r
quite succeeded, on account of his masculine prejudices, in teaching
him to wash his dinner-plate. There were drawbacks, however, about
these summer travels with Sigurd. His first concern, on arriving at a
new place, was to go the rounds of the neighborhood and knock over all
the dogs. Having thus established our popularity, he proceeded to make
himself at home, welcoming most affably the dog-owners who called to
complain of his exploits.

One summer he was with Joy-of-Life up in Franconia, where they loved to
climb the scenery, Sigurd taking immense satisfaction in his duties as
guide. "Find the path, boy," she would bid, and very proudly he would
run at a little distance before her, nosing out the way. It was on one
of these excursions that he came upon a scattered flock of sheep
and--hey presto!--was instantly transformed into a dog that we had
never known. Uttering a curious "Yep, yep, yep!" unlike any sound he
had ever been heard to make before, he sped away toward those
astonished sheep, rounded them up and drove them, much too fast for
their comfort, to the furthest limit of their sloping pasture, where
Joy-of-Life found him, panting in tremendous excitement, holding the
sheep, a woolly huddle, penned into an angle of the deep stone walls.
The next morning he was off before daybreak and, after an arduous
search, she found him again playing stern guardian to that same
embarrassed flock. If only the Lady of Cedar Hill had offered him the
lordship of a sheepfold instead of a cattle-barn, Sigurd would have
been Njal to the end of his days. But Joy-of-Life, afraid that the
ancestral Scotch conscience so suddenly awakened in him might not be to
the liking of the Franconia farmers, decided on an immediate return to
the Scarab.

Sigurd always detested train travel, and this time he barely escaped a
tragedy. The baggage car was so full that to him could be allotted only
a space the size of his body. Into that narrow cavity he was confined
by walls of trunks that towered on every side. Within an hour of Boston
an abrupt jolt threw the passengers forward in their seats. Beyond a
few bumps and bruises no harm was done and Joy-of-Life speedily made
her way forward through the disordered train, which had come to a
standstill, to the baggage-car. Here she found a scene of disastrous
confusion, trunks and valises pitched madly about, one baggageman
groaning with a broken arm, on which a doctor was already busy, and the
othe