ithin miles of us to
satisfy his hunger, and that the next day it would be the same, and the
next, and the next.

"We were powerless to help ourselves. But while we sat there in utter
despair, a neighbor rode by and hailed us. He told us that Red Cross
committees had started out from Milwaukee and Chicago at first tidings
of the fire, with car-loads of supplies, and that if we could go to the
place where they were distributing we could get whatever we needed.

"I wish you could have seen what they were handing out when we got
there: tools and lumber to put up cabins, food and beds and clothes and
coal-oil. They'd thought of everything and provided everything, and they
went about the distributing in a systematic, business-like way that
somehow put heart and cheer into us all.

"They didn't make us feel as if they were handing out alms to paupers,
but as if they were helping some of their own family on to their feet
again, and putting them in shape to help themselves. Even my little
Bertie felt it. Young as he was, he never forgot that awful night when
we fled from the fire, nor the hungry day that followed, nor the fact
that the arm that carried him food, when he got it at last, wore a
brassard marked like that." He touched the Red Cross on Hero's collar.

"And when the chance came to show the same brotherly spirit to some one
else in trouble and pass the help along, he was as ready as the rest of
us to do his share.

"Three years afterward I read in the papers of the floods that had swept
through the Ohio and Mississippi valleys, and of the thousands that were
homeless. Bertie,--he was six then,--he listened to the account of the
children walking the streets, crying because they hadn't a roof over
them or anything to eat. He didn't say a word, but he climbed up to the
mantel and took down his little red savings-bank.

"We were pretty near on our feet again by that time, although we were
still living in a cabin. The crops had been good, and we had been able
to save a little. He poured out all the pennies and nickels in his
bank,--ninety-three cents they came to,--and then he got his only store
toy, a box of tin soldiers that had been sent to him Christmas, and put
that on the table beside the money. We didn't appear to notice what he
was doing. Presently he brought the mittens his grandmother up in
Vermont had knit for him. Then he waited a bit, and seemed to be
weighing something in his mind. By and by he slipped