullied from the milkman in the
early dawn. As for Sigurd, she made him a square foot of his favorite
corn bread and hung a Catholic medal to his collar. She went off in the
best of humor, greatly set up by her own cleverness in having been able
to make, so cheaply, such suitable good-by gifts. When the expressman
came for her shabby, bulging bag, she treated him to such a nice little
luncheon of cookies and lemonade that he offered her a ride to the
station. From the driver's lofty seat she waved us a queenly adieu,
calling back: "The Lord loves Poor Ellen, after all." Sigurd ran with
the wagon as far as the corner. The last we saw of his psychic
instructor, she was kissing her workworn hands to him and shrilling
back endearments.

THE PLEADERS

Before the Majesty of Most High God
The gentlest of the glad Archangels came;
Swift down the emerald avenue he trod,
His eager sandals quivering to flame.
Close at his heels there frisked a dog, his mate
In bygone journeyings with young Tobias,
A dog "without," whose love had dared the gate,
Scenting the steps of Brother Azarias,
So-called in those blithe morns when, laughing-eyed,
By thorn and myrrh, the dew on every stem,
He led the son of Tobit to his bride,
And the lad's dog went leaping after them.

The little winds that in those sunrise-flushed,
Fleet plumes had nestled, to the harpstrings flew
To learn gold melodies for May, but hushed
Was all that glory till a Voice pealed through:
"Mine Angel Raphael, of the Holy Seven
Who lift the prayers of saints before the Throne,
What wild, unworded anguish troubles Heaven,
To man's appeal the wailing undertone?
Men's orisons for Peace, for Peace, for Peace,
Smothered the psalms of Paradise, until
I bade that vain and bitter crying cease.
My will is Peace. Let mortals do my will."

Before the shining of the Mercy Seat
The Angel raised a censer. "Lord, I bring
The screams of shell-torn horses, thrashing feet
Of mangled mules, the pigeon's broken wing,
Gasping of dogs gas-tortured, wounds and woe
Of myriad creatures by Thy breath endowed
With being. Theirs the prayers that overflow
This vessel by whose weight my heart is bowed."
Ah, strange to see that poor, vague incense rise,
Dim supplication crossed by fragrances
Of courage, faithfulness, self-sacrifice
Even of these brute martyrs, even of these.

"Brother of Sorrows, bear to man those groans
Of a creation that I fashioned well
And gave to his dominion,--man, who owns
One morning star to make it heaven or hell.
I am but God, a Pity throned above
To watch the sparrow's fall, to feel its throes
And wait the slow, sweet blossoming of love,
Small, kindly loves from which the Great Love grows."
Then Raphael, Healer of the Earth, bowed thrice,
Withdrawing through the ranks of seraphim
Who smiled to see how, scorning Paradise,
On frolic feet the dog sped after him.

COLLEGE CAREER

"Thy faith is all the knowledge that thou hast."

--Jonson's _Epigrams_, XVIII.

Whatever may be thought of Sigurd's college career, there can be no
doubt that he careered through college. He was at the top of bliss in a
mad run over the campus. With streaming ruff and tail he would rush on
like Lelaps, the wild hound of Cephalus on the trail of the monstrous
fox sent by a slighted goddess to harass the Thebans and, like Lelaps
when the Olympians chose to make the chase eternal by turning both dog
and fox to stone, Sigurd would come to a sudden stop on the brow of a
hill, standing out against the sky like a collie statue poised for
running.

Joy-of-Life could cross the broad meadow almost as lightly and swiftly
as he and their morning pilgrimages to chapel were expeditions of high
glory. There were hundreds of girls abroad at that hour and often
Sigurd would wheel from the path and dash jubilantly toward any figure
that took his fancy, confident of welcome. But if the individual
chanced to be a new freshman, not yet acquainted with the college
dignitaries, she might meet his advances with fear or annoyance or a
still more cutting indifference. Then Sigurd would droop those
expectant ears of his and return with dignity to his forsaken comrade.
If his greeting were properly reciprocated, he would ramp joyously upon
his fellow student and prance about her, leaping to the height of her
shoulders in his ecstasy of good-will.

