It was just at this time that Tom Adams, feeling thoroughly bored with his surroundings, left camp and sauntered up the street alone, planning how he could get his company ordered once more to the front. He could not stand this life any longer. As he strolled along the walk the sound of the cheerful voices of girls behind the magnolias and rose bowers came to him, and a wave of homesickness swept over him as he thought of his sisters and little nieces away up North. Suddenly, as he turned a corner, he saw a small figure walking slowly along before him; the great straw hat on the back of her head almost concealed the little body, but her sunny hair was peeping down below the broad brim, and Adams knew the child. She carried under her arm an old cigar-box, out of one end of which peeped the head and shoulders of an old doll, the feet of which stuck out of the other end. A string hung from the box, and trailed behind her on the pathway. She appeared to be very busy about something, and to be perfectly happy, for as she walked along she was singing out of her content a wordless little song of her heart, “Tra-la-la, tra-la-la.” The young officer fell into the same gait with the child, and instinctively trod softly to keep from disturbing her. Just then, however, a burly fellow named Griff O’Meara, who had belonged to one of the companies which preceded them, and had been transferred to Adams’s company, came down a side street, and turned into the walkway just behind the little maid. He seemed to be tipsy. The trailing string caught his eye, and he tipped forward and tried to step on it. Adams did not take in what the fellow was trying to do until he attempted it the second time. Then he called to him, but it was too late; he had stepped on the cord, and jerked the box, doll and all, from the child’s arm. The doll fell, face down, on a stone and broke to pieces. The man gave a great laugh, as the little girl turned, with a cry of anguish, and stooping, began to pick up the fragments, weeping in a low, pitiful way. In a second Adams sprang forward, and struck the fellow a blow between the eyes which sent him staggering off the sidewalk, down in the road, flat on his back. He rose with an oath, but Adams struck him a second blow which laid him out again, and the fellow, finding him to be an officer, was glad to slink off. Adams then turned to the child, whose tears, which had dried for a moment in her alarm at the fight, now began to flow again over her doll. “Her pretty head’s all broke! Oh--oh--oh!” she sobbed, trying vainly to get the pieces to fit into something like a face. The young officer sat down on the ground by her. “Never mind, sissy,” he said, soothingly, “let me see if I can help you.” She confidingly handed him the fragments, whilst she tried to stifle her sobs, and wiped her eyes with her little pinafore. “Can you do it?” she asked, dolefully, behind her pinafore. “I hope so. What’s your name?”