The Little Colonel's Hero

IN CAMP

Several miles from Lloydsboro Valley, where a rapid brook runs by the ruins of an old paper-mill, a roaring waterfall foams and splashes. Even in the long droughts of midsummer it is green and cool there, for the spray, breaking on the slippery stones, freshens the ferns on the bank, and turns its moss to the vivid hue of an emerald. Near by, in an open pasture, sloping down from a circle of wooded hills, lies an ideal spot for a small camp.

It was here that Mrs. Walton and Miss Allison came one warm afternoon, the Monday following the entertainment, with a wagonette full of children. Ranald, Malcolm, Keith, and Rob Moore had ridden over earlier in the day to superintend the coloured men who dug the trenches and pitched the tents. By the time the wagonette arrived, fuel enough to last a week was piled near the stones where the camp-fire was laid, and everything was in readiness for the gay party. Flags floated from the tent poles, and Dinah, the young coloured woman who was to be the cook, came up from the spring, balancing a pail of water on her head, smiling broadly.

As the boys and girls swarmed out and scurried away in every direction like a horde of busy ants, Mrs. Walton turned to her sister with a laugh. "Did we lose any of them on the way, Allison? We'd better count noses."

"No, we are all here: eight girls, four boys, the four already on the field, Dinah and her baby, and ourselves, twenty in all."

"Twenty-one, counting Hero," corrected Mrs. Walton, as the great St. Bernard went leaping after Lloyd, sniffing at the tents, and barking occasionally to express his interest in the frolic. "He seems to be enjoying it as much as any of us."

"I wish that they were all as able to take care of themselves as he is. It would save us a world of anxiety. Do you begin to realise, Mary, what a load of responsibility we have taken on our shoulders? Sixteen boys and girls to keep out of harm's way for a week in the woods is no easy matter."

"We'll keep them so busy that they'll have no time for mischief. The wagonette isn't unloaded yet. Wait till you see the games I've brought, and the fishing-tackle. There's an old curtain that can be hung between those two trees any time we want to play charades."

"Swing that hammock over there, Ranald," she called, nodding to a clump of trees near the spring. "Then some of you boys can carry this chest back to Dinah." She pointed to the old army mess-chest, that always accompanied them on their picnics and outings.

"The Ogre can do that," said the Little Captain, nodding toward Joe Clark, who stood leaning lazily against a tree.

"Do it yourself, Frog-Eye Fearsome," retorted Joe, at the same time coming forward to help carry the chest to the place assigned it.

"They'll never be able to get away from those names," said Miss Allison. "Well, what is it, my Princess Winsome?" she asked, as Lloyd came running up to her.

"Please take care of these for me, Miss Allison," answered Lloyd, holding out Hero's shoulder-bags, which she had just taken from him. "I put on his things when we started, for mothah says nobody evah knows what's goin' to happen in camp, and we might need those bandages." Tumbling them into Miss Allison's lap, she was off again in breathless haste, to follow the other girls, who were exploring the tents, and exclaiming over all the queer make-shifts of camp life. Then they raced down to the waterfall, and, taking off shoes and stockings, waded up and down in the brook. These early fall days were as warm as August, so wading was not yet one of the forbidden pastimes. They splashed up and down until the Little Captain's bugle sent a ringing call for their return to camp. Katie was one of the last to leave the water. Lloyd waited for her while she hurriedly laced her shoes, and as they followed the others she said, in a confidential tone, "Do you think you are goin' to like to stay out heah till next Sata'day?"

"Like it!" echoed Katie, "I could stay here a year!"

"But at night, I mean. Sleepin' in those narrow little cots, with nothin' ovah ou' heads but the tents, and no floah. Ugh! What if a snake or a liz'ad should wiggle in, and you'd heah it rustlin' around in the grass undah you! There's suah to be bugs and ants and cattahpillahs. I like camp in the daylight, but it would be moah comfortable to have a house to sleep in at night. I wish I could wish myself back home till mawnin'."

"I don't mind the bugs and spiders," said Katie, recklessly, "and you'd better not let the boys find out that you do, or they'll never stop teasing you."

A bountifully spread supper-table met their sight as they reached the camp. It had been made by laying long boards across two poles, which were supported by forked stakes driven into the ground. The eight girls made a rush for the camp-stools on one side of the table, and the eight boys grabbed those on the other side.

"Don't have to have no manners in the woods," remarked little Freddy Nicholls, straddling his stool, and beginning his supper, regardless of the knife and fork beside his plate. "That's what I like about camping out. You don't have to wait to have things handed to you, but can dip in and get what you want like an Injun."

