Lloyd looked up, startled.  He went on slowly.

“I cannot take Hero with me to the hospital, so I shall leave him behind with some one who will care for him and love him, perhaps even better than I have done.”  He held out his hand to the dog.

“Come, Hero, my dear old comrade, come bid thy master farewell.”  Fumbling under his pillow as he spoke, he took out a small leather case, and, opening it, held up a medal.  It was the medal that had been given him for bravery on the field of battle.

“It is my one treasure!” murmured the old soldier, turning it fondly, as it lay in his palm.  “I have no family to whom I can leave it as an heirloom, but thou hast twice earned the right to wear it.  I have no fear but that thou wilt always be true to the Red Cross and thy name of Hero, so thou shalt wear thy country’s medal to thy grave.”

He fastened the medal to Hero’s collar, then, with the dog’s great head pressed fondly against him, he began talking to him softly and gently in French.  Lloyd could not understand, but the sight of the gray-haired old soldier taking his last leave of his faithful friend brought the tears to her eyes.

She tried to describe the scene to her mother, afterward.

“Oh, it was so pitiful!” she exclaimed.  “It neahly broke my heart.  Then he called me to him and said that because I was like his little Christine, he knew that I would be good to Hero, and he asked me to take him back to America with me.  I promised that I would.  Then he put Hero’s paw in my hand, and said, ’Hero, I give thee to thy little mistress.  Protect and guard her always, as she will love and care for thee.’  It was awfully solemn, almost like some kind of blessing.

“Then he lay back on the pillows as if he was too tiahed to say anothah word.  I tried to thank him, but I was so surprised and glad that Hero was mine, and yet so sorry to say good-bye to the Majah, that the right words wouldn’t come.  I just began to cry again.  But I am suah the Majah undahstood.  He patted my hand and smoothed my hair and said things in French that sounded as if he was tryin’ to comfort me.  Aftah awhile I remembahed that we had been there a long time, and ought to go, so I kissed him good-bye, and Hero and I went out, leavin’ the doah open as he told us.  He watched us all the way down the hall.  When I turned at the stairway to look back, he was still watchin’.  He smiled and waved his hand, but the way he smiled made me feel worse than evah, it was so sad.”

Mr. Sherman went with the Major next morning, when he was taken to Zuerich.  Lloyd was asleep when they left the inn, so the last remembrance she had of the Major was the way he looked as he lay on his couch in the sunset, smiling, and waving his hand to her.  When Christmastide came, it was as he said.  He was with his little Christine.

“I can hardly keep from crying whenever I think of him,” Lloyd wrote to Betty.  “It was so pitiful, his giving up everything in the world that he cared for, and going off to the hospital to wait there alone for his hour-glass to run out.  Hero seems to miss him, but I think he understands that he belongs to me now.  I can scarcely believe that he is really mine, and that I may take him back to America with me.  He is the best thing that the wonder-ball has given me, or ever can give me.