His favorite laboratory was Lake Waban. In the summer afternoons he
would tease to have us both escort him up for his swim and if on the
way we tried to part company, one or the other turning aside for a more
pressing errand, Sigurd would herd us with ancestral art, jumping upon
the deserter and gently pushing her back, or standing in the path to
block her progress, protesting all the while with coaxing whines, with
expostulary barks and with all manner of collie eloquence. If we
walked, on the other hand, close together, absorbed in talk, he would
jealously push in between us, as he often did when we were having a
fireside tete-a-tete or bidding each other good night. He wished us to
understand that Sigurd was the one to be loved and that all affections
not directed toward Sigurd were superfluous. But when we both accepted
his invitation to the lake, the three hundred acres of the college park
hardly sufficed for his antics. Curveting about us till he seemed to be
ten collies at once, flashing in ever widening circles over the level
and over the slopes, bounding upon us with a storm of gleeful sneezes,
he would lead the way to Sigurd's Tub, as he considered it. If some one
fell in with us and joined us on the walk, Sigurd, always of courteous
instinct, would drop back and follow demurely, or amuse himself at a
decorous distance by investigating holes, chasing squirrels and
striving with wild springs, scrambles, clawings, to climb the trees
from whose boughs they mocked his clumsy efforts. But how rejoiced he
would be when the interloper turned off! "There! Gone at last! Now we
_will_ have fun, all by ourselves!" Then he would cast about for some
doughty deed to do, longing to dazzle us by a prodigious feat of
strength and skill. If he could find a young tree that our too
efficient forestry had cut down he would drag it along, bite and break
away its branches, seize it by the middle and balance it in his mouth
as a long pole, constantly lifting his bright eyes to us for
admiration.

Once arrived at the lake, it was our duty to find sticks and fling them
out over the water to the extent of our strength, while Sigurd swam for
them, the farther the better. As he would gallantly splash up from the
shallows and, stick in mouth, climb the bushy bank, we had to run from
the mighty shaking with which, delivering the prize, he loved to give
us a shower-bath. After a few such plunges, Sigurd, while we rested on
the bank, would appropriate the green apron of Mother Earth for a
towel, rolling over and over on the turf to dry himself and completing
the process by scampers in the sun. He disliked being wet, for although
these swims in the lake ranked among his prime delights, at home he
always resented and resisted a bath and, on a showery day, would often
run in to the towel rack, pleading to be wiped dry, and would then
forthwith run out into the rain again. In our hottest weather he would
slip off alone in the early morning to that still lake all sweet with
water-lilies and would be gone for hours. A few times, in his younger
years, our anxiety took us by mid-day to the shore, whence we would see
a yellow head well out in the water. At our whistle, Sigurd would turn
and swim back to us with an air of surprise and pleasure as if he had
quite forgotten that such dear friends were to be found on land. The
outcome was not so happy when, tormented in his fur coat by the heat,
he had stolen off to one of his secret mire-pits and indulged in a cool
wallow. When he came home plastered and perfumed from head to tail, we
would greet him with exclamations of disgust, which brought the Byronic
melancholy into his eyes, hustle him off to the rocks behind the house,
fling pailfuls of warm water over him and do our best to scrape off his
pollutions. On one of these occasions, a college-girl lover and Wallace
raced him up to Waban and scrubbed and rinsed him until, so they said,
the entire lake had changed color.

In the autumn term Sigurd would take a special course in harvesting,
frisking through a neighboring orchard and playing ball with the
falling apples. The winter term he gave mainly to athletics and
dramatics. How bewildered he was that first snowy morning when he ran
out into a strange white ravine bounded by slippery walls and when,
desperately lunging over one of these, he felt himself floundering in a
drift! His first dubious venture on a crackling sheet of ice taxed his
puppy courage, too, but he persisted in his quivering progress across
our little Longfellow Pond and swaggered up the further side with his
jauntiest sporting air. In later years he enjoyed nothing better than
going skating with Lady Blanche, another member of our changeful
household, and on a stinging January morning he would outdo the
frolics, that Cowper smiled to watch, of the dog who

"with many a frisk
Wide scampering, snatches up the drifted snow
With ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his snout;
Then shakes his powder'd coat, and barks for joy."

As for dramatics, Sigurd loved to thrust his stick deep into a pile of
russet leaves or sparkling snow, and then pretend that he was a
sanguinary monster whose prey had escaped him, and dig and nose and
scrape and scatter and tear and shuffle with frenzied energy, rumbling
all the while growls of awful menace, until he had tossed it up to
seize and worry, display to the audience always requisite for these
performances, and then bury it again for a repetition of the melodrama.

