Captain Arthur Hamilton, of the ——th Infantry, moved on his narrow cot, groaned partly from irritation and partly from pain, muttered a few inaudible words, and looked with strong disapproval toward the opening of the hospital tent in which he lay. Through it came the soft breezes of the Cuban night, a glimpse of brilliantly starred horizon-line, and the cheerful voice of Private Kelly, raised in song. The words came distinctly to the helpless officer's reluctant ears.

"'Oh, Liza, de-ar Liza,'" carolled Kelly, in buoyant response to the beauty of the evening.

Captain Hamilton muttered again as he suppressed a seductive desire to throw something at the Irishman's head, silhouetted against the sky as he limped past the entrance. Six weeks had elapsed since the battle of San Juan, in which Hamilton and Kelly had been among the many grievously hurt. Kelly, witness this needless service of song, was already convalescent. He could wander from tent to tent in well-meaning but futile efforts to cheer less fortunate mates. Baker was around again, too, Hamilton remembered, and Barnard and Hallenbeck and Lee, and—oh, hosts of others. He ran over their names as he had done countless times before in the long days and nights which had passed since he had been "out of it all," as he put it to himself. He alone, of his fellow officers in the regiment, still lay chained to his wretched cot, a very log of helplessness, in which a fiery spirit flamed and consumed. His was not a nature that took gracefully to inactivity; and of late it had been borne in upon him with a cold, sickening sense of fear, new, like his helplessness, that inactivity must be his portion for a long, long time to come. At first the thought had touched his consciousness only at wide intervals, but now it was becoming a constant, lurking horror, always with him, or just within reach, ready to spring.

He was "out of it all," not for weeks or even for months, but very possibly for all time. The doctor's reticence told him this; so did his own sick heart; so did the dutiful cheerfulness of his men and his brother officers. They overdid it, he realized, and the efforts they so conscientiously made showed how deep their sympathy must be, and how tragic the cause of it. His lips twisted sardonically as he remembered their optimistic predictions of his immediate recovery and the tributes they paid to his courage in the field. It was true he had distinguished himself in action (by chance, he assured himself and them), and he had figured as a hero in the subsequent reports of the battle. But the other fellows would hardly have bothered to have a trifle like that mentioned, he told himself, if the little glowing badge of fame he carried off the field had not been now his sole possession. He had given more than his life for it. He had sacrificed his career, his place in the active ranks, his perfect, athletic body. His life would have been a simple gift in comparison. Why couldn't it have been taken? he wondered for the hundredth time. Why could not he, like others, have died gloriously and been laid away with the flag wrapped round him? But that, he reflected, bitterly, would have been too much luck. Instead, he must drag on and on and on, of no use to himself or to any one else.

Again and again he contemplated the dreary outlook, checking off mentally the details of the past, the depressing experiences to come, the hopelessness of it all; and as his mind swung wearily round the small circle he despised himself for the futility of the whole mental process, and for his inability to fix his thoughts on things other than his own misfortune. A man paralyzed; a thing dead from the waist down—that was what he had become. He groaned again as the realization gnawed at his soul, and at the sound a white-capped nurse rose from a table where she had been sitting and came to his bedside with a smile of professional cheerfulness. She had a tired, worn face, and faded blue eyes, which looked as if they had seen too much of human suffering. But an indomitable spirit gazed out of them, and spoke, too, in her alert step and in the fine poise of her head and shoulders.

"Your mail has come," she told him, "and there seem to be some nice letters—fat ones. One, from Russia, has a gold crown on the envelope. Perhaps I had better leave you alone while you read it."

Hamilton smiled grimly as he held out a languid hand. He liked Miss Foster. She was a good sort, and she had stood by the boys nobly through the awful days after the fight. He liked her humor, too, though he sometimes had suspicions as to its spontaneity. Then his eye fell on the top envelope of the little package she had given him, and at the sight of the handwriting he caught his breath, and the blood rushed suddenly to his face. He closed his eyes for a moment in an effort to pull himself together. Did he still care, after ten years, and like that! But possibly, very probably, it was merely a manifestation of his wretched weakness, which could not endure even a pleasant surprise without these absurd physical effects. He remembered, with a more cheerful grin, that he had hardly thought of her at all during the past year. Preparations for war and his small part in them had absorbed him heart and soul. He opened the letter without further self-analysis, and read with deepening interest the closely written lines on the thin foreign paper, whose left-hand corner held a duplicate of the gold crown on the envelope.

