"Now tell of your success, and the scarlet runner," added Maggie.

"Ah! that was SENT, and so I prospered. I must begin ever so far
back, in war times, or I can't introduce my hero properly. You know
Papa was in the army, and fought all through the war till
Gettysburg, where he was wounded. He was engaged just before he
went; so when his father hurried to him after that awful battle,
Mamma went also, and helped nurse him till he could come home. He
wouldn't go to an officer's hospital, but kept with his men in a
poor sort of place, for many of his boys were hit, and he wouldn't
leave them. Sergeant Joe Collins was one of the bravest, and lost
his right arm saving the flag in one of the hottest struggles of
that great fight. He had been a Maine lumberman, and was over six
feet tall, but as gentle as a child, and as jolly as a boy, and very
fond of his colonel.

"Papa left first, but made Joe promise to let him know how he got
on, and Joe did so till he too went home. Then Papa lost sight of
him, and in the excitement of his own illness, and the end of the
war, and being married, Joe Collins was forgotten, till we children
came along, and used to love to hear the story of Papa's battles,
and how the brave sergeant caught the flag when the bearer was shot,
and held it in the rush till one arm was blown off and the other
wounded. We have fighting blood in us, you know, so we were never
tired of that story, though twenty-five years or more make it all
as far away to us as the old Revolution, where OUR ancestor was
killed, at OUR Bunker Hill!

"Last December, just after my sad disappointments, Papa came home to