When the winter storms kept him in, his surging vitality made him as
restless as an imprisoned wind. If the Cave of AEolus boasted a
housekeeper, she had our sympathy. All day long Sigurd would scoot and
spin about the little range of rooms that we liked to have quiet and
orderly, a very electric battery of mischief. He would pick quarrels
with the rugs, scatter the pile of newspapers and dance a scandalous
jig with that elderly, respectable Bostonian, _The Transcript_. He
would bump into a gracefully leaning broom and a meditative mop,
knocking their wooden wits together and bringing them to the floor with
what he considered a beautiful bang. He would stir up civil war on the
hearth till poker and tongs and dust-brush and bellows all set upon one
another with hideous clang of combat. At last we would toss over to
him, in desperation, an old pair of rubbers, and he would make love to
one and try to swallow the other, playing as many parts as Bottom
longed for, all the way from Pyramus to Lion.

A new stage was provided for him when the storm was over and we
undertook to shovel the drift off the piazza. He would instantly claim
the star role of rival shovel, pawing the powdery heaps with delirious
zest, or he would be the snow itself, ecstatically indignant at being
swept down the steps. He played thrilling tragi-comedies with bones,
too, especially with one monstrous knuckle that might have belonged to
the skeleton of Polyphemus, the prize of one of Sigurd's evening
prowls. It was a bitter cold midnight, but our happy rebel, sporting
with that giant joint, tossing it about in the snow, losing it on
purpose, catching its glimmer by grace of the moon and madly pouncing
on it once more, would not obey the bed-time whistle. He stretched
himself out, a saffron blotch on the white, and hugged his treasure,
crunching away persuasively to convince us that the clock was wrong and
it was still only dinner time. Our ignominious resort, in such a case,
was to fetch from a certain pantry box, the daily object of Sigurd's
supplicating sniffs, a piece of cake, and proceed to eat it, with
vulgar smack of ostentatious relish, in the doorway, under the electric
light. As ever, this stratagem brought our mutineer to terms. Giving
the bone a last affectionate lick, he came bounding into the hall in
time for the crumbs. But his high spirits were far from spent. Though
he consented to play Yellow Caterpillar, curling up in the blanketed
round clothes-basket which, for the winter, displaced his
Thunder-and-Lightning rug, he barked so often through the small hours,
in his dreams or out, that our slumbers were literally curtailed.
Rebuked into silence, he gnawed his leash in two, tipped over his
basket and settled himself for a morning snooze on the forbidden
lounge.

It is obvious that Sigurd was not a model of virtue. We did not want
him so much better than ourselves. "That dog would be improved by a
good licking," said Joy-of-Life's visiting elder brother. But with all
respect for elder brothers--my own had nearly hanged Sigurd by an
ingenious contrivance of ropes and loops designed to enable me to
unleash him on a summer morning from my sleeping balcony--we decided
that we would rather have our collie with all his frolic imperfections
on his head than cowed into slavish obedience. Only once when, hardly
out of puppyhood, he dashed from my side, as we were walking decorously
on the sidewalk, and danced backward on his hind legs in front of a
dodging automobile, out-barking its distracted horn, did I attempt to
whip him. He had barely escaped with life and limb and, determined to
impress him, for his own safety, with his wrong-doing, I caught him by
the collar, doubled the leash which I still carried but had almost
ceased to use, and began to beat him with it about the head. Sigurd's
astonished yelp was answered in an instant from the side street where
dwelt the Sisters and, like a white knight of chivalry, Laddie came
charging out, thrusting himself between us, leaping upon me and
demanding, with a wrath seldom seen in his gentle eyes, that I stop
maltreating his twin.

Of course the brothers took the chance to run away together. It was
slushy going and when Sigurd came home at seven o'clock, so tired that
he could hardly drag one muddy foot after another, he was in shocking
trim, his white hose and shirt-front soaked to a disreputable gray. It
was unlucky, for his amateur dramatics were to be crowned that evening
by a public part on the college stage. He was to be Faithful Dog,
watching beside his master,--a forgotten hero of the Revolution,--as
that gallant young lieutenant slept away the hour before daybreak, when
he was to be executed as a spy. At a low whistle of the rescuer beneath
the window, Faithful Dog was to arouse his master by placing a wary paw
upon the sleeper's breast and, when the lieutenant had made good his
escape, remain behind to face the angry guard and be shot extremely
dead in his master's place. Sigurd had thrown himself into this noble
role with enthusiasm and rehearsed it several times with distinguished
success.

