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:
| "My godmother bids me spin, |
| That my heart may not be sad; |
| Sing and spin for my brother's sake, |
| And the spinning makes me glad." |
She knows that she can never be a Joan of Arc or a Clara Barton, and her name will never be written in America's hall of fame, but with the sweet ambition in her heart to make life a little lovelier for every one she touches, she is growing up into a veritable Princess Winsome.
Often as she sings, Betty closes her book to listen, thrilled with the old feeling that always comes with the music of the harp. It is as if she were "away off from everything, and high up where it is wide and open, and where the stars are." The strange, beautiful thoughts she can find no words for still dance on ahead, like shining will-'o-the-wisps, but she knows that she shall surely find words for them some day, and that many besides the Little Colonel will sing her verses and find comfort in her songs.
To both Betty and Lloyd the land of Someday and the happy land of Now lie very close together in their day-dreams, as side by side they go to school these bright October mornings, or stroll slowly homeward in the golden afternoons, under the shade of the friendly old locusts.