"DEAR OLD FRIEND,—You have forgotten me, no doubt, in all these years. Ten, is it not? But I have not forgotten you, nor my other friends in America, exile though I am and oblivious though I may have seemed. I do not know quite why I have not come home for a visit long before this. Indeed, I have planned to do so from year to year, but a full life and many varied interests have deferred the journey one way or another. I have three boys—nine, seven, and five—and it would be difficult to bring them with me and impossible to leave them behind. So, you see—

"But my heart often longs for my native land, and in one tower of this old castle I have a great room full of souvenirs of home. It is the spot I love best in my new country. Here I read my mail and write my letters and follow American news in the newspapers friends send me. Here, with my boys tumbling over each other before the fireplace, I read of the ascent of San Juan Hill, and of you, my friend, and your splendid courage, and your injury.

"No doubt by the time this letter reaches you you will be well again, and in no need of my sympathy. But you will let me tell you how proud of you I am.

"I read the newspaper accounts to my boys, who were greatly interested and impressed when they learned that mamma knew the hero. I was much amused by the youngest, Charlie—too small, I thought, to understand it all. But he stood before me with his hands on my knees and his big brown eyes on my face; and when I finished reading he asked many questions about the war and about you. He is the most American of my children, and loves to hear of his mother's country. After the others had gone he cuddled down in my lap and demanded the 'story' repeated in full; and when I described again the magnificent way in which you saved your men, he said, firmly, 'I am his boy.'

"I thought you might be interested in this unsought, spontaneous tribute, and my purpose in writing is to pass it on to you—though I admit it has taken me a long time to get 'round to it!

"You will forgive this rambling letter, and you will believe me, now as ever,

"Sincerely your friend,

"MARGARET CHALLONER VALDRONOVNA."

Hamilton slowly refolded the letter and returned it to its envelope, letting the solace of its sweet friendliness sink into his sore heart the while. She had not wholly forgotten him, then, this beautiful woman he had loved and who had given him a gracious and charming camaraderie in return for the devotion of his life. He had not been senseless enough to misconstrue her feeling, so he had never spoken; and she, after two brilliant Washington seasons, had married a great Russian noble and sailed away without suspecting, he felt sure, what she was to him. He had recovered, as men do, but he had not loved again, nor had he married. He wondered if she knew. Very probably; for the newspapers which devoted so much space to his achievements had added detailed biographical sketches, over which he had winced from instinctive distaste of such intimate discussion of his personal affairs. The earlier reports (evidently the ones she had read) had published misleading accounts of his injuries. They were serious, but not dangerous, according to these authorities. It was only recently that rumors of his true condition had begun to creep into print. The Princess had not read these. Hamilton was glad of that.

He recalled dreamily the different passages of her letter, the remainder of his mail lying neglected on his bed. That boy—her boy—his boy. He smiled to himself, at first with amusement, then with a sudden tenderness that pleasantly softened his stern lips. He was weak enough, frightened enough, lonely enough, to grasp with an actual pitiful throb of the heart this tiny hand stretched out to him across the sea. He liked that boy—his boy. He must be a fine fellow. He wondered idly how he looked. "Three boys—nine, seven, five"—yes, Charlie was five and had great brown eyes. Like his mother's, the stricken man remembered. She had brown eyes—and such brown eyes. Such kind, friendly, womanly brown eyes—true mirrors of the strong soul that looked from them. Something hot and wet stung the surface of Hamilton's cheek. He touched it unsuspectingly, and then swore alone in deep, frank self-disgust.

"Well, of all the sentimental idiots!" he muttered. "My nerves are in a nice way, when I bawl like a baby because some one sends me a friendly letter. Guess I'll answer it."

Miss Foster brought him pen, ink, and paper, and he began, writing with some difficulty, as he lay flat on his back.

"MY DEAR PRINCESS,—Your letter has just reached me, and you cannot, I am sure, imagine the cheer and comfort it brought. I am still lingering unwillingly on the sick-list, but there is some talk now of shipping me north on the Relief next week, when I hope to give a better account of myself. In the mean time, and after, I shall think much of you and the boys, especially of the youngest and his flattering adoption of me. I am already insufferably proud of that, and rather sentimental as well, as you will see by the fact that I want his photograph! Will you send it to me, in care of the Morton Trust Company, New York? I do not yet know just where I shall be.

"There is a pleasant revelation of well-being and happiness between the lines of your letter. Believe me, I rejoice in both.