An escort of sophomores had been waiting for him in an agony of
impatience and, when he at last arrived, there could be no thought of
dinner or a nap. Sigurd was hustled down to the laundry, put through
merciless ablutions and rushed off to the college barn, our impromptu
theater, in the snug little vehicle that our liveryman called his
"coop." Three or four girls were sardined in with him, flourishing
towels and doing their best to scrub him dry on the way. But it was a
ruffled, soapsudsy and excessively drowsy Faithful Dog that trotted out
upon the stage, yawned in the face of the rapturous greeting of his
congregated friends, the Barn Swallows, jumped up on the prison cot,
never meant for him, and rolled himself into a solid slumber-ball,
refusing to wake, not even so much as blink, from first to last of the
drama. With natural presence of mind, an essential quality in spies,
the hero soliloquized to the audience that his Faithful Dog had been
drugged, evoking a round of applause at which Sigurd dreamily flapped
his tail.

One role that he never could be induced to play was that of Dandy. One
Sunday afternoon, when he came limping in with his feet all cut and
sore from a morning frisk over rough ice, I dressed them in discarded
white kid gloves, tying each firmly round the ankle, and started out
with Sigurd for a call on the Dryad. But our sturdy Viking resented
such dudish apparel and would flump down, at brief intervals, on the
crusted drifts and tug away at that detested frippery with the result
that, on his arrival, only the paw he thrust out at his amused hostess
was still elegant in a tatter of white kid.

Sigurd believed in elective courses rather than required. There were
certain things that, as a matter of principle, he persistently refused
to learn. Though by nature a dig, as my sister's flower-beds too often
testified, not her most fervent remonstrances could convince him that
bulbs and bones should not be planted together. His general attitude
toward education was not unique. He had "come to college for the life."
From the narrow paths of learning he bounded off in pursuit of a
"well-rounded development." His social engagements were numerous and
pressing. Often he had not time, between afternoon tea in one dormitory
and a birthday spread in another, to scamper home for the plain
parenthesis of a dog-biscuit dinner. Sometimes we would hear our
truant, in the small hours, drop down upon the porch with a thud of
utter exhaustion, and would learn by degrees, during the next day or
two, that he had gone with a botany or geology class on a long morning
tramp, played hare and hounds with one of the athletic teams all the
afternoon and paraded the town till midnight with a serenading party.
Often in the spring weather we would not set eyes on him for two days
running, or might, perhaps, catch a passing glimpse of our collie
standing expectant on the stone wall by the East Lodge, watching the
stream of girls and waiting for his next invitation. He would dutifully
greet us with a bark and a caper and, if we were driving, jump down to
follow the carriage, but if one of his student chums came tripping
along and threw her arms about him, showering kisses on his sunny head,
Sigurd would flourish his tail in rapturous response and off the two
would race to "Math." or "Lit." or "Chem." or "Comp." or whatever other
branch of knowledge Young America cannot spare breath to pronounce.

We would often see him lying impartially across the knees of a group of
girls studying together in some green nook, his plume waving in the
faces clustered over Horace or Livy. He had nothing but admiration for
such guileless renderings as "The swift hunter pursuing the leper" or
"He landed his boats in the sea," and the harder these latter-day
Humanists hugged him, the more he sneezed and yawned in a very
embarrassment of joy, though when, absorbed in subjunctives, they
pinched his silky ears a trifle too hard, he would quietly withdraw and
hunt up a stick for them to throw for Sigurd. Not all his mates were
wise in their good-will. They would pick up and toss, for him to chase
and worry, rough-broken, splintery pieces of painted board or anything
that came handy, and presently a lugubrious dog would appear before his
family, laying at our feet, perhaps, a well-licked strip of picket
fence, and lifting for our ministrations a bleeding mouth, where the
red was mingled with a stain of sickly green.

