n old man now, and I think he understands that he
is all I have. Good Hero! He knows he is a comfort to his old master!"

At the sound of his name, uttered in a sad voice, the great dog got up and
laid his head on the Major's knee, looking wistfully into his face.

"Of co'se you oughtn't to give him back!" cried the Little Colonel. "If he
were mine, I wouldn't give him up for the president, or the emperor, or
the czar, or _anybody!_"

"But for the soldiers, the poor wounded soldiers!" suggested the Major.

Lloyd hesitated, looking from the dog to the empty sleeve above it.
"Well," she declared, at last, "I wouldn't give him up while the country
is at peace. I'd wait till the last minute, until there was goin' to be an
awful battle, and then I'd make them promise to let me have him again when
the wah was ovah. Just the minute it was ovah. It would be like givin'
away part of your family to give away Hero."

Suddenly the Major spoke to the dog in French, a quick, sharp sentence
that Lloyd could not understand. But Hero, without an instant's
hesitation, bounded from the courtyard, where they sat, into the hall of
the hotel. Through the glass doors she could see him leaping up the
stairs, and, almost before the Major could explain that he had sent him
for the shoulder-bags he wore in service, the dog was back with them
grasped firmly in his mouth.

"Now the flask," said the Major. While the dog obeyed the second order, he
opened the bags for Lloyd to examine them. They were marked with a red
cross in a square of white, and contained rolls of bandages, from which
any man, able to use his arms, could help himself until his rescuer
brought further aid.

The flask which Hero brought was marked in the same way, and the Major
buckled it to his collar, saying, as he fastened first that and then the
shoulder-bags in place, "When a dog is in training, soldiers, pretending
to be dead or wounded, are hidden in the woods or ravines and he is taught
to find a fallen body, and to bark loudly. If the soldier is in some place
too remote for his voice to bring aid the dog seizes a cap, a
handkerchief, or a belt,--any article of the man's clothing which he can
pick up,--and dashes back to the nearest ambulance."

"What a lovely game that would make!" exclaimed Lloyd. "Do you suppose
that I could train the two Bobs to do that? We often play soldiah at
Locust. Now, what is it you say to Hero when you want him to hunt the men?
Let me se