“Now tell of your success, and the scarlet runner,” added Maggie.

“Ah! that was sent, and so I prospered.  I must begin ever so far back, in war times, or I can’t introduce my hero properly.  You know Papa was in the army, and fought all through the war till Gettysburg, where he was wounded.  He was engaged just before he went; so when his father hurried to him after that awful battle, Mamma went also, and helped nurse him till he could come home.  He wouldn’t go to an officer’s hospital, but kept with his men in a poor sort of place, for many of his boys were hit, and he wouldn’t leave them.  Sergeant Joe Collins was one of the bravest, and lost his right arm saving the flag in one of the hottest struggles of that great fight.  He had been a Maine lumberman, and was over six feet tall, but as gentle as a child, and as jolly as a boy, and very fond of his colonel.

“Papa left first, but made Joe promise to let him know how he got on, and Joe did so till he too went home.  Then Papa lost sight of him, and in the excitement of his own illness, and the end of the war, and being married, Joe Collins was forgotten, till we children came along, and used to love to hear the story of Papa’s battles, and how the brave sergeant caught the flag when the bearer was shot, and held it in the rush till one arm was blown off and the other wounded.  We have fighting blood in us, you know, so we were never tired of that story, though twenty-five years or more make it all as far away to us as the old Revolution, where our ancestor was killed, at our Bunker Hill!

“Last December, just after my sad disappointments, Papa came home to dinner one day, exclaiming, in great glee:  ’I’ve found old Joe!  A messenger came with a letter to me, and when I looked up to give my answer, there stood a tall, grizzled fellow, as straight as a ramrod, grinning from ear to ear, with his hand to his temple, saluting me in regular style.  “Don’t you remember Joe Collins, Colonel?  Awful glad to see you, sir,” said he.  And then it all came back, and we had a good talk, and I found out that the poor old boy was down on his luck, and almost friendless, but as proud and independent as ever, and bound to take care of himself while he had a leg to stand on.  I’ve got his address, and mean to keep an eye on him, for he looks feeble and can’t make much, I’m sure.’

“We were all very glad, and Joe came to see us, and Papa sent him on endless errands, and helped him in that way till he went to New York.  Then, in the fun and flurry of the holidays, we forgot all about Joe, till Papa came home and missed him from his post.  I said I’d go and find him; so Harry and I rummaged about till we did find him, in a little house at the North End, laid up with rheumatic fever in a stuffy back room, with no one to look after him but the washerwoman with whom he boarded.

“I was so sorry we had forgotten him! but he never complained, only said, with his cheerful grin,’ I kinder mistrusted the Colonel was away, but I wasn’t goin’ to pester him.’  He tried to be jolly, though in dreadful pain; called Harry ‘Major,’ and was so grateful for all we brought him, though he didn’t want oranges and tea, and made us shout when I said, like a goose, thinking that was the proper thing to do, ‘Shall I bathe your brow, you are so feverish?’