through that grass to know whether it was Judith
or not. But usually it was a hill that he was tramping toward, and then
his foothold was good; and while he went slowly he got forward and he
reached the hill, and he climbed it to a queer-looking little
block-house on top, from which queer-looking little blue men were
running. And now and then one would drop and not get up again. And by
and by came his time to drop. Then he would begin all over again, or he
would go back to the coast, which he preferred to do, in spite of his
aching wound, and the long wait in the hospital and the place where poor
Reynolds was tossed into the air and into fragments by a shell; in spite
of the long walk back to Siboney, the graves of the Rough Riders and the
scuttling land-crabs; and the heat and the smells. Then he would march
back again to the trenches in his dream, as he had done in Cuba when he
got out of the hospital. There was the hill up which he had charged. It
looked like the abode of cave-dwellers--so burrowed was it with
bomb-proofs. He could hear the shouts of welcome as his comrades, and
men who had never spoken to him before, crowded about him.

How often he lived through that last proud little drama of his soldier
life! There was his Captain wounded, and there was the old Sergeant--the
"Governor"--with chevrons and a flag.

"You're a Sergeant, Crittenden," said the Captain.

He, Crittenden, in blood and sympathy the spirit of secession--bearer
now of the Stars and Stripes! How his heart thumped, and how his head
reeled when he caught the staff and looked dumbly up to the folds; and
in spite of all his self-control, the tears came, as they came again and
again in his delirium.

Right at that moment there was a great bustle in camp. And still holding
that flag, Crittenden marched with his company up to the trenches. There
was the army drawn up at parade, in a great ten-mile half-circle and
facing Santiago. There were the red roofs of the town, and the
batteries, which were to thunder word when the red and yellow flag of
defeat went down and the victorious Stars and Stripes rose up. There
were little men in straw hats and blue clothes coming from Santiago, and
swinging hammocks and tethering horses in an open field, while more
little men in Panama hats were advancing on the American trenches,
saluting courteously. And there were American officers jumping across
the trenches to meet them, and while they were shaking hands, o