"Faithfully yours,

"ARTHUR HAMILTON."

As he read it over the letter seemed curt and unsatisfactory, but he was already exhausted and had not the strength to make another effort. So he wearily sealed and addressed it, and gave it to Miss Foster for the next mail. Her tired eyes widened a little as she artlessly read the inscription.

During the seemingly endless days and nights that followed, Hamilton battled manfully but despairingly with his sick soul. Wherever he looked there was blackness, lightened once or twice, and for an instant only, by a sudden passing memory of a little child. It would be too much to say that the memory comforted him. Nothing could do that, yet. All he dared hope for was for the strength to go through his ordeal with something approaching manliness and dignity. The visits of his friends were a strain to him, as well as to them, and it was sadly easy to see how the sense of his hopeless case depressed them. He could imagine the long breath they drew as they left his tent and found themselves again in the rich, warm, healthy world. He did not blame them. In their places, he would no doubt have felt just the same. But he was inevitably driven more and more into himself, and in his dogged efforts to get away from self-centred thought he turned with a sturdy determination to fancies about remote things, and especially to imaginings of the boy—the little fellow who loved him, and who, thank God, was not as yet "sorry for him!" Oddly enough, the mother seemed to have taken her place in the background of Hamilton's thoughts. It was her son who appealed to him—the innocent man-child, half American, half Russian, entering so happily and unconsciously on the enhanced uncertainties of life in the tragic land of his birth.

During the trying, stormy voyage north on the great hospital ship, Hamilton had strange, half-waking visions of a curly headed lad with brown eyes, tumbling over a bear-skin rug in front of a great fireplace, or standing at his mother's knee looking into her face as she talked of America and of an American soldier. He began to fancy that the vision held at bay the other crowding horrors which lay in wait. If he could keep his mind on that he was safe. He was glad the mother and son could not, in their turn, picture him—as he was.

When the photographs arrived, soon after he reached New York, the helpless officer opened the bulky package with eager ringers. There were two "cabinets," both of the child. One showed him at the tender age of two, a plump, dimpled, beautiful baby, airily clad in an embroidered towel. The second was apparently quite recent. A five-year-old boy, in black velvet and a bewildering expanse of lace collar, looked straight out of the picture with tragic dark eyes, whose direct glance was so like his mother's that ten years seemed suddenly obliterated as Hamilton returned their gaze. With these was a little letter on a child's note-paper, in printed characters which reeled drunkenly down the page from left to right. Hamilton read it with a chuckle.

"DEAR CAPTAIN HAMILTON,—I love you very much. I love you becos you fought in the war. I have your picture. I have put a candle befront of your picture. The candle is burning. I love you very much. Your boy,

"CHARLIE."

Accompanying this epistolary masterpiece was a brief note from the writer's mother, explaining that the "picture" of Captain Hamilton, of whose possession her infant boasted, had been cut from an illustrated newspaper and pasted on stiff card-board in gratification of the child's whim.

"He insists on burning a candle before it," she wrote, "evidently from some dim association with tapers and altars and the rest. As it is all a new manifestation of his character, we are indulging him freely. Certainly it can do him no harm to love and admire a brave man. Besides, to have a candle burned for you! Is not that a new flutter of glory?"

Hamilton, still in the grasp of a dumb depression he would voice to no one, was a little amused and more touched. In his hideous loneliness and terror the pretty incident, one he would have smiled at and forgotten a year ago, took on an interest out of all proportion to its importance. He felt a sudden, unaccountable sense of pleasant companionship. The child became a loved personality—the one human, close, vital thing in a world over which there seemed to hang a thick black fog through which Hamilton vaguely, wretchedly groped. He himself did not know why the child interested him so keenly, nor did he try to analyze the fact. He was merely grateful for it, and for the other fact that he cherished no sentimental feeling for the boy's mother. That had passed out of his life as everything else had seemingly passed which belonged to the old order of things. He had always been a calm, reserved, self-absorbed, unemotional type of man, glorying a little, perhaps, in his lack of dependence on human kind. In his need he had turned to his fellows and turned in vain. Now that a precious thing had come to him unsought, he did not intend to lose it.

