The place was in an uproar.  Nurses and doctors came rushing out into the vestibule; sick and wounded men sat up on their cots and eagerly craned their necks to catch sight of the scrimmage.  Soldiers ran in from the street.

Strong as he was, Mahan had both hands full in holding the frantic Bruce back from his enemy.  Under the insult of the kick from this masquerader, whom he had already recognized as a foe, the collie had temporarily lost every vestige of his stately dignity.  He was for the moment merely a wild beast, seeking revenge for a brutal injury.  He writhed and fought in Mahan’s grasp.  Never once did he seek to attack the struggling man who held him.  But he strained every giant sinew to get at the foe who had kicked him.

The dog’s opponent scrambled to his feet, helped by a dozen willing hands and accosted by as many solicitous voices.  The victim’s face was bone-gray with terror.  His lips twitched convulsively.  Yet, as befitted a person in his position, he had a splendid set of nerves.  And almost at once he recovered partial control over himself.

“I—­I don’t know how it happened,” he faltered, his rich contralto voice shaky with the ground-swells of his recent shock.  “It began when I was sitting on the steps, sewing.  This dog came past.  He growled at me so threateningly that I came indoors.  A minute later, while I was sitting here sewing, he sprang at me and threw me down.  I believe he would—­would have killed me,” the narrator finished, with a very genuine shudder, “if I had not been rescued when I was.  Such bloodthirsty brutes ought to be shot!”

“He not only ought to be,” hotly agreed the chief surgeon, “but he is going to be.  Take him out into the street, one of you men, and put a ball in his head.”

The surgeon turned to the panting nurse.

“You’re certain he didn’t hurt you?” he asked.  “I don’t want a newcomer, like yourself, to think this is the usual treatment our nurses get.  Lie down and rest.  You look scared to death.  And don’t be nervous about the cur attacking you again.  He’ll be dead inside of three minutes.”

The nurse, with a mumbled word of thanks, scuttled off into the rear of the church, where the tumbledown vestry had been fitted up as a dormitory.

Bruce had calmed down somewhat under Mahan’s sharp reproof.  But he now struggled afresh to get at his vanished quarry.  And again the Sergeant had a tussle to hold him.

“I don’t know what’s got into the big fellow!” exclaimed Mahan to Vivier as the old Frenchman joined the tumultuous group.  “He’s gone clean daft.  He’d of killed that poor woman, if I hadn’t—­”

“Get him out of here!” ordered the surgeon.  “And clear out, yourselves, all of you!  This rumpus has probably set a lot of my patients’ temperatures to rocketing.  Take the cur out and shoot him!”

“Excuse me, sir,” spoke up Mahan, as Vivier stared aghast at the man who commanded Bruce’s destruction, “but he’s no cur.  He’s a courier-collie, officially in the service of the United States Government.  And he’s the best courier-dog in France to-day.  This is—­”