there, his fair young face flushed with
the deadly fever, and begged the surgeons to do something for him.

"We can do nothing," they said. "Our hands are full. His case is
hopeless. We must help where it will do some good."

"But may we take him with us? May we see what we can do for him? Perhaps
we can find a doctor who can cure him."

"Take him and welcome," the surgeon replied. "But you can find no doctor
who can save the dead. Little Giffin can never get well."

But the good people lifted the broken form and carried it out from the
hospital's deadly air, into the golden sunshine and away to a clean
little cot in a humble home where a good doctor treated him and a kind
motherly nurse hung over him and soothed his feverish brain for many a
weary hour. For days it seemed that every breath would be his last and
for months his sufferings wrung the hearts of his friends.

But at last there came a day when he could sit up a little, and then for
weeks he hobbled about, an almost helpless cripple with a rude crutch
for his only support.

But his new friends had known that he would get well, for even during
the days of burning fever and the weeks of weary recovery his heart had
been filled with courage and his steel blue eye had glinted with a
dauntless spirit that would not die.

The crippled right arm and mangled fingers were slow in healing and
nearly useless when the wounds were closed and only ugly scars remained.
In spite of all, though, he learned again to write, and you can imagine
that the first letter, in its scraggly writing, began, "My Dearest
Mother," and the next, "Dear Captain."

Mother's answer came first and brought warmth and love to the heart of
the brave little cripple who dreamed now only of home--home, which he
had not dared hope to see again. But then the Captain's letter came:

"Dear Giffin:

"Your letter reached me tonight. God bless you, my boy. I thought you
were gone with the others. Of the eighty-five who made that fatal charge
only you and I are now alive. They say that Johnston is hard pressed and
needs every man----"

Little Giffin never finished reading the letter. He was up and ready to
start away to the front, to his Captain and to Johnston.

"Johnston needs every man," he said, as the first tears he had shed came
to his brave blue eyes. "He needs every man and I'll be some help. I'll
write to you, if I'm spared. Good bye. God bless you, kindest of
friends."

He was gone. Lo