rate colors fastened in her old dress, and, almost hidden by
the crowd, she was looking up and down in some distress to see if she
could not again get a place from which she could see. Finally she seemed
to give it up, and stood quite still, tiptoeing now and then to try to
catch a glimpse. I saw someone about to help her when, from a gay and
crowded portico above her, a young and beautiful girl in a white dress,
whom I had been observing for some time as the life of a gay party,
as she sat in her loveliness, a queen on her throne with her courtiers
around her, suddenly arose and ran down into the street. There was a
short colloquy. The young beauty was offering something which the old
lady was declining; but it ended in the young girl leading the older
woman gently up on to her veranda and giving her the chair of state. She
was hardly seated when the old soldiers began to pass.

As the last mounted veterans came by, I remembered that I had not seen
"No. 4"; but as I looked up, he was just coming along. In his hand,
with staff resting on his toe, he carried an old standard so torn and
tattered and stained that it was scarcely recognizable as a flag. I
did not for a moment take in that it was he, for he was not in the gray
jacket which I had expected to see. He was busy looking down at the
throng on the sidewalk, apparently searching for some one whom he
expected to find there. He was in some perplexity, and pulled in his
horse, which began to rear. Suddenly the applause from the portico above
arrested his attention, and he looked toward it and bowed. As he did so
his eye caught that of the old lady seated there. His face lighted up,
and, wheeling his prancing horse half around, he dipped the tattered
standard, and gave the royal salute as though saluting a queen. The
old lady pressed her wrinkled hand over the knot of faded ribbon on her
breast, and made a gesture to him, and he rode on. He had suddenly grown
handsome. I looked at her again; her eyes were closed, her hands were
clasped, and her lips were moving. I saw the likeness: she was his
mother. As he passed me I caught his eye. He saw my perplexity about
the jacket, glanced up at the torn colors, and pointed to a figure just
beyond him dressed in a short, faded jacket. "No. 4" had been selected,
as the highest honor, to carry the old colors which he had once saved;
and not to bear off all the honors from his friend, he had with true
comradeship made Binford Terrel