On he came, with slow, heavy tread, his footsteps ringing through the silent street with a strange metallic echo. As he passed out from the black shadow of the warehouse, into the light of the street-crossing, Elise peeped between her fingers again, and then smiled through her tears. It was a big, burly policeman.
The next instant she was running toward him, calling, "Oh, Mister Policeman, I'm lost! Please take me home!"
It was a safe haven she had run into. The policeman had just come from home to go on his beat, and in a little cottage not many blocks away were three children who were still in his thoughts. They had followed him to the door to swarm over him and kiss him, and had called after him down the snowy street, "Good night, daddy!" The childish voices were still ringing in his ears.
As tenderly as if she had been one of his own, he lifted Elise in his strong, fatherly arms, wiped her tear-stained face, and began to question her. She told him her name, but in her confusion could not remember the name of the street where she lived.
It was the work of only a moment to carry her into a drug-store around the corner, ring up headquarters, and report his discovery, and it was only a few moments after that until they were on an electric car, homeward bound.
Elise was not the first lost child the big, tender-hearted policeman had taken home, but he had never had such a royal welcome as the one that awaited him in the hall when the joyful family met him.
He glanced around him curiously, seeing on every side the relics of victorious battle-fields, the grim weapons of warfare that stood as mute witnesses of a brave soldier's life. Beyond in the library he caught a glimpse of the portrait, the flag, and the sword, and then suddenly realised in whose presence he stood.
"Don't mention it, madam," he said, awkwardly, as the grateful mother tried to express her thanks. "Don't you know that this is about the proudest moment of my life? To know that it was his little one I found, and brought back with her arms around my neck! I read everything there was about him in the papers (he nodded toward the portrait), and I always did say he was exactly my idea of a hero. But I never thought the day would come when I'd stand in his house and see all the things he touched and looked at."
"That's the way everybody seems to feel about the general," thought the Little Colonel, glancing from the blue-coated policeman to the portrait. "It's grand to be a hero."
Elise was too tired and sleepy to talk about her adventures that night, and asked to be put to bed as soon as she had had the bowl of oyster soup that was being kept hot for her. When the cook brought it in, loudly blessing all the saints in the calendar that the child had been found, all the family remembered that they were hungry and the long delayed dinner was brought on again.