Sigurd crowded with the rest of the college into close quarters, where he was more than ever underfoot. On that languid twenty-second of May he slept all day along the threshold of the improvised postoffice, and the hurrying feet stepped over him with unreproaching care. But with the arrival of the late afternoon mail, the postmistress, knowing the rush that was to come, said kindly to him:
"Now, Sigurd, you must really go away."
He rose slowly and moved from door to door till he came to the office of the Christian Association. Assured of Samaritan shelter here, he finished his snooze on their one rescued rug, but arrived at home in punctual time for his dinner, and that night it chanced to be the dinner Sigurd liked best. Little Esther, who had a romp with him on his arrival, said he "smiled all over when he smelt the liver cooking."
He scraped out his pan to the last crumb and then lay down in a favorite burrow of loose, cool earth for a twilight revery. One of the household, a new lover, invited him to take a stroll with her, but he excused himself with a grateful rub of his head against her knees.
He slept in Sigurd's House, as usual, and started out soon after dawn, as usual, to go for a splash in a brook not far away. An early riser, intent on making up her count of birds, met him and reported that he was trotting briskly and saluted her with "a sunny twinkle of his tail." Across the road from the brook is a pleasant old homestead under whose great trees Sigurd often took a morning nap before returning to the Scarab. Its occupants looked from the window, as they were dressing, and saw him lying at ease under a spreading evergreen. An hour later, as they rose from breakfast, they observed that Sigurd had not changed his posture and, going out to bid him good morning, found him lifeless. There was no injury on his body nor any sign of pain or struggle. He had made friends even with Death.
Did he, like the old hero Njal, "gentle and generous," foreknow his end as he chose out this quiet, beautiful spot? "We will go to our bed," said Njal in the saga, "and lay us down. I have long been eager for rest."
A grave was dug for Sigurd on the brow of Observatory Hill over which he had so often sped in the splendor of his strength, and there, under the pines, some score of his closest friends and ours gathered the following morning. With the reading of dog poems and the dropping of wild flowers they gave the still body, that was not Sigurd, back to earth. Jack pressed close to his mistress, whose Wallace sleeps near by, and whined as the box was lowered, while little Esther, beholding for the first time a burial, broke into wild crying.
In the autumn I stood by the grave, on which the one dear Sister left in The Orchard had planted violets and periwinkles from Laddie's mound, and watched a kindly young workman set above it a low granite block inscribed, "Sigurd—Our Golden Collie. 1902-1914." As I strewed the stone with goldenrod and turned away, there echoed on the air ancient words from the Greek Anthology, "Thou who passest on the path, if haply thou dost mark this monument, laugh not, I pray thee, though it is a dog's grave. Tears fell for me."
Sigurd would have been well content with the honors that his College paid him,—an obituary notice written with tenderest sympathy, a commemorative letter from his Class of 1911 and many a student elegy. It shall be his own class poet who paints the final picture:
"A dancing collie and gay woodland sprite,