powers.

"Live!" she whispered. "Live!"

Some one called for a doctor, and she assented. But to her own soul she said:

"What's a doctor?"

The flags had fallen from his arms at last; he had clung to them till now. The chaplain reverently lifted them and laid them at his feet.

Once his white lips moved, and the people hushed to hear what outburst of patriotism would issue from them—what tribute to the cause that he had fought for, what final apostrophe to his country or his flag.

"Peter?" he called, feebly. "Peter!"

But Patience had said he should not die. And Patience knew. Had not she always known what he should do, or what he could? He lay upon his bed peacefully when, with tears and smiles, in reverence and in wonder, they had brought him home—and the flags of the Post, too. By a gesture he had asked to have these hung upon the foot-board of his bed.

He turned his head upon his pillow and watched his wife with wide, reflecting eyes. It was a long time before she would let him talk; in fact, the May afternoon was slanting to dusk before he tried to cross her tender will about that matter. When he did, it was to say only this:

"Peter? I was goin' to decorate the baby. I meant to when I took that turn."

Patience nodded.

"It's all done, Reuben."

"And, Peter? I've had the queerest notions about my old dog Tramp to-day. I wonder if there's a johnnyquil left to decorate him?"

"I'll go and see," said Patience. But when she had come back he had forgotten Tramp and the johnnyquil.

"Peter," he muttered, "this has been a great day." He gazed solemnly at the flags.

Patience regarded him poignantly. With a stricture at the heart she thought:

"He has grown old fast since yesterday." Then joyously the elderly wife cried out upon herself: "But I am young! He shall have all my youth. I've got enough for two—and strength!"

She crept beside him and laid her warm cheek to his.

THE END