the silence but incredulous of death.

Because of their vanishing ways, Sigurd had early come to look on
college girls in general as an inconstant factor in life and accepted
their attentions with the casual air of a confirmed old bachelor, but
his faithfulness to his friends of riper age never wavered. Even to the
last he always raised for the Lady of Cedar Hill his rapturous lyric
cry, though it would sometimes embarrass him by breaking into a hoarse
and husky squeak. He had special ways with each of us. He kept one
piquant game for my mother, who, while he wagged his tail in ever
wilder circles at her, would wag her _Congregationalist_ in exact
mockery at him, until he would make a maddened leap and snatch that
sacred sheet from her hand.

But he was gentle with old people, even in his frolics, and from the
first had felt a certain responsibility for their safety. Joy-of-Life
had left him late one afternoon, while he was still a youngster, to
guard her mother's nap on the piazza couch, but a white flash of
Laddie, temptation incarnate, at the foot of the hill, had sent him
careering off into the gloaming. Rising hurriedly to call him back,
confused by the sudden waking, his charge had missed her footing in the
dusk and fallen down the steps. Her first clear consciousness was of
Sigurd standing over her, licking her face and hands with a penitent
tongue, nor would he leave her all that evening, lying on the edge of
her dress as she sat and trotting close beside her whenever she crossed
the room. And when, touched by his concern, she bent to him and said:
"I wasn't really hurt, and Sigurd was a good dog to come back," he
joyously flopped over on his spine and presented his snowy shirt-front
for a forgiving pat.

A household dear to Sigurd was that in which two of our college
professors, long retired, dwelt in sisterly affection. He bore himself
with the utmost discretion there, as if aware of a dignity and
fragility beyond the wont of households. The classicist, whose Greek
precision of accent gave beauty to her least remark, would introduce
Sigurd to callers from abroad as "one of our most distinguished
citizens," while the botanist, prisoned in a hooded chair on
wheels,--ah, the feet that had so often and so lightly carried her in a
day over twenty miles and more of the green earth she loved!--liked to
have him escort her on her pathetic airings. He was not with her, but
attending his own family on a drive one da