id. "It is my country as well as yours you are going to fight for, and
I give you with all my heart. All of it will be with you and all my
thoughts, too, every minute of every day, so you need never wonder if
I'm thinking of you. And soon the Spaniards will be beaten and you'll be
coming home again 'crowned with glory and honor,' and the bands will
play fighting music, and the flag will be flying over you, for you, and
in all proud America there will be no prouder soul than I--unless it is
your mother. Good-by, good-by--God be with you, my very dearest."

He had come home "crowned with glory and honor." And the bands had
played martial music for him. But his horse stood riderless by his
grave, and the empty cavalry boots hung, top down, from the saddle.

Loose in the bottom of the box lay a folded sheet of paper, and, hidden
under it, an envelope, the face side down. When the boy's mother opened
the paper, it was his own crabbed, uneven writing that met her eye.

"They say there will be a fight to-morrow," he wrote, "and we're likely
to be in it. If I come out right, you will not see this, and I hope I
shall, for the world is sweet with you in it. But if I'm hit, then this
will go to you. I'm leaving a line for my mother and will enclose this
and ask her to send it to you. You must find her and be good to her, if
that happens. I want you to know that if I die, my last thought will
have been of you, and if I have the chance to do anything worth while,
it will be for your sake. I could die happy if I might do even a small
thing that would make you proud of me."

The sorrowful woman drew a long, shivering breath as she thought of the
magnificent courage of that painful passing up San Juan Hill, wounded,
crawling on, with a pluck that the shades of death could not dim. Would
she be proud of him?

The line for herself he had never written. There was only the empty
envelope lying alone in the box. She turned it in her hand and saw it
was addressed to the girl to whom he had been engaged. Slowly it dawned
on her that to every appearance this envelope belonged to the letter she
had just read, his letter of the night before the battle. She recoiled
at the thought--those last sacred words of his, to go to that
empty-souled girl! All that she would find in them would be a little
fuel for her vanity, while the other--she put her fingers on the
irregular, back writing, and felt as if a strong young hand held hers
again. She woul