Chapter I: Sigurd Our Golden Collie (4)

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 angles while the precipitate pursuer sped on for some distance in the old direction. But the goal was what Sigurd chose to make it, and Sandy, bewildered by these subtle tactics, always believed himself outrun.

We had come to regard a walk without Sigurd as hardly a walk at all. Perhaps we observed that he found the heat, which brought out his tormenting eczema, a little harder to bear from summer to summer, but our crisp, crackling winters revived him to all manner of puppy antics. I remember, like a picture, one frosty afternoon, the evergreens festooned with ice, while the leafless trees, struck by the level rays of the western sun, glistened with rainbow crystals. Through this enchanted world, as through the heart of a diamond, Joy-of-Life and Sigurd were coming home. Sigurd, barking his glad music, was bounding hither and thither over the sparkling crust, now trying to fulfill his contract to keep all chickadees and nut-hatches, blue jays and juncos, from alighting on the earth, and now convinced that at last the moment had come when he was to realize his supreme ambition, inherited from Ralph, and catch a crow. Their sardonic caws above his head, as they flapped heavily from pine to pine, made him so furious that he would pounce on their black, sliding shadows, while Joy-of-Life, her cheeks apple-bright with the cold, laughed at him so merrily that he took it for applause.

Yet change was busy about our collie, who welcomed no changes but loved his world exactly as it was. We sold the first home and moved into a more spacious one that we had built on a strip of untamed land hard by. Then a street came, and more houses, and quietly the wildwood drew away from us. Within our own bounds, at least, we strove to keep the forest growth in its own careless beauty, but never a man stepped on the place, brother or guest or gardener or state warden or whosoever, but, driven by the deep instinct of the pioneer, he must needs go stealthily forth with ax or saw or shears and lay about him in our happy tangle. The worst of it was that we had to appear grateful.

Sigurd accepted his new abode with but a passing bewilderment. Racing up from the train on his return from a summer in the mountains with Joy-of-Life, he was whistled into the Scarab while yet too utterly absorbed in the rapture of his greetings to heed where he was. After a little he looked about him in obvious surprise and perplexity and set out at once on a tour of investigation, trotting from cellar to attic, nosing into the closets and under the shelves, sniffing at the familiar desks and bookcases and recognizing with a wag his own chair and rug. As soon as might be he was out of doors, examining porches and paths. Then he crossed the intervening bit of wilderness, granite ledge matted over with the red-berried kinnikinic, and woofed for admittance at his accustomed door. He was kindly received and allowed to go about as he liked, upstairs and downstairs and into my lord's chamber, but the furniture was not his furniture, the smells were not his smells, and within ten minutes he had quitted those rooms, scene of so many puppy exploits, to enter them no more. He knew the difference between house and home.

Yet our new holding did not seem to Sigurd nor to us entirely natural until he had cut one of his unfortunate paws on a broken bottle left by the carpenters as a souvenir and had strewn steps and driveway and lawn with shreds of cotton bandages and adhesive plaster. "When is a clutter not a clutter?" asked my mother, and answered her own conundrum: "When Sigurd does it."

In a snug corner against the south wall of the Scarab stood a massive and elegant erection, with gable roof and olive-green door, that only the unsophisticated called a kennel. It was "Sigurd's House," and as such he accepted it, counting its artistically shingled walls and heavy layers of sheathing paper no more than his just deserts. He delighted in its deep bed of fresh straw which tickled him most agreeably as he rolled over and over in it. He found it an exciting by-play, too, to dash in with stick or bone and lose it under his bedding, which he would proceed to scratch up with all the fury of a New England matron in housecleaning time. Then he would come swaggering out with the air of duty done, shaking his own skin. Sigurd's House was such a palace that the children of the neighborhood liked to play in it, but our collie deemed this high trespass and, from the screened study porch, would roar indignant protest when five or six chubby tots, with that saucy black spaniel, Curly, would all squeeze in together.

To the Scarab came new friends for Sigurd with new caresses, to which he always made cordial and courteous response. Amelia crossed the ocean to a waiting bridegroom and a happy home of her own, but Housewife Honey-voice, with her little Esther, petted Sigurd even more devotedly.

Sigurd's only difficulty with Housewife Honey-voice, the only shadow on their sympathy, arose from the delicacy of her appetite by which she was inclined, at first, to measure his. When her enthusiasm and culinary skill persuaded the family to go on a vegetable diet, Sigurd gave us clearly to understand that we need not count him in. And when I came home, one evening, from a week's motor trip, Sigurd barely waited for his customary chant of welcome before gripping my dress and leading me to the refrigerator.

"Hasn't Sigurd had his dinner yet?"

"Why, yes, an hour ago."

"Nonsense, boy! You're not hungry. Nobody is hungry just after dinner."

"What a whopper!" sighed Sigurd, as he pattered after me back to the study.

No sooner had I turned my attention to the accumulation of letters on my desk than again Sigurd pulled gently, yet with determination, at my skirt and insisted on a second promenade to the refrigerator.

"He really is hungry. How much have you been giving him for dinner?"

But when I saw the measure, I heaped his plate, while he eagerly watched the process, waving his tail in triumph, but hurrying once across the kitchen to snuggle his head against the knee of Housewife Honey-voice, looking up at her with those comprehending, trustful eyes that said:

"You didn't _mean_ to starve dear Sigurd, and now that you know how big my hollow is, it will be all right forever."