Sigurd took all manner of liberties even with seniors. At home, though
he would gaze into the refrigerator with deep interest, he never
ventured to insert so much as his nose, and though a dish of candies
might be standing on a low table easily in reach, he merely looked and
waggled. Only once, on a Tophet-hot afternoon, while a guest, absorbed
in talk, sat oblivious of the plate of ice-cream melting on her knee,
did Sigurd slip in his craving tongue and accelerate the process. But
with the college girls he knew no such restraints. He was familiar with
all their chafing-dish corners and, entering by any door he found ajar,
he would help himself to a lunch of fudge and wafers before looking
about to choose the softest heap of couch cushions for his nap. When a
cut foot made walking painful, he would prevail upon the girls to carry
him, great fellow that he was, and we would sometimes come upon him
dangling across a slender hand-chair, while his panting bearers
struggled up the hill to College Hall. On seeing us, he would scramble
down and sheepishly make off with an exaggerated limp. Once we chanced
on a group of freshmen holding a picnic party with King Sigurd
enthroned on a mossy log in the center, his gilt-paper crown tipped
rakishly over one eye. He delighted in picnics, cross-country walks,
the May-day frolic on the campus, and constantly imperiled his life by
frisking about on tennis court, golf links and archery fields. The
girls would use him as a postman, sending him from one to another with
notes, not always delivered, swinging from his collar, and he often
appeared at the door of a college fair or other festivity wearing the
ticket which some lavish chum had bought for him. He was about the
college grounds and buildings so much that we feared he might become a
nuisance, as well as depart from the few principles of collie conduct
we had labored to instill. Much to his indignation, therefore, we made
him address to the students, through the columns of our little college
weekly,

A DOGGEREL PETITION

Sigurd begs to say to his friends
That for certain inscrutable ends,
Quite apart from his own sweet way,
There are laws he ought to obey;
And because the sight of a girl
Puts the tip of his tail in a curl,
And sends, with a pit-a-pat start,
The commandments out of his heart,
He has to entreat you should
All help poor Sigurd be good.
'Tisn't easy to choke one's barks,
With squirrels making remarks;
'Tisn't easy to travel home
With girls enticing to roam.
All nice things seem to be naughty;
So it's not that Sigurd's grown haughty,
When he meets you at eve on the meadow,
A yellow scud in the shadow,
And passes your grocery bag
With only a wistful wag.
The New Year's good resolutions,
If broken, bring retributions;
So Sigurd beseeches--'tis hard--
That you shouldn't call him off guard;
Nor tempt that inquisitive rover,
That affectionate follower, over
The threshold of College Hall;
Nor let him trustfully sprawl
In the pathway of many feet.
And don't, though the sin is sweet,
Don't, for the gleam of his eyes,
His expectant ears' uprise,
For his nose's coaxing nudge,
Feed Sigurd infinite fudge.

That helped him through with one generation of college girls, but after
three or four years a fresh appeal had to be made, especially in view
of the fact that Sigurd had suddenly resumed the dangerous trick, first
taken up on his wild scampers with Laddie, of jumping at horses' heads,
and we found some of his younger classmates, for Sigurd belonged to
every class in turn, encouraging him in it, because he was "so pretty"
in his leaps. Hence once more he reluctantly lapsed into verse and
recommended to his intimates

A NOSTRUM FOR SIGURD

It is wrong to spring
At a horse's nose;
At that quivery thing
It is wrong to spring.
With tail for a wing
I may chase the crows,
But 'tis wrong to spring
At a horse's nose.

Call me back from the horses
With _no_, _no_, _noes_;
When I try snap courses
Call me back from the horses.
Though my remorse is
A transient pose,
Call me back from the horses
With _no_, _no_, _noes_.

I'm only a collie,
As Wellesley knows;
Though ever so jolly
I'm only a collie.
Save Sigurd from folly,
For folly has foes,
And I'm only a collie,
As Wellesley knows.

There was a perilous season, after a village Airedale had unadvisedly
nipped a teasing small boy, when our hysterical local legislation
ordered all dogs into muzzles, commanding the police to shoot at sight
any canine wayfarer not so equipped. Sigurd, of course, detested his
muzzle and though he would sulkily fetch it when he saw us making ready
for a walk, he would growl at it and worry it until we had it snapped
on, when he would often turn mournfully back from the door or lie down
before it literally in flat rebellion, rather than take the air under
such humiliating and uncomfortable conditions. He soon began to
exercise his ingenuity, however, in the getting rid of that
encumbrance, and again and again, having gone forth a model of
compliance with the law, he would come bounding back, muzzleless,
triumphant, expecting congratulations. It was hard to find a make of
muzzle that he could not push off with his paws or scrape off under a
fence or rub off between close-growing trees, and impossible to find
one that he could not coax his compassionate girl-chums to take off for
him. Melted by his pleading whines, they would slip the muzzle down
from his jaws so that he wore it as a pendant over his white vest, a
compromise that perplexed our honest college policeman, who, Sigurd's
neighbor and friend, solved the problem by consistently turning his
back and refusing to see the dog at all. But one well-nigh fatal day a
special officer, called in by our stern selectmen for the purpose of
hunting down all lawless dogs, beheld Sigurd disporting himself in the
public road, his muzzle, as so often, gayly flapping under his chin.
According to the man's bewildered account, no sooner had he drawn his
revolver and taken good aim at the offender, than "a mob of girls,
coming from nowhere and everywhere," suddenly enveloped his intended
victim and swept the dog off in their midst to the campus. But the
officer had a determined jaw of his own. He kept watch for that fawn
collie and the next time he caught sight of Sigurd, again with a
swinging muzzle, he ran a rope through our poor boy's collar and was
dragging him off to the town lockup and execution ground when again an
excited throng of nymphs blocked the way.