Through his physicians he pulled various journalistic wires, resulting in the suppression, in the newspapers, of the hopeless facts of his case. He did not intend, he decided, to have his boy think of him as tied to an invalid's couch. Then, knowing something of human nature, and of the evanescent character of childish fancies, he ordered shipped to Russia a variety of American mechanical toys, calculated to swell the proud bosom of the small boy who received them. This shameless bid for continued favor met with immediate success. An ecstatic, incoherent little shriek of delight came from the land of the czar in the form of another letter; and the candle, which quite possibly would have burned low or even gone out, blazed up cheerily again.

That was the beginning of an intercourse which interested and diverted Hamilton for months. He spared no pains to adapt his letters to the interest and comprehension of his small correspondent, and he derived a quite incredible amount of satisfaction from the childish scrawls which came to him in reply. They were wholly babyish documents, about the donkey, the nurse, the toys, and games of the small boy's daily life. Usually they were written in his own printed letters. Sometimes they were dictated to his mother, who faithfully reported every weighty word that fell from the infant's lips. But always they were full of the hero-worship of the little child for the big, strong, American fighting-man; and in every letter, sometimes in the beginning, sometimes at the end, occasionally in both places, as the enthusiasm of the writer waxed, was the satisfying assurance, "I am your boy." Hamilton's eyes raced over the little pages till he found that line, and there rested contentedly.

As the months passed, the healing influence of time wrought its effects. Hamilton, shut in though he was, adapted himself to the narrow world of an invalid's room and its few interests. With the wealth he had fortunately inherited he brought to his side leading specialists who might possibly help him, and went through alternate ecstatic hopes and abysmal fears as the great men came and departed. Very quietly, too, he helped others less fortunate, financially, than himself. The nurses and physicians in the hospital where he lay learned to like and admire him, and other patients, convalescents or newcomers who were able to move about, sought his cheerful rooms and brought into them a whiff of the outside world. Through it all, winding in and out of the neutral-colored weeks like a scarlet thread of life and hope, came the childish letters from Russia, and each week a thick letter went back, artfully designed to keep alive the love and interest of an imaginative little boy.

At the end of six months young Charles fell from his donkey and broke his left arm, but this trivial incident was not allowed to interfere with the gratifying regularity with which his letters arrived. It was, however, interesting, as throwing a high light on the place his American hero held in the child's fancy. His mother touched on this in her letter describing the accident.

"The arm had to be set at once," she wrote, "and of course it was very painful. But I told Charlie you would be greatly disappointed if your boy were not brave and did not obey the doctor. He saw the force of this immediately, and did not shed a tear, though his dear little face was white and drawn with pain."

Master Charlie himself discussed the same pleasant incident in the first letter he dictated after the episode.

"I did not cry," he mentioned, with natural satisfaction. "Mamma cried, and Sonya cried. Men do not cry. Do they? You did not cry when you were hurt, did you? I am going to be just like you."

Hamilton laughed over the letter, his pale cheek flushing a little at the same time. He had cried, once or twice; he recalled it now with shame. He must try to do better, remembering that he loomed large as a heroic model for the young.

He was still reading the little letter when Dr. Van Buren, his classmate at the Point, his one intimate since then, and his physician now, entered the room, greeted him curtly, and stood at the window for a moment, drumming his fingers fiercely against the pane. Hamilton knew the symptoms; Van Buren was nervous and worried about something. He dropped the small envelope into his lap and looked up.

"Well?" he said, tersely.

Van Buren did not answer for a moment. Then he turned, crossed the room abruptly, and sat down near the reclining-chair in which the officer spent his days. The physician's face was strained and pale. His glance, usually direct, shifted and fell under his friend's inquiring gaze.

"Well?" repeated the latter, compellingly. "I suppose you fellows have been talking me over again. What's the outcome?"

Van Buren cleared his throat.

"Yes, we—we have, old man," he began, rather huskily—"in there, you know." He indicated the direction of the consulting-room as he spoke. "We don't like the recent symptoms."

Unconsciously, Hamilton straightened his shoulders.

"Out with it. Don't mince matters, Frank. Do you think life is so precious a thing to me that I can't part with it if I've got to?"

Van Buren writhed in his chair.

"It isn't that," he said, "life or death. It's wor—I mean, it's different. It's—it's these." He laid his hand on the officer's helpless legs, stretched out stiffly under a gay red afghan. "God!" he broke out, suddenly, "I don't know how you'll take it, old chap; and there's no sense in trying to break a thing like this gently. We're afraid—we think—they'll—have to come off!"

Under the shock of it Hamilton set his teeth.

"Why?" he asked, quietly.

