"But for the soldiers, the poor wounded soldiers!" suggested the Major.

Lloyd hesitated, looking from the dog to the empty sleeve above it.
"Well," she declared, at last, "I wouldn't give him up while the country
is at peace. I'd wait till the last minute, until there was goin' to be
an awful battle, and then I'd make them promise to let me have him again
when the wah was ovah. Just the minute it was ovah. It would be like
givin' away part of your family to give away Hero."

Suddenly the Major spoke to the dog--a quick, sharp sentence that Lloyd
could not understand. But Hero, without an instant's hesitation,
bounded from the courtyard, where they sat, into the hall of the hotel.
Through the glass doors she could see him leaping up the stairs, and,
almost before the Major could explain that he had sent him for the
shoulder-bags he wore in service, the dog was back with them grasped
firmly in his mouth.

"Now the flask," said the Major. While the dog obeyed the second order,
he opened the bags for Lloyd to examine them. They were marked with a
red cross in a square of white, and contained rolls of bandages, from
which any man, able to use his arms, could help himself until his
rescuer brought further aid.

The flask which Hero brought was marked in the same way, and the Major
buckled it to his collar, saying, as he fastened first that and then
the shoulder-bags in place, "When a dog is in training, soldiers,
pretending to be dead or wounded, are hidden in the woods or ravines and
he is taught to find a fallen body, and to bark loudly. If the soldier
is in some place too remote for his voice to bring aid, the dog seizes a
cap, a handkerchief, or a belt,--any article of the man's clothing which