him if I
had."

"Money couldn't buy Hero!" exclaimed Lloyd.

"Now what would you do," said Kitty, who was always supposing impossible
things, "if some old witch would come to you and say, 'You may have your
choice? a palace full of gold and silver and precious stones and give up
Hero, or keep him and be a beggar in rags?"

"I'd be a beggah, of co'se!" cried Lloyd, warmly, throwing her arm around
the dog's neck. "Think I'd go back on anybody that had saved my life? But
I wouldn't stay a beggah," she continued. "I'd put on the Red Cross too,
and we'd go away where there was war, Hero and I, and we'd spend ou' lives
takin' care of the soldiahs. I wouldn't have to dress in rags, for I'd
weah the nurse's costume, and I'd do so much good that some day, may be,
somebody would send me the Gold Cross of Remembrance, as they did Clara
Barton, and I'm suah that I'd rathah have that, with all it means, than
all the precious stones and things that the witch could give me."

"When did Hero save your life?" asked Joe, who had not heard the story of
the runaway in Geneva.

"Tell us all about it, Lloyd," asked Mrs. Walton. So Lloyd began, and the
group around the fire listened with breathless attention. And that was
followed by the Major's story, and all he had told her of St. Bernard
dogs, and of the Red Cross service. Then the finding of the Major by his
faithful dog on the dark mountain after the storm. Betty's turn came next.
She repeated some of the stories they had heard on shipboard. Mrs. Walton
added her part afterward, telling her personal experience with the Red
Cross work in Cuba and the Philippines.

"That is one reason I took such a deep interest in your little
entertainment," she said, "and was so pleased when it brought so much
money. I know that every penny under the wise direction of the Red Cross
will help to make some poor soldier more comfortable; or if some sudden
calamity should come in this country, before it was sent away, your little
fund might help to save dozens of lives."

The fire had burned low while they talked, and Elise was yawning sleepily.
Miss Allison looked at her watch. "How the time has flown!" she exclaimed
in surprise. "Where is the bugler of this camp? It is high time for him to
play taps."

Ranald ran for his bugle, and the clear call that he had learned to play
when he was "The Little Captain," in far-away Luzon, rang out into the
dark woods. It was answered by the same silvery notes