“One day, a few months afterward I was passing by a recruiting office, and went in.  I heard them say they wanted a drummer.  I offered; they laughed and said I was too little; but they brought me a drum and I beat it for them.  They agreed to take me.  So the old stars and stripes was the ship for me to stand by.”

The colonel was silent; he seemed to be in deep thought.  “How do you ever expect,” he said, “to find your father?  You do not even know his name.”

“I don’t know, sir, but I am sure I shall find him, somehow.  My father will be certain to know that I am the right boy, when he does find me, for I have something to show him that was my mother’s,” and he drew forth a little canvas bag, sewed tightly all around, and suspended from his neck by a string.

“In this,” he said, “is a pretty bracelet that my mother always wore on her arm.  Father Jack took it off after she died, to keep for me.  He said I must never open it until I found my father, and that I must wear it so around my neck, that it might be safe.”

“A bracelet, did you say?” exclaimed the colonel, “let me have it—­I must see it at once!”

With both his small hands clasped around it, the little boy stood looking into Colonel B.’s face; then, slipping the string from over his head, he silently placed it in his hand.  To rip open the canvas was but the work of a moment.

“I think I know this bracelet,” stammered Colonel B.  “If it be as I hope and believe, within the locket we will find two names,—­Wilhelmina and Carleton; date, May 26, 1849"

[Illustration:  “He silently placed it in his hand.”]

There were the names as he said.  Colonel B. clasped the boy to his heart, crying brokenly, “My son! my son!”

I must now go back in my story.  In the first year of his married life, Colonel B. and his lovely young wife sailed for Europe, expecting to remain several years in Southern Europe, on account of the delicate health of his wife.  He was engaged in merchandise in the city of Baltimore.  The sudden death of his business partner compelled his return to America, leaving his wife with her mother in Italy.

Soon after he left, his mother-in-law died.  Mrs. B. then prepared to return to Baltimore at once, and took passage on the ill-fated steamer which was lost.  Vainly he made inquiries; no tidings came of her.  At last he gave her up as dead; he almost lost his reason from grief and doubt.

Fourteen years had passed; he did not know that God in his mercy had spared to him a precious link with the young life so lost and mourned.  Restless, and almost aimless, he removed to Michigan.  When the war broke out, he was among the first to join the army.

There stood the boy, tears streaming down his cheeks.  “Father,” he said, “you have found me at last, just as Father Jack said.  You are a great gentleman, while I am only a poor drummer boy.  But I have been an honest boy, and tried my best to do what was right.  You won’t be ashamed of me, father?”