ttle play camp, where children tried to
make him romp continually, was not home. Locust was not home. This strange
new country full of unfamiliar faces and foreign voices was not home. But
the orderly's voice reminded him of it. Over there were bearded men and
deep voices, and strong hands, guns, and the smell of powder; fife and
drum, and canteens and knapsacks; things that he had seen daily in his
soldier life.

Was it some call to duty that thrilled him, or only a homesick longing? As
he listened with head up, there came ringing, clear and silvery through
the night, the bugle notes from the other camp. At the first sound Hero
was on his feet. He moved noiselessly toward the tent flap, only partially
fastened, and flattening himself against the ground wriggled out.

And if he gave no thought to the little mistress, dreaming inside the
tent, if he left without regret the life of ease and loving care to which
she had brought him, it was not because he was ungrateful, but because he
did not understand. To him his old life woke and called him in the bugle's
blowing. To him duty did not mean soft cushions, and idle days, and the
following of a happy-hearted child at play. It meant long marches and the
guarding of ambulances and the rescue of the dead and dying. A true
soldier's heart beat in the dog's shaggy body, and, obedient to his
instinct and training, he answered the summons when it sounded. With long,
swinging steps he set out in the direction of the bugle-call, taking the
road through the woods that the wagon had travelled that day, and down
which he had watched the orderly disappear. No, not deserting his duty,
but, as he understood it, hurrying back, with faithful heart to the cause
that had always claimed him.

Now and then the moon, coming out fitfully from, behind the clouds, shone
on his great tawny body, touching the white curls of his ruff with a line
of silver. Then he would be lost in darkness again. But he swung on
unerringly, until he was almost in sight of the camp. A little farther on
a sentry paced up and down the picket-line that ran along the edge of the
woods. Hero travelled on toward him, the dry dead leaves rustling under
his paws, and now and then a twig crackling with his weight.

The sentry paused and, listened, wondering what kind of an animal was
coming toward him in the darkness.

"Halt! Who goes there?" he called, sharply. The moon, peeping out at that
instant, seemed to magnify the s