"How can you be so cruel?" blazed one of Sigurd's fondest playmates, as
a dozen arms were thrown about the collie.

"I'm no rougher with that there dog than he is with me," protested the
young officer, purple not only through embarrassment but from the tug
of war in which he and Sigurd had been matching strength. "He may be
your college pet, but his manners ain't no-way ladylike."

Meanwhile one of the girlish hands caressing Sigurd's neck must have
succeeded in slipping a buckle, for suddenly his head shot back through
the collar, left as a keepsake to the dog-catcher, and our innocent was
far on his way toward the safe shelter of home.

This period of persecution extended over some months, for the muzzles
had a bad effect on dog tempers and there were more cases of snapping
and nipping than the town, in Sigurd's lifetime, had ever known, though
no trace of rabies was detected. It was an anxious season for
dog-owners. Our neighboring professor of psychology, she who
specialized in spaniels, was overheard by a guest one evening wearily
informing a new litter of eight:

"Puppies, this has been a sad day. This morning your ma bit the
postman, and this afternoon your pa bit the doctor."

It was a relief to many households when at last the selectmen put their
minds on something else.

Although Sigurd was a member of all classes, as well as faculty, and of
all societies, he bore, as mascot, a special relation to the Class of
1911, whose color he wore by grace of nature. Glorious he was to behold
on Field Day, his coat, well brushed for the occasion, glistening in
the sun, a great bow of yellow ribbon standing out like a butterfly
from the top of his collar, wagging all over with joyous
self-importance as he stood in the front rank of his class, impartially
barking applause for both their triumphs and defeats.

With him, as with the girls, the spring term was the climax of the
college year, though not precisely an academic climax. Sigurd still
found time to drop in at a lecture occasionally, flumping down beside
some favorite fellow-student for a brief repose and rousing now and
then to thrust up a sentimental paw for a shake. But he had many
class-meetings to attend, where, when "Further Remarks" were called
for, he has been known to respond with a loud bark,--a recognized
indecorum in the college buildings. But on the whole, he kept the rules
save in so far as he might be considered "a musical instrument" in use
"out of recreation hours."

The spring term bloomed out in guests like crocuses and Sigurd made a
point of attending as many as possible of the luncheons and teas given
in their honor. An English lady, a poet and a visionary, a presence
like a flame, was one afternoon addressing a choice assemblage in our
oriental parlor on the mysteries of the Bahist faith. A torch-bearer of
the Persian prophet, she was telling of her first interview with Ali
Baha on Mount Carmel.

"And the Master greeted me thus: 'O Child of the Kingdom!'"----

_Bump_ went something against the door, which swung wide, admitting
Sigurd, who saluted the company with a comprehensive wave of his tail.

"You beautiful creature!" cried the Englishwoman, winning him to her
with an outstretched hand, "I am sure _you_ are a Child of the
Kingdom," and Sigurd wagged, came up for a pat and dropped down at her
feet to slumber out the rest of her impassioned discourse, waking
promptly with the arrival of refreshments.

But our Child of the Kingdom, on the very day after he had received
this accolade, came home to dinner, for which he had no appetite, not
only with a deep scratch, inflicted by the claw of some profane,
anti-Bahist cat, down one side of his face, but with his white and
golden hair all matted in brown streaks and patches, in witness that a
freshman saucepan had spilled its fudge upon him. Where he could get at
himself to lick, he enjoyed it very much, but he was deplorably sticky
on top.

In the spring, too, there were more dogs about the campus, and battles
were frequent. In the interests of academic fellowship we did our best
to steer Sigurd clear of encounters with professorial champions,
especially Jerry, an Irish terrier who would fight with his own shadow
rather than not fight at all, but one morning our chapel vestibule was
the scene of an encounter that Isaac Watts might well have called
horrendous.