"Because—well, because they're no good. They're dead. They're a constant menace to you. A scratch or injury of any kind—they've got to go—that's all, Arthur. But we've been talking it over and we can fix you up so you can get about and be much better off than you are now." He leaned forward as he spoke, and his words came quickly and eagerly. The worst was over; he was ready to picture the other side. Hamilton stopped him with a gesture.

"Suppose I decline to let them go?" he asked, grimly.

Van Buren stared at him.

"You can't!" he stammered.

"Why not?"

"Because—why, because your life depends on their coming off!"

Hamilton's lips set.

"My life!" he repeated. "My precious, glad, young life! So full of happiness! So useful!" He dropped the savagely bitter tone suddenly. "No, Frank," he said, quietly, "I won't go through life as the half of a man. I'll let the thing take its course; or if that will be too slow and too—horrible, I'll help the hobbling beast on its way. I think I'd be justified. It's too much to ask—you know it—to be hoisted through life as a remnant."

Van Buren rose, moved his chair nearer to Hamilton's, and sat down close to his friend's side. All nervousness had left him. He was again cool, scientific, professional; but with it all there was the deep sympathy and understanding of a friend.

"No, you won't," he said, firmly; "you won't do anything of the kind, and I'll tell you why you won't. Because it isn't in your make-up to play the coward. That's why. You've got to go through with it and take what comes, and do it all like the strong chap you are. If you think there won't be anything left in life, you are mistaken. You can be of a lot of use; you can do a lot of good. You will have time and inclination and money. You will be able to get around, not as quickly, but as surely. With a good man-servant you'll be entirely independent of drafts on charity or pity. Money has some beautiful uses. If you were a poor devil who hadn't a cent in the world and would be dependent on the grudging service of others, I should wish you to accept and bear, perhaps, but I could not urge you to. Now, your life is helpful to others. You can give and aid and bless. You can be a greater hero than the man who went up San Juan Hill, and there are those who will feel it."

"That is, my money is needed, and because I've got it I should drag out years of misery while I spread little financial poultices on other people's ills," returned Hamilton. "No, thanks; it's not enough good. They can have the money just the same. That can be amputated with profit to all concerned. I'll leave it to hospitals and homes for the helpless, especially for fractional humanity—needy remnants. But I decline absolutely, once and for all, to accept the noble future you have outlined. I grant you it would be heroic. But have you ever heard of great heroism with no stimulus to arouse it?"

He raised his hand as he spoke, and brought it down with a gesture of finality. As it fell, it dropped on the little letter. Mechanically, his fingers closed on it.

His boy! His brave little boy who had not flinched or cried, because he meant to be just like Captain Hamilton. What would he think when the truth came to him years hence, as it must do. What would she think now, the mother who was glad that her son should "love and admire a brave man"? The small missive was a stimulus.

Hamilton turned to Van Buren again, checking with a little shake of the head the impetuous speech that rushed to that gentleman's lips.

"Just wait one moment," he said, thoughtfully. He leaned back and shut his eyes, and as he did so the familiar scene of months past came suddenly before them—the quaint old foreign room, the great fireplace with its blazing logs, the mother, the curly haired boy. His life had been a lonely one, always, Hamilton reflected. Few, pathetically few, so far as he knew, would be affected by its continuance or its end. But the manner of its end—that was a different matter. That might touch individuals far and wide by its tragic example to other desperate souls. Still, he was not their keeper. As for Charlie—

Ah, Charlie! Charlie, with his childish but utter hero-worship; Charlie, with his lighted candle; Charlie, with his small-boy love and trust—Charlie would be told some little story and Charlie would soon forget. But—what would Charlie think of him some day when the truth was out—Charlie who at five could set his teeth and bear pain stoically because his hero did! Because he was "His Boy!" Hamilton's mind returned to that problem again and again and lingered there. No, he could not disappoint Charlie. Besides, Van Buren was right. There was work, creditable work to do. And to be plucky, even if only to keep a brave little chap's ideal intact, to maintain its helpful activity, was something worthy of a stanch man. Would he wish his boy to go under when the strain against the right thing was crushing?

He laid the letter down gently, deliberately, turned to his friend, and smiled as Van Buren had not seen him smile since their ingenuous boyhood days. There was that sweetness in the smile which homage to woman makes us dub "feminine," and something of it, too, in the way he laid his hand on his chum's shoulder.

"All right, old sawbones," he said, slowly. "You may do whatever has to be done. I'll face the music. Unbuilding one man may build up another."