up and down on the great shoulders.

"Have you a little boy?" he asked, when they were started again.

"Why, no," Grant confessed, laughing at the question.

"Why?"

There was no evading this childish inquisitor. He had a way of pursuing
a subject to bedrock.

"Well, you see, I've no wife."

"No mother?"

"No--no wife. You see--"

"But I have a mother--"

"Of course, and she is your daddy's wife. You see they have to have
that--"

Grant found himself getting into deep water, but the sharp little
intellect had cut a corner and was now ahead of him.

"Then I'll be your little boy," he said, and, clambering up to Grant's
shoulder pressed a kiss on his cheek. In a sudden burst of emotion Grant
brought his team to a stop and clasped the little fellow in both his
arms. For a moment everything seemed misty.

"And I have lived to be thirty-two years old and have never known what
this meant," he said to himself.

"Daddy's hardly ever home, anyway," the boy added, naively.

"Where is your home?"

"Down beside the river. We live there in summer."

And so the conversation continued and the acquaintanceship grew as man
and boy plied back and forth on their mile-long furrow. At length
it occurred to Grant that he should send Wilson home; the boy's long
absence might be occasioning some uneasiness. They stopped at the end
of the field and carefully removed teddy from his place of prestige,
but just at that moment a horsefly buzzing about caused Prince to stamp
impatiently, and the big hoof came down on the boy's foot. Wilson sent
up a cry proportionate to the possibilities of the occasion, and Grant
in alarm tore off the boot and stocking. Fortunately the soil had been
soft, and the only damage done was a slight bruise across the upper part
of the foot.

"There, there," said Grant, soothingly, caressing the injury with his
fingers. "It will be all right in a minute. Prince didn't mean to do it,
and besides, I've seen much worse than that at the war."

At the mention of war the boy suspended a cry half uttered.

"Were you at the war?" he demanded.

"Yes."

"Did you kill a German?"

"I've seen a German killed," said Grant, evading a question which no
soldier cares to discuss.

"Did you kill 'em in the tummy?" the boy persisted.

"We'll talk about that to-morrow. Now you hop up on to my shoulders, and
I'll tie the horses and then carry you home."

He followed the boy's directions until they led him to a