Lloyd looked at him scornfully as she daintily unfolded her paper napkin. She nodded a decided yes when Katie whispered, "Aren't boys horrid and greedy!" Then she corrected herself hastily. She had seen Malcolm wait to pass a dish of fried chicken to his Aunt Allison before helping himself, and heard Ranald apologise to his next neighbour for accidentally jogging his elbow. "Not all of them," she replied.

It added much to Betty's interest in the meal to know that the cup from which she drank, and the fork with which she ate, had been used by real soldiers, and carried from one army post to another many times in the travel-worn old mess chest.

Little Elise was the only one who did not give due attention to her supper. She sat with a cooky in her hand, looking off at the hills with dreamy eyes, until her mother spoke to her.

"I am trying to make some poetry like Betty did," she answered. Ever since the play her thoughts seemed trying to twist themselves into rhymes, and she was constantly coming up to her mother with a new verse she had just made.

"Well, what is it, Titania?" asked Mrs. Walton, seeing from the gleam of satisfaction in the black eyes that the verse was ready.

"It's all of our names," she said, shyly, waving her hand toward the girls on her side of the table.

"Oh, that's easy," said Rob. "You just strung a lot of names together. Anybody can do that."

"You do it, then," proposed Kitty. "Make a verse with the boys' names in it."

"Malcolm, Ranald, and Rob, Jamie, Freddy, Keith," he began, boldly, then hesitated. "There isn't any rhyme for Keith."

"Change them around," suggested Malcolm. The girls would not help, and the whole row of boys floundered among the names for a while, unwilling to be beaten by the youngest member of the party, and a girl, at that. Finally, by their united efforts and a hint from Miss Allison, they succeeded.

"Let's make a law," suggested Kitty, "that nobody at the table can say anything from now on till we are through supper, unless they speak in rhymes."

They all agreed, but for a few minutes no one ventured a remark. Only giggles broke the silence, until Allison asked Freddy Nicholls to pass the pickles. Recorded here in a book, it may seem a very silly game, but to the jolly camping party, ready to laugh at even the sheerest nonsense, it proved to be the source of much fun. Even Freddy, to his own great delight, surprised himself and the company by asking Elise to take some cheese. Joe was thrown into confusion by Kitty's asking him if flesh, fowl, or fish, was his favourite dish. As he could only nod his head, he had to pay a forfeit, and Keith answered for him by saying, "That's not a fair question to Joe. An ogre eats all things, you know." So it went on until Mrs. Walton said:

"This is the jolliest part of it all!" exclaimed Keith, a little later, as, stretched out on a thick Indian blanket, he looked around on the circle of faces, glowing in the light of the leaping fagot-fire. Twilight had settled on the camp. The tumbling of the waterfall over the rocks made a subdued roar in the background. An owl called somewhere from the depths of the woods. As the dismal "Tu-whit, tu who-oo" sounded through the gloaming, Lloyd glanced over her shoulder with a shudder.

"Ugh!" she exclaimed. "It looks as if the witch's orchard might be there behind us, with all sorts of snaky, crawlin' things in it. Come heah, Hero. Let me put my back against you. It makes me feel shivery to even think of such a thing!"

The dog edged nearer at her call, and she snuggled up against his tawny curls with a feeling of warmth and protection.

"Wish I had a dog like that," said Jamie, fondly stroking the silky ear that was nearest him. "I wouldn't take a thousand dollars for him if I had."

"Money couldn't buy Hero!" exclaimed Lloyd.

"Now what would you do," said Kitty, who was always supposing impossible things, "if some old witch would come to you and say, 'You may have your choice? a palace full of gold and silver and precious stones and give up Hero, or keep him and be a beggar in rags?"

"I'd be a beggah, of co'se!" cried Lloyd, warmly, throwing her arm around the dog's neck. "Think I'd go back on anybody that had saved my life? But I wouldn't stay a beggah," she continued. "I'd put on the Red Cross too, and we'd go away where there was war, Hero and I, and we'd spend ou' lives takin' care of the soldiahs. I wouldn't have to dress in rags, for I'd weah the nurse's costume, and I'd do so much good that some day, may be, somebody would send me the Gold Cross of Remembrance, as they did Clara Barton, and I'm suah that I'd rathah have that, with all it means, than all the precious stones and things that the witch could give me."

"When did Hero save your life?" asked Joe, who had not heard the story of the runaway in Geneva.

"Tell us all about it, Lloyd," asked Mrs. Walton. So Lloyd began, and the group around the fire listened with breathless attention. And that was followed by the Major's story, and all he had told her of St. Bernard dogs, and of the Red Cross service. Then the finding of the Major by his faithful dog on the dark mountain after the storm. Betty's turn came next. She repeated some of the stories they had heard on shipboard. Mrs. Walton added her part afterward, telling her personal experience with the Red Cross work in Cuba and the Philippines.

