nd the bluest of heavens
Bending above, and resting its dome on the walls of the forest.

_Longfellow._

HIS HERO

BY MARGARET MINOR

It was an October afternoon, and through Indian summer's tulle-like haze
a low-swinging sun sent shafts of scarlet light at the highest peaks of
the Blue Ridge. The sweet-gum leaves looked like blood-colored stars as
they floated slowly to the ground, and brown chestnuts gleamed
satin-like through their gaping burs; while over all there rested a
dense stillness, cut now and then by the sharp yelp of a dog as he
scurried through the bushes after a rabbit.

Surrounded by this splendid autumn beauty stood Mountain Top Inn, near
the crest of the Blue Ridge in Rockfish Gap, its historical value dating
from the time when Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, after a long and
spirited discussion in one of its low-ceiled rooms, decided upon the
location of the University of Virginia.

On the porch of this old inn there now sat a little boy, idly swinging a
pair of sun-tanned legs. Occasionally he tickled an old liver-colored
hound that lay dozing in a limp heap; but being rewarded only by
toothless snaps at very long intervals, he finally grew tired of this
amusement, and stretching himself out on his back, he began to dream
with wide-open eyes. At these dream-times, when he let his thoughts
loose, they always bore him to the very same field, and here his fancy
painted pictures with the vivid colors of a boy's imagination: pictures
so strong that they left him flushed and tingling with pride; again,
pictures that brought a cool, choking feeling to his throat; and at
times pictures that made his childish mouth quiver and droop. Among all
of these thought-born scenes, at intervals there would stand out the
real ones, scenes that were etched on the clean walls of his memory in
everlasting strokes.

He never tired thinking of that first morning--that morning when all the
world seemed gilded with sunshine and throbbing with martial music. His
grandfather had lifted him up on one of the "big gate" posts to see the
soldiers march by. With mingled feelings of admiration and childish envy
he had watched them drill for many weeks, but they had never seemed such
real, grand soldiers until now, as they came marching by with quick,
firm steps, keeping time to the clear, staccato notes, marching off to
real battle-fields. It was all so beautiful,