ust on the crowd that forces him to walk gingerly where
usually he struts as a master. He, too, is a patriot and he means to see
the march of the troops, and to applaud it--but from his club window, if
ever he is able to make his way there through the perspiring congestion
of the motley crowd.

There is a crew of money-makers, busy along the avenue on an occasion
such as this. These are hordes of itinerant merchants moving up and down
with things to sell to the crowd. They offer canes and instruments of
noise that by a twist of the wrist make a horrible din. Especially, they
offer American flags--bigger or smaller according to the purchaser's
taste and purse. These are bought with eagerness by the crowd, and the
fakers reap a harvest from the enthusiasm of those assembled to witness
the marching soldiers.

The boy with a box is dominant. Wherever a short, but eager watcher
stands to look, the boy comes, with his offer of a box to stand on, a
box to sit on, as the purchaser may please, for the nominal cost of ten
cents. Always, one finds at hand this boy, with the box that he offers
for your sitting or for your feet, as you will. One box bought, he shows
another, offering it for sale. Whence he comes with boxes so
multitudinous none may guess. But he goes away with nickles and dimes
enough perhaps to provide an income that will continue over until
another day of parade.

In the reviewing stand, there was seated a girl who watched the marching
troops with an intentness that had in it something of desperation,
something of despair. Yet, as the soldiers passed, she gave them little
heed. She was always looking toward those advancing, as if in search for
something that meant more to her than this moving mass of troops.

A band passed. Behind it, at the head of his men, rode Colonel Marion.
As he came opposite the reviewing stand, his eyes swept over the crowd
seated on the tiers of benches. They rested on the face of the girl, who
had been so anxiously watching. He smiled and saluted. The girl--his
daughter Ethel--waved her handkerchief eagerly in response. Then she
turned, and spoke to the young man who sat beside her. There was love,
touched with reverence, in her voice.

"Isn't Daddy splendid!"

Her companion, Roy Morton, answered with sincerity, in which was a
tincture of irrepressible bitterness.

"He's every inch a soldier."

The bitterness came from the fact that a broken tendon--received during
his last foo