ake him out into the street, one of you men, and put a
ball in his head."

The surgeon turned to the panting nurse.

"You're certain he didn't hurt you?" he asked. "I don't want a
newcomer, like yourself, to think this is the usual treatment our
nurses get. Lie down and rest. You look scared to death. And don't be
nervous about the cur attacking you again. He'll be dead inside of
three minutes."

The nurse, with a mumbled word of thanks, scuttled off into the rear of
the church, where the tumbledown vestry had been fitted up as a
dormitory.

Bruce had calmed down somewhat under Mahan's sharp reproof. But he now
struggled afresh to get at his vanished quarry. And again the Sergeant
had a tussle to hold him.

"I don't know what's got into the big fellow!" exclaimed Mahan to
Vivier as the old Frenchman joined the tumultuous group. "He's gone
clean daft. He'd of killed that poor woman, if I hadn't--"

"Get him out of here!" ordered the surgeon. "And clear out, yourselves,
all of you! This rumpus has probably set a lot of my patients'
temperatures to rocketing. Take the cur out and shoot him!"

"Excuse me, sir," spoke up Mahan, as Vivier stared aghast at the man
who commanded Bruce's destruction, "but he's no cur. He's a
courier-collie, officially in the service of the United States
Government. And he's the best courier-dog in France to-day. This is--"

"I don't care what he is!" raged the surgeon. "He--"

"This is Bruce," continued Mahan, "the dog that saved the
'Here-We-Comes' at Rache, and that steered a detail of us to safety one
night in the fog, in the Chateau-Thierry sector. If you order any man
of the 'Here-We-Comes' to shoot Bruce, you're liable to have a mutiny
on your hands--officer or no officer. But if you wish, sir, I can
transmit your order to the K.O. If he endorses it--"

But the surgeon sought, at that moment, to save the remnants of his
dignity and of a bad situation by stalking loftily back into the
hospital, and leaving Mahan in the middle of his speech.

"Or, sir," the Sergeant grinningly called after him, "you might write
to the General Commanding, and tell him you want Bruce shot. The Big
Dog always sleeps in the general's own room, when he's off-duty, at
Division Headquarters. Maybe the general will O.K. his death-sentence,
if you ask him to. He--"

Somewhat quickening his stately stride, the surgeon passed out of
earshot. At the officers' mess of the "Here-We-Comes," he had often
hea