The aggressor was Coco, a fierce little Boston bull and the pride of
one of the town's most honored citizens. Coco fought by method and a
very effective method it was. He would sneak up to his chosen
antagonist, fly at the forehead, tear the flesh so that the streaming
blood blinded his enemy and then try for a grip on the throat. Half the
dogs in the village already bore Coco's mark when, one March morning,
Joy-of-Life and I went in to chapel, leaving Sigurd, as usual, to wait
for us outside. As a dog, whom we did not pause to identify, was
trotting down the avenue, we laid strict injunctions on Sigurd not to
get into a scrap.

The organ was calling all hearts to worship, and heads were already
bowed, when suddenly Sigurd, his earnest eyes trying in vain to explain
his difficulties, pressed in against our knees. This was a grave breach
of chapel decorum, and Joy-of-Life, rising instantly, led him down the
aisle. As she opened the door into the vestibule, Coco was upon him,
and the snarling fury of a dog-fight jarred against the solemn strains
of the organ. I slipped out to find Coco hanging from Sigurd's throat,
and Sigurd, blood streaming from his forehead over his face, so
hampered by a ring of hands pulling on his collar that he could only
snap his jaws in air, unable to see or reach his foe. The choir,
arrayed for the processional, had broken line and were banging Coco
with hymn books, while everybody was wildly issuing orders to everybody
else.

"Let the dogs alone, girls. Look out for yourselves."

"Let Sigurd go. Give him a chance to fight."

"Choke Coco off."

"Twist Coco's tail."

"Bring water."

"_Don't_ put your hands between them, girls. Keep away."

The janitor, the only man on the scene, had discreetly climbed into a
high window-seat, and it was one of the slenderest, most flowerlike
maidens there who finally jerked a half-strangled Coco loose and flung
him forth from the sacred portals. The choir promptly reformed in rank
and, a trifle flushed and disheveled but chanting more lustily than
ever, swung up the aisle with the air of the Church Militant. Only the
few who were slightly bitten remained behind to be conducted by
Joy-of-Life to the hospital for immediate attention to their wounds,
while Sigurd and I made for home, marking the trail with our blood. No
real harm was done. Coco's owner, though secretly convinced that Sigurd
did all the biting, insisted on paying the doctor's bills and, a few
days after the encounter, Sigurd, with a scarred forehead, welcomed his
injured defenders to a dinner-party, at which I presided with my arm in
a sling. Sigurd seemed to feel a dim responsibility for that hurt of
mine and, as long as I wore a bandage, would come up at intervals to
give it a penitent lick.

At all the festivals of the spring term Sigurd deemed his attendance
indispensable. He fell in with the parades, frisked out into the midst
of the campus dances, and once, at least, took a conspicuous part in
the Tree Day pageant. A graceful, carmine-clad Narcissus had died to
slow music on the bank of Longfellow Fountain. The wood-nymphs and
water-nymphs, Diana and her train, even the hilltop Oreads had tripped
off the sylvan stage, but the audience, massed on the other side of the
pool, refused to take the hint and, instead of breaking up, still sat
spell-bound, their gaze fastened on poor Narcissus, who, cramped in the
dying attitude, could not conceive any dramatic way of coming to life
again. So we bade Sigurd: "Go find," and after two false starts, once
for a squirrel and once for a stick, he sped straight for Narcissus
and, anxiously thrusting his nose into her face, recognized a special
friend and broke into loud barks of joy, while, throwing her arm about
him, she sprang no less gladly to her feet. The audience thought it all
a part of the pageant, the prevailing opinion being that Sigurd was
playing the role of Cerberus and welcoming Narcissus to Hades.

But for all his years of enthusiastic college attendance, Sigurd never
took a degree. Not even his own Class of 1911 was allowed to carry out
its design of dressing their mascot in a specially made cap and gown
and leading him with them in the Commencement procession. His B.A.
stood only for Beloved Animal.

TO SIGURD

Not one blithe leap of welcome? Can you lie
Under this woodland mold,
More still
Than broken daffodil,
When I,
Home from too long a roving,
Come up the silent hill?
Dear, wistful eyes,
White ruff and windy gold
Of collie coat so oft caressed,
Not one quick thrill
In snowy breast,
One spring of jubilant surprise,
One ecstasy of loving?

Are all our frolics ended? Never more
Those royal romps of old,
When one,
Playfellow of the sun,
Would pour
Adventures and romances
Into a morning run;
Off and away,
A flying glint of gold,
Startling to wing a husky choir
Of crows whose dun
Shadows would tire
Even that wild speed? Unscared to-day
They hold their weird seances.

