em. You will let me feel
when I am far away that you are shielding my little girl from evil,
won't you, Phil?"

I clenched his hand in mine. "You know I'll do that, Mr. Whately." I
stood up to my full height, young, broad-shouldered, and muscular.

"It will be easier for me, Phil, to know you are here."

I understood him. Mrs. Whately was, of all the women I knew, least able
to do for herself. Marjie was like her father, and, save for her fear of
Indians, no Kansas girl was ever more capable and independent. It has
been my joy that this father trusted me. The flag his daughter put into
his hands that day was his shroud at Chattanooga, and his last moments
were happier for the thought of his little girl in my care.

Aunt Candace and I walked home together after we had waved the last
good-byes to the soldiers. From our doorway up on Cliff Street we
watched that line of men grow dim and blend at last into the eastern
horizon's purple bound. When I turned then and looked down at the town
beyond the slope, it seemed to me that upon me alone rested the burden
of its protection. Driven deep in my boyish soul was the sense of the
sacredness of these homes, and of a man's high duty to keep harm from
them. My father had gone out to battle, not alone to set free an
enslaved race, but to make whole and strong a nation whose roots are in
the homes it defends. So I, left to fill his place, must be the valiant
defender of the defenceless. Such moments of exaltation come to the
young soul, and by such ideals a life is squared.

That evening our little crowd of boys strolled out on the west prairie.
The sunset deepened to the rich afterglow, and all the soft shadows of
evening began to unfold about us. In that quiet, sacred time, standing
out on the wide prairie, with the great crystal dome above us, and the
landscape, swept across by the free winds of heaven, unrolled in all its
dreamy beauty about us, our little company gripped hands and swore our
fealty to the Stars and Stripes. And then and there we gave sacred
pledge and promise to stand by one another and to give our lives if need
be for the protection and welfare of the homes of Springvale.

Busy days followed the going of the soldiers. Somehow the gang of us who
had idled away the summer afternoons in the sand-bar shallows beyond the
Deep Hole seemed suddenly to grow into young men who must not neglect
school nor business duties. Awkwardly enough but earnestly we strove to