n the
very stroke of twelve, there came thunder--the thunder of two-score and
one salutes. And the cheers--the cheers! From the right rose those
cheers, gathering volume as they came, swinging through the centre far
to the left, and swinging through the centre back again, until they
broke in a wild storm against the big, green hills. A storm that ran
down the foothills to the rear, was mingled with the surf at Siboney and
swung by the rocking transports out to sea. Under the sea, too, it sang,
along the cables, to ring on through the white corridors of the great
capitol and spread like a hurricane throughout all the waiting land at
home! Then he could hear bands playing--playing the "Star-Spangled
Banner"--and the soldiers cheering and cheering again. Suddenly there
was quiet; the bands were playing hymns--old, old hymns that the soldier
had heard with bowed head at his mother's knee, or in some little old
country church at home--and what hardships, privations, wounds, death of
comrades had rarely done, those old hymns did now--they brought tears.
Then some thoughtful soldier pulled a box of hardtack across the
trenches and the little Spanish soldiers fell upon it like schoolboys
and scrambled like pickaninnies for a penny.

Thus it was that day all around the shining circle of sheathed bayonets,
silent carbines, and dumb cannon-mouths at the American trenches around
Santiago, where the fighting was done.

And on a little knoll not far away stood Sergeant Crittenden, swaying on
his feet--colour-sergeant to the folds of the ever-victorious,
ever-beloved Old Glory waving over him, with a strange new wave of
feeling surging through him. For then and there, Crittenden, Southerner,
died straightway and through a travail of wounds, suffering, sickness,
devotion, and love for that flag--Crittenden, American, was born. And
just at that proud moment, he would feel once more the dizziness seize
him. The world would turn dark, and again he would sink slowly.

And again, when all this was over, the sick man would go back to the
long grass and tramp it once more until his legs ached and his brain
swam. And when it was the hill that he could see, he was quiet and got
rest for a while; and when it was the figure of Judith--he knew now that
it _was_ Judith--he would call aloud for her, just as he did in the
hospital at Siboney. And always the tramp through the long grass would
begin again--

Tramp--tramp--tramp.

He was very tire