“That was nearly a year ago.  I took him to an eminent surgeon, told him his history, and interested him in his case.  He treated him so successfully, that now, as you see, the leg is entirely well.  Sometimes I feel that it is my duty to give him back to the service, although I paid for the rearing of a fine Scotch collie in his stead.  He is so unusually intelligent and well trained.  But it would be hard to part with such a good friend.  Although I have had him less than a year, he seems very much attached to me, and I have grown more fond of him than I would have believed possible.  I am an old man now, and I think he understands that he is all I have.  Good Hero!  He knows he is a comfort to his old master!”

At the sound of his name, uttered in a sad voice, the great dog got up and laid his head on the Major’s knee, looking wistfully into his face.

“Of co’se you oughtn’t to give him back!” cried the Little Colonel.  “If he were mine, I wouldn’t give him up for the president, or the emperor, or the czar, or anybody!”

“But for the soldiers, the poor wounded soldiers!” suggested the Major.

Lloyd hesitated, looking from the dog to the empty sleeve above it.  “Well,” she declared, at last, “I wouldn’t give him up while the country is at peace.  I’d wait till the last minute, until there was goin’ to be an awful battle, and then I’d make them promise to let me have him again when the wah was ovah.  Just the minute it was ovah.  It would be like givin’ away part of your family to give away Hero.”

Suddenly the Major spoke to the dog in French, a quick, sharp sentence that Lloyd could not understand.  But Hero, without an instant’s hesitation, bounded from the courtyard, where they sat, into the hall of the hotel.  Through the glass doors she could see him leaping up the stairs, and, almost before the Major could explain that he had sent him for the shoulder-bags he wore in service, the dog was back with them grasped firmly in his mouth.

“Now the flask,” said the Major.  While the dog obeyed the second order, he opened the bags for Lloyd to examine them.  They were marked with a red cross in a square of white, and contained rolls of bandages, from which any man, able to use his arms, could help himself until his rescuer brought further aid.

The flask which Hero brought was marked in the same way, and the Major buckled it to his collar, saying, as he fastened first that and then the shoulder-bags in place, “When a dog is in training, soldiers, pretending to be dead or wounded, are hidden in the woods or ravines and he is taught to find a fallen body, and to bark loudly.  If the soldier is in some place too remote for his voice to bring aid the dog seizes a cap, a handkerchief, or a belt,—­any article of the man’s clothing which he can pick up,—­and dashes back to the nearest ambulance.”

“What a lovely game that would make!” exclaimed Lloyd.  “Do you suppose that I could train the two Bobs to do that?  We often play soldiah at Locust.  Now, what is it you say to Hero when you want him to hunt the men?  Let me see if he’ll mind me.”