Suddenly there appeared above the parapet the tips of two golden-brown ears, pricked up in eager inquiry. Sigurd, overtopped by our own wall, could not have seen them, but with one tremendous lurch he was up and out, wallowing madly through the drifts to meet Laddie, who, like a miniature snow plow, was already breaking a way toward him. The collies touched noses and, ranging themselves side by side, plunged off into that blank of white, utterly deaf to the human calls that would check the onward impulse of their sacred brotherhood.
They had another glorious run two days later, when the snow was frosted and could bear their weight. Mad with mischief, they raced miles on miles, – to Oldtown and beyond, barking at every man they met and leaping at every horse; they dashed into Waban Way and out over the spacious Honeymoon estates; they scampered hither and thither across the three hundred acres of the campus; they careered back and forth over the frozen lake and challenged the college girls to a rough-and-tumble in the snow. Meanwhile the Younger Sister and I, seriously alarmed lest some nervous horse, startled by their antics, should bring about disaster, had taken a sleigh and gone forth in pursuit. Disquieting news of them kept coming to us as we drove.
"Two young collies? I should say so. I met them an hour ago, way over in Dover. They both jumped at my old Dobbin's head, barking all Hallelujah."
"O yes, I've seen two runaway dogs. Shepherds, white and fawn. They were chasing an express team down by Eliot Oak. The driver was standing up and whipping out at them for all he was worth."
Presently we came on their fresh tracks in the snow, tracks of running feet always side by side, until at last we overtook the truants. There they were, barking in duet, hoarse but happy, trying to scramble up an icy telephone pole after a spitting cat. They bounded to greet us and followed the sleigh home like lambs. The Sister, secretly condemning Sigurd as the dangerous misleader of her angel Laddie, assured them firmly that they were never to play together again.
Sigurd still had so much frolic in him that, when we had arrived at our own door, he coaxed me to stay outside and throw sticks for him from the piazza into the drifts. But soon I noticed red touches on the snow and, bringing him in, found that his feet were ice-cut and bleeding. I told him sternly that such were his just deserts and he rolled over on his back, holding up his paws to be healed. While I was anointing them with vaseline, a vain remedy because of the avidity with which Sigurd licked it off, I discovered that he had lost, in his wild whirl, the ornamental blue-bead collar, wrought for him by a student devotee at the cost of many patient hours. When I had done what he would let me for his feet and he had curled up cosily in his basket, I solemnly set about my duty of rebuking him, but the youngster was too tired for rhetoric. With an apologetic grunt, he instantly fell fast asleep. Being inwardly persuaded that Laddie was chiefly to blame, I left my misguided innocent to his repose.
The next afternoon he limped demurely down the hill and, in about two minutes, was on The Orchard porch, exchanging vociferous greetings with Laddie, but for once his effrontery failed of its effect. Steeling their hearts, the Sisters refused to let the outside collie in or the inside collie out. Sigurd, always most dignified when his feelings were hurt, rose against one of the drawing-room windows, took a long look at the sofa and vanished into the early winter twilight, not to be seen again by our anxious eyes for thirty-six hours. It was just on the silver edge of the third day that a wistful woof on our porch sent four hastily slippered feet skurrying to the door. Such a famished, unkempt, exhausted collie as stood wagging there! His coat was grimy, his ruff gray and tangled, and from his collar, drawn cruelly tight, dragged a cumbrous length of iron chain. The Sisters, who, suffering all the pangs of contrition, had been no less eager than we in prosecuting the search, hurried over (without Laddie) straight from their breakfast table, and one of them, flinging her arms about Sigurd as he nestled in the forbidden easy-chair – for he never missed the opportunity to wrest some special privilege out of any emotional crisis – sobbed with relief. Spent as he was, the collie licked her cheek, forgiving and consoling, even while his happy, love-beaming eyes could hardly hold themselves open. If an attempt had been made to kidnap him, Sigurd's strength and often proved cleverness in extricating himself from bonds had stood him in good stead. More fortunate than his sister Hildigunna and than another high-spirited sister, Unna, likewise supposed to have been stolen – though in the saga Unna ran away from her home (and husband), – Sigurd, if he could not break the chain of captivity, had managed to pull it out of its staple and lug it along with him back to freedom.
By an assiduous use of the telephone to the effect, "We are taking Laddie for a walk. Will you please keep Sigurd in?" or "Sigurd has just started off in your direction. Where's Laddie?" we kept a certain check on their escapades for the rest of that winter, but they contrived to meet at some secret rendezvous in apple-blossom time and came home panting and jubilant, with pink and white blossoms all over their coats. Sigurd apparently liked the effect, considering himself a King of the May, for no sooner were those petals brushed off than he frisked out and rolled over in the tulip-bed to accumulate some more. On the few occasions when our runaways, oozing through the merest cracks of doors, gave us the slip, we dropped all minor occupations and hunted them down, calling in the aid of an amused liveryman, an Irish neighbor whose white hairs thatched a pate where wit and kindliness kept house together.
"It's the goolden dog y'are to me," he would say to Sigurd. "Many's the good dollar I've made out o' yez thraipsin's and throublin's."
The Lady of Cedar Hill had given away to appreciative friends all the puppies save Gunnar, but several of them had homes nearby and she thought it would be pleasant to have a family reunion once a year, on their common birthday. One such gathering proved enough for all time.
On a delectable autumn afternoon we set forth, just after luncheon, in a roomy surrey, The Sisters, Joy-of-Life, my nephew – then a wide-eyed small boy, now a surgeon working for the wounded in France, – and I, with Sigurd and Laddie racing alongside, to attend Gunnar's birthday party. Six or seven of his brothers and sisters were assembled, but at this distance of time I cannot call the roll. Among them were probably Helga, who, becoming Lady Gwendolyn, lived to a reverend age; certainly Flosi, who returned from the new owner to Cedar Hill, where his frolicsome years were nine; perhaps Hauskuld, dearly beloved, who, like Sigurd, was tormented in hot weather by the aristocratic ailment of eczema, and perhaps Helgi, who, as far as the family record is known, outlived all his generation, dying at the ripe age, for a high-bred collie, of thirteen. There was no receiving line and never a moment that afternoon when it was easy to distinguish them, for it was all one glorious scrimmage from arrival to departure.
Ralph, growing more and more inhospitable with the years, had been locked up as a precaution against tragedy, and resplendent young Gunnar, the host of the day, assailed his guests so violently that he, too, had to be put on his chain, where he alternately strained and sulked all the afternoon. No wonder he never gave another party. But Dora, always bewitching in her ways, found the occasion entertaining and tolerated her children, if she could not be said to welcome them. Meanwhile, by unremitting vigilance on the part of masters and mistresses, the guests were restrained from too furious attacks on one another, until the banquet, consisting of a row of extraordinarily big and marrowy bones, was served. Each dog was instantly prompted by the Evil One to covet his neighbor's bone, but after a really magnificent display of authority on the part of their respective guardians, the raging bunch of white and sable was disentangled. Separated by wide distances, the collies, graceful figures lying on green lawn and bank, fell to their crunching in comparative peace, while Gunnar, spurning his own birthday dinner, roared grace from the end of his chain, with Ralph's gruff amen coming down from the open windows of his prison chamber. I blush to record that Sigurd, having polished off his bone at top speed, proceeded without ceremony to appropriate Laddie's. This was rescued 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
