such seeking to join the young lads in "this ding-dong scrap." It was
only too evident that he was well over the age limit, but when they
told him he was too old, he offered to fight them singly or
collectively, or take on the best fighter their blank-blank army could
produce. They managed to get him outside the door, but not before both
he and Nipper had left behind them proof of their quality in lost skin
and torn clothes.

Some days later old Mullins appeared again, leading Nipper on a chain.
Almost every one entrenched himself behind a table, but the old man had
no fight in him, declaring in a choking voice that Nipper had come to
enlist alone. "He is not too old, anyway, and will deal with more of
the blank-blank swine than a hundred of your sissy, white-faced,
unweaned kids!" One of the doctors had a heart in the right place and
wrote a letter to the commandant of a regiment soon going overseas,
asking him if he could not take the dog as a regimental pet. He gave
the old man the letter and told him to take his dog out to the camp.

The colonel was not without understanding, and that is how Nipper
"joined up" to fight for democracy.

There were some who started out to teach Nipper tricks, but it was soon
discovered that he knew a good deal more than most of us. He had a
keen sense of humor, and after some one would spend hours trying to
teach him to sit up, all of which time he would pretend he could not
understand what he was wanted to do, with a sly look he would suddenly
go through a whole repertoire of tricks, not merely sitting up, but
tumbling over backward, generally ending the performance by
"heeling-up" (nipping in the heel) all and sundry. He never really bit
any one, but a lot of the new boys were nervous during this heeling-up