"That is one reason I took such a deep interest in your little entertainment," she said, "and was so pleased when it brought so much money. I know that every penny under the wise direction of the Red Cross will help to make some poor soldier more comfortable; or if some sudden calamity should come in this country, before it was sent away, your little fund might help to save dozens of lives."

The fire had burned low while they talked, and Elise was yawning sleepily. Miss Allison looked at her watch. "How the time has flown!" she exclaimed in surprise. "Where is the bugler of this camp? It is high time for him to play taps."

Ranald ran for his bugle, and the clear call that he had learned to play when he was "The Little Captain," in far-away Luzon, rang out into the dark woods. It was answered by the same silvery notes. Mrs. Walton and Miss Allison looked at each other in surprise, for the reply was no echo, but the call of a real bugle, somewhere not far away.

"Oh, we forgot to tell you, Aunt Mary," said Malcolm, noting the surprised glance, "It's a regiment of the State Guard, in camp over by Calkin's Cliff. We boys were over there this morning. They made a big fuss over us when they found that Ranald was General Walton's son and we were his nephews. They wanted us to stay to dinner, and when they found out that you were coming to camp here, the Colonel said be wanted to come over here and call. He used to know you out West."

"Colonel Wayne," repeated Mrs. Walton, when Malcolm finally remembered the name. "We knew him when he was only a young cadet at West Point. The General was very fond of him, and I shall be glad to see him again."

"They'll be interested in Hero," said Ranald. "Maybe they'll want to train some war dogs for our army if they set him at work. Do you suppose he has forgotten his training, Lloyd? Let's try him in the morning."

"You can make a great game of it," suggested Mrs. Walton. "Rig up one of the tents for a hospital. Some of the boys can be wounded soldiers and some of the girls nurses."

"All but me," said Lloyd. "I'll have to be an officer to give the ordahs. He only knows the French words for that, and the Majah taught them to me."

"What can we use for the brassards and costumes?" said Kitty.

"Elise has an old red apron in the clothes-hamper that we can cut up for crosses," said Mrs. Walton, always ready for emergencies. "But now to your tents, every man of you, or you'll never be ready to get up in the morning."

It was hard to go to sleep in the midst of such strange surroundings, and more than once Lloyd started up, aroused by the hoot of an owl, or the thud of a bat against the side of the tent. Not until she reached out and laid her hand on the great St. Bernard stretched out beside her cot, did she settle herself comfortably to sleep. With the touch of his soft curls against her fingers, she was no longer afraid.

When the officers came into the camp next day, they found the children in the midst of their new game. It was some time before their attention was attracted to it, for the Colonel was one of the men who had followed General Walton on his long, hard Indian campaign, and there were many questions to be asked and answered, about mutual friends in the army.

Hero was not making a serious business of the game, but was entering into it as if it were a big frolic. He could not make believe as the boys could, who played at soldiering. But the old words of command, uttered, in the Little Colonel's high, excited voice, sent him bounding in the direction she pointed, and the prostrate forms he found scattered about the sham battle field, seemed to quicken his memory. Mrs. Walton presently called the officer's attention to the efforts Hero was making to recall his old lessons, and briefly outlined his history.

"I believe he would remember perfectly," said the Colonel, watching him with deep interest, "if we were to take him over to our camp, and try him among the regular uniformed soldiers. Of course our accoutrements are not the kind he has been accustomed to, but I think they would suggest them. At least the smell of powder would be familiar, and the guns and canteens and knapsacks might awaken something in his memory that would revive his entire training. I should like very much to make the experiment."

After some further conversation, Lloyd was called up to meet the officers, and it was agreed that Hero should be taken over to the camp for a trial on the day the sham battle was to take place.

"The day has not yet been definitely determined," said the Colonel, "but I'll send you word as soon as it is. By the way, my orderly was once a young French officer, and often talks of the French army. He'll welcome Hero like a long-lost brother, for he has a soft spot in his heart for anything connected with his motherland. Ill send him over either this evening or to-morrow."

That evening the orderly rode over to bring word that the sham battle would take place the following Thursday, and they were all invited to witness it. Hero's trial would take place immediately after the battle. While he stood talking to Mrs. Walton and Miss Allison, Lloyd and Kitty came running down the hill with Hero close behind them.

The orderly turned with an exclamation of admiration as the dog came toward him, and held out his hand with a friendly snap of the fingers. "Ah, old comrade," he called out in French, in a deep, hearty voice. "Come, give me a greeting! I, too, am from the motherland."

At sound of the familiar speech, the dog went forward, wagging his tail violently, as if he recognised an old acquaintance. Then he stopped and snuffed his boots in a puzzled manner, and looked up wistfully into the orderly's face. It was a stranger he gazed at, yet voice, speech, and appearance were like the man's who had trained him from a puppy, and he gave a wriggle of pleasure when the big hand came down on his head, and the deep voice spoke caressingly to him.

