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