“I saw him fall,” said Billy hoarsely; “fall, shot in a dozen places.  For a moment, boys, I think I failed to bugle.  I dropped on my knees and raised his poor face out of the dust.  ‘Billy,’ he said, ’Billy, when you get home, give my love to my wife and little Buddie.’  Then he just seemed to sink into a heap, and I sprang up to ‘commands.’  Boys, through the rest of that fight I could see nothing but Mrs. Morrison’s white face, hear nothing but her sobs.  Oh, the misery of it all!  I seemed to grow into an old man all at once.  I could see myself coming home, and all of us here cheering—­all but Jack Morrison.”

No one spoke.  A vast silence fell, and the cheering ceased.  Then Billy walked quietly through the crowd, and standing beside the white-faced widow, picked up the child in his strong young arms.  He was not used to babies, and looked awkward and stiff and terribly conscious.  Then he pulled himself together.

“I have a message for you, Mrs. Morrison, and for this little chap here.  I’ll come and see you to-morrow, if I may, when all this fuss and flag-waving is over.”

The woman looked blankly at him, with eyes that seemed watching for something—­something that never came.  Billy dared not trust himself to say another word.  He finally set the child down and turned away.

In a few minutes the “procession” was in full swing, Billy and his father, in one of the carriages, being driven beneath arches and banners, and handclasped on all sides.  Somehow, he got through that uproarious day smiling, but shy as usual, but when night came he was tired and utterly undone, and “turned in” early.  But sleep would not come.  Then he arose and crept to his little bedroom window, standing there a long, long time alone in the dark—­thinking.  How glorious it all had been!—­the glad, loyal faces of his boy friends, the magnificent welcome home—­if only they could have brought Jack Morrison back with them!  Oh!  Billy would have given up all the glory, the music, the cheers, the banners, to get away from the haunting memory of a woman’s white, suffering face and black-robed figure, and the feel of the clinging hands of a tiny fatherless boy!  His eyes did not see the homely street at his feet—­the dying rockets and fireworks glaring against the sky.  He saw only a simple grave in the open veldt in far-away Africa—­a grave that he, himself, had heaped with stones formed in the one word “Canada.”  At the recollection of it, poor Billy buried his aching head in his hands.  The glory had paled and vanished.  There was nothing left of this terrible war but the misery, the mourning, the heartbreak of it all!

The Brotherhood

“What is the silver chain for, Queetah?” asked the boy, lifting the tomahawk* and running the curious links between his thumb and fingers.  “I never saw one before.”

[The tomahawk and avenging knife spoken of in the story are both in the possession of the writer, the knife having been buried for seventy-three years on the estate where she was born.]