When the orderly mounted his horse. Hero would have followed had not the Little Colonel called him sharply, grieved and jealous that he should show such marked interest in a stranger. He turned back at her call, but stood in the road, looking after his new-found friend, till horse and rider disappeared down the bridle-path that led through the deep woods to the other camp.

THE SENTRY'S MISTAKE

Promptly on Thursday, at the time appointed, the orderly rode over to Camp Walton to escort the party back to the camp at Calkin's Cliff. The four boys led the way on their ponies; the rest piled into a great farm wagon filled with straw, that had been procured from one of the neighbouring farms for the occasion.

Hero followed obediently, when the Little Colonel ordered him to jump up beside her, but he turned longing eyes on the orderly, whom he had welcomed with strong marks of pleasure. It was only their second meeting, but Hero seemed to regard him as an old friend. He leaped up to lick his face, and bounded around him with quick, short barks of pleasure that, for the moment, gave Lloyd a jealous pang. She was hurt that Hero should show such an evident desire to follow him in preference to her.

"I don't see what makes Hero act so," she said to Mrs. Walton.

"The orderly certainly must bear a strong resemblance to some one whom Hero knew and loved in France," she replied. "You have owned him less than two months, and he has been away from France only a year, you must remember. Everything must seem strange to him here. He was not brought up to play with children, as many St. Bernards are.

"The other night, at the entertainment, I wondered many times what Hero must think of his strange surroundings. His life here is different in every way from all that he has been used to. A dog trained from puppyhood to the experiences of soldier life would naturally miss the excitement of camp as much as a soldier suddenly retired to the life of a private citizen."

"Oh, deah!" sighed Lloyd, "I wish he could talk. I'd ask him if he is unhappy. Are you homesick, old fellow?"

She took his great head between her little hands and looked earnestly into his eyes as she asked the question.

"Do you wish you were back in the French army, following the ambulances and hunting the wounded soldiahs? Seems to me you ought to like it so much bettah heah in Kentucky, with, nothing to do but play and eat and sleep, and be loved by everybody."

"But an army dog can't get away from his training any easier than a man," laughed the orderly, as he rode on beside the wagon. "It is a part of him. Hero is a good soldier, and no doubt feels a greater joy in obeying what he considers a call to duty, than in riding in the wagon at his ease, with the ladies."

"You know a great deal, perhaps, of this society for the training of ambulance dogs," said Mrs. Walton.

"Yes," he replied. "I am deeply interested in it. My brother at home keeps me informed of its movements, and has written me much of Herr Bungartz's methods. I think I shall have no difficulty in putting the dog through his manoeuvres, especially as he seems to recognise me and in some way connect me with his past life."

Fife and drum welcomed the party as they drove into camp, and the party were at once escorted to seats where they could watch the drill and the sham battle. It was a familiar scene to the General's little family, and to Miss Allison, who had visited more than one army post. But some of the girls put their fingers in their ears when the noise of the rapid firing began. Hero was greatly excited.

Soon after the noise of the sham battle ceased, the field was prepared for the dog's trial. Men were hidden behind logs, stretched out in ditches, and left lying as if dead, in the dense thicket that skirted one side of the field, for wounded animals, either men or beasts, instinctively crawl away to die under cover.

With hands almost trembling in their eagerness, Lloyd fastened the flask and shoulder-bags on the dog. He seemed to know that something unusual was expected of him, and wagged his tail so violently that he nearly upset the Little Colonel. He watched every movement of the orderly, who, with a Red Cross brassard on his arm, was acting as chief of the improvised ambulance corps.

"Will you give him the order, Miss Lloyd?" he asked, turning politely to the little girl. Lloyd had pictured this moment several times on the way over, thinking how proud she would be to stand up like a real Little Colonel and send her orders ringing over the field before the whole admiring regiment. But now that the moment had actually come, she blushed and shrank back, timidly. She was not sure that she could say the strange French words just as the Major had taught them to her, when such a crowd of soldiers were standing by to hear.

"Oh, you do it, please," she asked.

"If you will tell me the exact words he has been accustomed to hearing," answered the orderly.

Lloyd stammered them out, greatly embarrassed, feeling that her pronunciation must have grown quite faulty from lack of practice under the Major's careful training. The orderly repeated them in an undertone, then, turning to Hero, gave the order in a clear, deep voice, that seemed to thrill the dog with its familiar ring. Instantly at the sound he started out across the field. Not a thing that had been taught him in his long, careful training was forgotten.

The first man he found was lying in a ditch, apparently desperately wounded. Hero allowed him to help himself from his flask, and drag a bandage from the bags on his back. Then, standing with his hind feet in the ditch and his fore feet resting on the bank above him, he gave voice until the men by the ambulance heard him, and came toward him carrying a stretcher.

