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 m