d 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