nel, but now I jis' feel like I 'd
be glad to do something fur de Boy hisself!"

Colonel Austin seemed to understand. "Well," said he, "you and he are
both taking care of me. You are helping him and he is helping you, and
maybe some day you may tell each other all about it."

There was surely one thing the Colonel's two "boys" had in common: they
both had the same devouring passion for hero-stories.

During almost every spring evening of that year, by a bedside in a cool
Northern home, a pretty young mother had sat and told to an eager little
lad thrilling tales of bravery and courage. Always she began with the
one the Colonel had told to G. W.--the story of the crippled boy in the
old castle turret. There was something in that legend that stirred Jack
Austin in a wonderful manner.

It had been hard for Jack to be separated from his father from the
first; but now, whenever he heard from his father's letters about G. W.,
and realized that among war's perils there could be a place for a small
boy, his heart simply ached with longing. G. W., a boy little older than
himself, was there beside Daddy! But at this point Jack always recalled
the story of the gauntlet and the small sword, and stifled back the
tears and looked lovingly at his pretty mother. No matter how he envied
G. W., he would stay, patient, in his "turret chamber." His place was
beside his mother until Daddy came marching home. How many times his
father had sent him that message! Jack dreamed almost every night of his
father coming home, keeping step to the cheerful drum; so he had marched
away, and so he would return, with G. W. at his side!

Near his bed, at night, always lay Jack's own splendid suit of
make-believe soldier clothes. It was hard sometimes for him to think
that they were make-believe clothes, while the suit of blue his mother
had sent to G. W. were real, true ones, and worn by the dusky little
soldier who lived in his dear father's tent. There often seemed to him
an unendurable difference between G. W. and himself.

Poor little Jack! he was braver than he realized when he turned away
from this feeling and smiled up into his mother's face.

But Jack's mother knew all about this feeling.

"And so you see, dear," the stories for Jack always ended, "that though
you are but mother's obedient little boy now, your chance in the great
world's work will come!"

And in the tent, beneath the glorious sunsets of Tampa, at about the
same time "Da