"Look at him!" exclaimed Mrs. Walton, who with the party and several of the officers had walked down to the hospital tent. "He knows he has done his duty well. Did you ever see a dog manifest such delight! He fairly wriggles with joy!"

The praise of the men bearing the stretcher, and especially of the orderly, seemed to send the dog into a transport of happiness. The second man lay far on the outskirts of the field, hidden by a thicket of hazel bushes. This time Hero's frantic barking brought no reply. The men acted as if deaf to his appeals of help, so in a few minutes, evidently thinking they were beyond the range of his voice, he picked up the man's cap in his mouth, and ran back at the top of his speed.

"Good dog!" said the orderly, taking the cap he dropped at his feet. "Go back now and lead the way."

"If that man had really been wounded, and had crawled under that thicket," said Colonel Wayne, "we never could have found him alone. Only the sense of smell could lead to such a hiding-place. The ambulance might have passed there a hundred times and never seen a trace of him."

The hunt went on for some time; before it closed, every man personating a killed or wounded soldier was located and carried to the hospital tent. When the tired dog was finally allowed to rest, he dropped down at the orderly's feet, panting.

"That, was certainly fine work," said the Colonel, stooping to pat Hero's sides. "I suppose nothing could induce you to give him up to the army?" he asked, turning to Lloyd.

"Oh, no, no, no!" cried Lloyd, as if alarmed at the suggestion, and pressing Hero's head protectingly against her shoulder. If she had been proud of him before, she was doubly proud of him now. He had won the admiration of the entire regiment. Never had he been so praised and petted. When Mrs. Walton called her party together for their homeward drive, it was plain to be seen that Hero was loath to leave the camp. A word from the orderly would have kept him, despite Lloyd's commands to jump up into the wagon.

As the boys rode on ahead again, Keith said, "It does seem too bad to force that dog into being a private citizen when he is a born soldier."

"Did you hear what Colonel Wayne told mamma as we left?" asked Ranald. "He told her that it was reported that some of the animals had escaped from the circus that was in Louisville yesterday, and that a panther and some other kind of a beast had been seen in these woods. He laughed and asked her if she didn't want him to send a guard over to our camp. Of course he was only joking, but when she saw that I had heard what he said, she told me not to tell the girls; not to even mention such a thing, or they'd be so frightened they'd want to break camp and go straight home."

"It would be fun to scare them," said Rob, "but you'd better believe I'll not say anything if there's any danger of having to go home sooner on account of it."

"We've got to go day after to-morrow anyhow," said Keith, gloomily. "I wish I could miss another week of school, but I know papa wouldn't let me, even if the camp didn't break up."

"Come on!" called Ranald, who had pushed on ahead. "Let's hurry back and have a good swim before supper."

Not satisfied with the excitement of the day, the girls were no sooner out of the wagon than some one started a wild game of prisoners' base. Then they played hide-and-seek among the rocks and trees around the waterfall, and while they were wiping their flushed faces, panting after the long run, Kitty proposed that they should have a candy pulling.

Dinah made the candy, but the girls pulled it, running a race to see whose would be the whitest in a given time. Their arms ached long before they were done. By the time the boys came stumbling up the hill from their long swim in the creek, it would be hard to say which group was most tired.

"I'm sure we'll all want to turn in early to-night," said Mrs. Walton at supper. Freddy was yawning widely, and Elise was almost asleep over her plate. "You are all tired."

"All but Hero," said Miss Allison, offering him a chicken bone. "He rested while the others played. You'd like to go through your game every day. Wouldn't you, old boy?"

There was no story-telling around the camp-fire that night. They gathered around it, even before the light died out in the sky. Ranald had his guitar and Allison her mandolin, and they thrummed accompaniments awhile for the others to sing. But a mighty yawn catching Margery in the middle of a verse, and Mrs. Walton discovering both Jamie and Freddy sound asleep on the rug beside her, she proposed that they all go to bed an hour earlier than usual.

The Little Captain vowed he was too sleepy to blow a single toot on his bugle, so they went to their tents without the usual sounding of taps. It was not long before every child was asleep, worn out by the day's hard play. Mrs. Walton lay awake sometime listening to the sounds outside the tent. The crackling of underbrush and rustle of dry leaves was familiar enough in the daytime, but they seemed strangely ominous now that the lights were out. She could not help thinking of what the Colonel had told her of the escaped panther. She imagined the panic it would make if it should suddenly appear in their midst. Then she thought of Hero's protecting presence, and, raising herself on her elbow, she looked across the tent to where she knew he lay asleep. At first she could not see even the ruff of white that made the collar around his tawny throat, for the moon had slipped behind a cloud, but as she raised herself on her elbow, and peered intently through the darkness, the faint misty light shone out again, and she saw Hero plainly, the Little Colonel's outstretched hand resting on his broad back. Then she lay down again, this time to sleep, and soon all the little camp was wrapped in the peace and rest of perfect silence.

