red, and when the Allied armies, in great numbers
and with abundant ammunition, swept out and down upon them, the
impetus and force of the advance were irresistible. Trenches were
blotted out. Towns were taken. The German lines melted away over wide
areas. Victory, decisive and permanent, rested on the Allied banners.
On the third of the month the British took La Boiselle and four
thousand three hundred prisoners. But on the fourth the enemy troops
turned and fought like wild animals at bay. This was the day on which
Aleck received his wounds. In the morning, as they lay sprawled in a
ravine which had been captured the night before, waiting for orders to
push still farther on, Aleck had said to Pen:

"You know what day this is, comrade?"

"Indeed I do!" was the reply, "it's Independence Day."

"Right you are. I wish I could get sight of an American flag. It will
be the first time in my life that I haven't seen 'Old Glory' somewhere
on the Fourth of July."

"True. Back yonder in the States they'll be having parades and
speeches, and the flag will be flying from every masthead. If only
they could be made to realize that it's really that flag that we're
fighting for, you and I, and drop this cloak of neutrality, and come
over here as a nation and help us, wouldn't that be glorious?"

Pen's face was grimy, his uniform was torn and stained, his hair was
tousled; somewhere he had lost his cap and the times were too
strenuous to get another; but out from his eyes there shone a
tenderness, a longing, a determination that marked him as a true
soldier of the American Legion.

The cannonading had again begun. Shells were whining and whistling
above their heads and exploding in the enemy lines not far beyond.
Off to the right, a village in flames sent up great clouds of smoke,
and the roar of the conflagration was joined to the noise of
artillery. Back of the lines the ground was strewn with wreckage,
pitted with shell-holes, ghastly with its harvest of bodies of the
slain. With rifles gripped, bayonets ready, hand grenades near by, the
boys lay waiting for the word of command.

"Aleck?"

"Yes, comrade."

"Over yonder at Chestnut Hill, on the school-grounds, the flag will be
floating from the top of the staff to-day."

"Yes, I know. It will be a pretty sight. I used to be ashamed to look
at it. You know why. To-day I could stare at it and glory in it for
hours."

"That flag at the school-house is the most beautiful A