Ever you dreamed, legs twitching, you would catch
A crow, O leaper bold,
Next time,
Or chase to branch sublime
That batch
Of squirrels daring capture
In saucy pantomime;
Till one spring dawn,
Resting amid the gold
Of crocuses, Death stole on you
From that far clime
Where dreams come true,
And left upon the starry lawn
Your form without your rapture.

And was Death's whistle then so wondrous sweet
Across the glimmering wold
That you
Would trustfully pursue
Strange feet?
When I was gone, each morrow
You sought our old haunts through,
Slower to play,
Drooping in faded gold.
Now it is mine to grieve and miss
My comrade true,
Who used to kiss
With eager tongue such tears away,
Coaxing a smile from sorrow.

I know not what life is, nor what is death,
Nor how vast Heaven may hold
All this
Earth-beauty and earth-bliss.
Christ saith
That not a sparrow falleth
--O songs of sparrow faith!--
But God is there.
May not a leap of gold
Yet greet me on some gladder hill,
A shining wraith,
Rejoicing still,
As in those hours we found so fair,
To follow where love calleth?

FAREWELLS

"The door of Death is made of gold,
That mortal eyes cannot behold."

--Blake's _Dedication to Queen Charlotte_.

We were slow to realize that Sigurd was having too many birthdays. That
guardian figure stretched out on the south porch just above the steps,
shining like an embodied welcome, had become a part of life itself.
Indeed, a caller, not famed for tact, after surveying our Volsung for
some time in silence, dropped the cryptic remark: "How much a dog comes
to look like the family!" Brightening our busy months with golden
glints of romp and mischief and caress, he kept his run of birthdays
like festivals which brought no warning with them.

They were celebrated with becoming pomp, with much-wrapped gifts that
he rejoiced to open himself and often with a yellow tea. As his taste
inclined to broad and simple effects, there would be a giant sunflower
in the center of the table, with strips of goldenrod emanating from it
like rays. The guests, his best-beloved of all ages and conditions,
would drink Sigurd's health in orangeade and feast in his honor on
sponge cake. From the day of Poor Ellen to that of Housewife
Honeyvoice, Amelia, a young and comely Irish Protestant, reigned in the
kitchen and made it her pride to celebrate Sigurd's anniversaries with
all due splendor, though even then she would not intermit the daily
scoldings to which she attributed his very gradual growth in grace. For
still he would run away at intervals and wallow in all iniquity. If the
prodigal returned by daylight and found us together, he would disport
himself at our feet in a brief agony of penitence. As he lay on his
back, writhing with remorse and apparently trying to clasp his paws in
supplication, we would reproach him, to the accompaniment of his hollow
groans, until our gravity would break down. Then he would cheerfully
scramble up and fetch us his latest rubber toy, with a coaxing
invitation to let bygones be bygones and have a frisk with Sigurd. If
he came home under cover of darkness, he would shamelessly go straight
to his own piazza corner, venting an indignant grunt, like an outraged
man of the house, if he found his supper soggy and his bed not made.

The birthday teas, though they brought so many of his friends across
the threshold, were not an unmixed joy to Sigurd. The flaunting bow of
new, stiff, yellow ribbon tickled his ears, until he had succeeded in
working it around, a rumpled knot, under his chin, and worse yet were
the wreaths of yellow wild flowers that the small fingers of some of
his child neighbors had woven for his neck. His share of his own
birthday cake, too, was more hygienically apportioned than he approved.
What is a speck of yellow frosting on a collie's long red tongue? But
Amelia saw to it that his birthday dinner was after his own
heart,--fresh corncake, rice and liver, while now and then some devoted
sophomore, even though the long vacation had put a thousand miles
between them, would send him a home-made chocolate cream as large as a
saucer, at which he was allowed only to sniff and nibble.

We may have noticed that Sigurd's girth was ampler and his bearing more
sedate than in his younger days, but still he was the first in every
frolic and almost as fleet as a deer. He roused one at the edge of the
woods one morning when he was out for an early airing with Joy-of-Life
and chased it across the meadows so fast and far that she was in dismay
lest he overtake the beautiful creature and pull it down. Even to the
last he would let no dog pass him. His frankest admirer and
fellow-runner through his sunset years was a simple-minded young collie
whom Sigurd would outwit by wheeling sharply, when he felt Sandy
gaining on him, and making off at right angle

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