Half an hour later Hero lifted his head from between his paws and listened. Something seemed calling him. He did not know what. Being only a dog, he could not analyse the thoughts passing through his brain. A restlessness seized him. He longed to be back among the familiar sights and sounds of soldier life. This little play camp, where children tried to make him romp continually, was not home. Locust was not home. This strange new country full of unfamiliar faces and foreign voices was not home. But the orderly's voice reminded him of it. Over there were bearded men and deep voices, and strong hands, guns, and the smell of powder; fife and drum, and canteens and knapsacks; things that he had seen daily in his soldier life.

Was it some call to duty that thrilled him, or only a homesick longing? As he listened with head up, there came ringing, clear and silvery through the night, the bugle notes from the other camp. At the first sound Hero was on his feet. He moved noiselessly toward the tent flap, only partially fastened, and flattening himself against the ground wriggled out.

And if he gave no thought to the little mistress, dreaming inside the tent, if he left without regret the life of ease and loving care to which she had brought him, it was not because he was ungrateful, but because he did not understand. To him his old life woke and called him in the bugle's blowing. To him duty did not mean soft cushions, and idle days, and the following of a happy-hearted child at play. It meant long marches and the guarding of ambulances and the rescue of the dead and dying. A true soldier's heart beat in the dog's shaggy body, and, obedient to his instinct and training, he answered the summons when it sounded. With long, swinging steps he set out in the direction of the bugle-call, taking the road through the woods that the wagon had travelled that day, and down which he had watched the orderly disappear. No, not deserting his duty, but, as he understood it, hurrying back, with faithful heart to the cause that had always claimed him.

Now and then the moon, coming out fitfully from, behind the clouds, shone on his great tawny body, touching the white curls of his ruff with a line of silver. Then he would be lost in darkness again. But he swung on unerringly, until he was almost in sight of the camp. A little farther on a sentry paced up and down the picket-line that ran along the edge of the woods. Hero travelled on toward him, the dry dead leaves rustling under his paws, and now and then a twig crackling with his weight.

The sentry paused and, listened, wondering what kind of an animal was coming toward him in the darkness.

"Halt! Who goes there?" he called, sharply. The moon, peeping out at that instant, seemed to magnify the size of the great creature in his path. He thought of the panther and the other wild beast, whatever it was, supposed to be roaming about in the woods. Then the moon disappeared as suddenly as it had lighted up the scene, and the big paws still pattered on toward him in the darkness, regardless of his repeated challenge.

As the underbrush crackled again with the weight of the great body now almost upon him, the sentry raised his rifle. A shot rang out, arousing the camp not yet fully settled to sleep. The echo bounded back from the startled hills, and rolled away over the peaceful farms and orchards, growing fainter and fainter, until only a whisper of it reached the white tent where the Little Colonel lay dreaming. Then the moon shone out again, and the sentry, going a few paces forward, looked down in horror at the silent form stretched out at his feet.

"TAPS"

The corporal of the guard went running in the direction of the shot, and here and there an inquiring head, was thrust out of a tent.

"Only a dog shot, sir," he was heard to call out in answer to some officer's question, as he passed back down the line. "Sentry took him for a wild beast escaped from the show."

Somebody laughed in reply, and the men who had been aroused by the noise turned over and went to sleep. They did not know that the corporal hurried on down to the guard-house, and that as a result of his report there was a hasty summons for the surgeon. They did not know that it was Hero whom the sentry bent over, gulping down a feeling in his throat that nearly choked him, as he saw the blood welling out of the dog's shaggy white breast, and slowly stiffening the silky hair of his beautiful yellow coat.

The surgeon knelt down beside the dog, and as the clouds hid the moon again, he turned the light of his lantern on the wound for a careful examination.

"That was a cracking good shot, Bently," he said. "He never knew what stopped him."

The sentry turned his head away. "I wouldn't have been the one to take that dog's life for anything in the world!" he exclaimed. "I'd pretty near as soon have killed a man. It never entered my head that any tame animal would come leaping out of the woods that way at this time of night. He loomed up nearly as big as a lion when the moon shone out on him. The next minute it was all dark again, and I heard his big soft feet come pattering through the leaves, straight on toward me. It flashed over me that it must be one of those escaped circus animals, so I just let loose and blazed away at him."

The surgeon stood up and looked down at the still form at his feet. "It's too bad," he said. "He was a grand old dog, the finest St. Bernard I ever saw. How that little girl loved him! It will just about break her heart when she finds out what's happened to him."

"Don't!" begged the sentry, huskily. "Don't say anything like that. I feel bad enough about it now, goodness knows, without your harrowing up my feelings, talking of the way she's going to feel."

As the surgeon started on, the sentry stopped him. "For heaven's sake, Mac, don't leave him lying there on the picket-line where I've got to see him every time I pass. Send somebody to take him away. I'm all unnerved. I feel as if I'd shot one of my own comrades."

The surgeon looked at him curiously and walked on. Nobody was sent to take the dog away, but a little while later the sentry was relieved from duty, and another soldier kept guard over the silent camp, pacing back and forth past the Red Cross Hero, sleeping his last sleep under the light of the sentinel stars.

Somebody draped a flag across him before the camp was astir next morning. "Well, why not?" the man asked when he was joked about paying so much attention to a dead dog. "Why not? He was a war dog, wasn't he? It's no more than his due. I was the man he found in the ditch yesterday. As far as his intention and good will went, he did as much to save me as if I had been really lying there a wounded soldier. When he came leaping down there into the ditch after me, licking my face in such a friendly fashion and holding still so that I could help myself to the flask and bandages, I thought how grateful a fellow would feel to him if he were really rescued by him that way. It was all make-believe to me, but it was dead earnest to the dog, and he did his part as faithfully as any soldier who ever wore a uniform."

"You're right," said a young lieutenant, sitting near. "If for no other reason than that he was in the service of the Red Cross, he has a right to the respect of every man that calls himself a soldier, no matter what flag he follows."

Later in the morning, when the orderly rode into the little picnic camp, the girls were away. They were down by the waterfall digging ferns and mosses to take home. "We are thinking of breaking up camp this afternoon," Mrs. Walton told him. "The weather looks so threatening that I have sent for the wagonette to come for us, and I was about to send over to your camp to see if Hero had wandered back there. He has not been seen since last night. He was lying by Lloyd's cot just before I went to sleep, but this morning he is nowhere to be found. Lloyd is distressed. I told her that probably the drill yesterday awakened all his love for the old life, and that he might have been drawn back to it. Was I right? Have you seen him?"

"Yes," said the orderly, hesitating. "I saw him, but I find it hard to tell you how and where, Mrs. Walton." He paused again, and then hurried on with the explanation, as if anxious to have it over as soon as possible.

"He was shot last night by mistake on the picket-line. The sentry is all broken up over it, poor fellow, and the whole camp regrets it more than I can tell. You see, after yesterday's performance we almost claimed the dog as one of us. Colonel Wayne has made me the bearer of his deepest regrets. He especially deplores the occurrence on account of the dog's little mistress, knowing what a great grief it will be to her. He wishes, if you think it will be any consolation to her, to give Hero a military funeral, and bury him with the honours due a brave soldier."

"I am sure that Lloyd will want that," said Mrs, Walton. "She will appreciate it deeply, when she understands what a mark of respect to Hero such an attention would be. Tell Colonel Wayne, please, that I gladly accept the offer in her behalf, and will send Ranald over later, to arrange for it."

The orderly rode away, and Mrs. Walton turned to her sister, exclaiming, "Poor little Lloyd! I confess I am not brave enough to face her grief when she first hears the news. You will have to tell her, Allison. You know her so much better than I. We might as well hurry the preparations for leaving. No one will care to stay a moment longer, now this has happened. It will cast a gloom over the entire party."

"Maybe it would be better not to tell her until after she gets home," suggested Miss Allison. She had soothed the childish griefs of nearly every child in the Valley, at some time or another, but she felt that this was the most serious one that had fallen to her lot to comfort.

"I'm sure it would be impossible to get Lloyd away from here without Hero, unless she knew," was the answer. "I heard her tell Kitty this morning that nobody could make her go without him. She said if he wasn't back by the time we were ready to start, we could go on without her, and she would hunt for him if it took all fall."

While they were still discussing it the boys came running back to camp much excited. They had met the orderly.

"Oh, the poor dog!" mourned Keith. "What a shame for the poor old fellow to be shot down that way. It seems almost as bad as if it had been one of us boys that was killed."

Ranald and Rob joined in with praise of his many lovable traits, talking of his death as if it were a lifelong friend they had lost; but Malcolm turned away with an anxious glance to the woods, where he could hear the laughing voices of the girls.

"Poor little Princess Winsome," he thought. "It will nearly break her heart," and he wished with all the earnestness of the real Sir Feal, that by some knightly service, no matter how hard, he could save his little friend from this sorrow.

The girls came strolling up, presently, so occupied with their spoils that no one noticed the boy's serious faces but Lloyd. The moment she caught Malcolm's sympathetic glance she was sure something had happened to Hero.

"Oh, what is it?" she began, the tears gathering in her eyes as she felt the unspoken, sympathy of the little group. Leaving Mrs. Walton to tell the other girls, Miss Allison drew Lloyd aside, saying as she led her down toward the spring, an arm around her waist, "I have a message for you, Lloyd, from Colonel Wayne. Let's go down to the rocks by ourselves."

A sympathetic silence fell on the little circle left behind as they heard Lloyd cry out, "Shot my dog? Shot Hero? Oh, he ought to be killed! How could he do such a cruel thing!"

"But he feels dreadfully about it," said Miss Allison. "The orderly said that, big, strong man though he was, the tears stood in his eyes when he saw what he had done, and he kept saying, 'I wouldn't have done it for the world.'"

Nearly all the girls were crying by this time, and Malcolm turned his head so that he could not see the fair little head pressed against Miss Allison's shoulder, as she clung to her sobbing.

"Think how it must have hurt poah Hero's feelin's," Lloyd was saying, "to go back to their camp so trustin' and happy, thinkin' the men would be so glad to see him, and that he was doin' his duty, and then to have one of them stand up and send a bullet through his deah, lovin' old heart. Oh, I can't beah it," she screamed. "Oh, I can't! I can't! It seems as if it would kill me to think of him lyin' ovah there all cold and stiff, with the blood on his lovely white and yellow curls, and know that he'll nevah, nevah again jump up to lick my hands, and put his paws on my shouldahs. He'll nevah come to meet me any moah, waggin' his tail and lookin' up into my face with his deah lovin' eyes. Oh, Miss Allison! I can't stand it! It's just breakin' my heart!" Burying her face in Miss Allison's lap, she sobbed and cried until her tears were all spent.

It was a subdued little party that rode back to the Valley, a few hours later. Not only sympathy for Lloyd kept them quiet, but each one mourned the loss of the gentle, lovable playfellow who had come to such an untimely end after this week of happy camp life with them.

Under the locusts that evening, just as the sun was going down, came the tread of many marching feet. It was the tramp, tramp of the soldiers who were bringing home the Little Colonel's Hero, All the men who had been most interested in his performances the day before, had volunteered to follow Colonel Wayne, and the long line made an imposing showing, as it stretched up the avenue after him.

Lloyd watched the approach from her seat on the porch beside her father. All the camping party were waiting with her, except the four boys who rode at the head of the procession, Ranald and Malcolm first, then Rob and Keith. Lloyd hid her eyes as Lad and Tarbaby came into view behind them.

"Look," said her father gently, pointing to the flag-draped burden they drew. "How much better it was for Hero to have been shot by a soldier and brought home with military honours, than to have met the fate of an ordinary dog—been poisoned, or mangled, by a train, as might have happened, or even died of a painful, feeble old age. The Major would have chosen this? so would Hero, if he could have understood."

There was more comfort in that thought than in anything that had been said to her before, and Lloyd wiped her eyes, and sat up to watch the ceremony that followed, with a feeling of pride that made her almost cheerful.

On they came to the beat of the muffled drum, halting under a great locust-tree that stood by itself on the lawn, in sight of the library windows, like a giant sentinel. There the boys dismounted to lower Hero into the grave that Walker and Alec had just finished digging. Then the coloured men, spreading the sod quickly back in place, stepped aside from the low mound they had made, and Lloyd saw that it was smooth and green. She started violently when the soldiers, drawn up in line, fired a parting volley over it, but sat quietly back again when the Little Captain stepped forward and raised his bugle. The sun was sinking low behind the locusts, and in the golden glow filling the western sky, he softly sounded taps. "Lights out" now for the faithful old Hero! The last bugle-call that sounded for him was in a foreign land, but it was not as a stranger and an alien they left him.

The flag he followed floats farther than the Stars and Stripes, waves wider than the banner of the Kaiser. It is a world-wide flag, that flag of perpetual peace which bears the Red Cross of Geneva. In its shadow, whether on land or sea, all patriot hearts are at home, and under that flag they left him.

A square white stone stands now under the locust where the Little Captain sounded taps at the close of that September day. On it gleams the Red Cross, in whose service all of Hero's lessons had been learned. But the daily sight of it from her bedroom window no longer brings pain to the Little Colonel. Hero is only a tender memory now, and she counts the Red Cross above him as another talisman, like the little ring and the silver scissors, to remind her that only through unselfish service to others can one reach the happiness that is highest and best.

Time flies fast under the locusts. Sometimes to Papa Jack it seems only yesterday that she clattered up and down the wide halls with her grandfather's spurs buckled to her tiny feet. But if he misses the charm of the baby voice that called to him then, or the childish mischievousness of his Little Colonel, he finds a greater one in the flower-like beauty of the tall, slender girl who stands beside the gilded harp, and sings to him softly in the candle-light. And it is Betty's song of service that is oftenest on her lips: