“Colonel Campbell, I’m not a girl. I’m Neil Davidson, and I’ve brought you a message from General Greene,” he said. “It’s sewed inside the bonnet.” But the colonel had caught a motion between the trees. “Who’s that moving off there?” he asked sharply. “A man I was talking to,” Neil said. “I was riding fast and my bonnet flew off. A stranger stepped out of the woods and picked it up for me. He thought I was a girl, of course, and teased me at first. He wanted me to kiss him before he’d give it back. I was nearly wild on account of the message. Then we heard you coming. He stopped teasing and waited with me until I told him you were my friends.” “Humph! It’s pretty evident we weren’t his friends; but I reckon he’s not worth following!” the colonel commented. He tore open the bonnet, found the message in it, and troubled himself no more about the man in the woods. “Ah, Neil, you brought them in!” the general said, when Neil reported to him. As it chanced, the regiment would have arrived just as safely without the message, yet he let his grave, tired eyes rest approvingly on the boy. Neil had on his own tattered clothes again. His head was as shaggy and bare as usual, and his brown legs nearly as bare, but there was something unfamiliar in his face. “Yes, sir,” he answered impetuously. “I brought them in, but I let the worst Tory in the country go free.” Greene smiled half-incredulously. “Why was that?” he asked. Neil was silent a moment, and the general saw tears rising in the blue eyes that he had supposed were always shrewd or fierce. “He was my brother!” Neil broke out at last, and because his heart was so full that he had to tell some one, he told the big, considerate general the whole story. “And you may do what you please with me, general,” he ended. “I had to let him go free.” The general took the boy’s small, shaking hand. “I don’t think you let him go _free_, exactly, Neil,” he said. “That minute of mercy will make him more or less your captive all his life.” JOHN PAUL JONES: THE BOY OF THE ATLANTIC[Y] By RUPERT S. HOLLAND A little Scottish lad dreamed of a great sea fight--of a flag with red and white stripes, and white stars on a blue field. This story tells how his dream came true. The summer afternoon was fair, and the waves that rolled upon the north shore of Solway Firth in the western Lowlands of Scotland were calm and even. But the tide was coming in, and inch by inch was covering the causeway that led from shore to a high rock some hundred yards away. The rock was bare of vegetation, and sheer on the landward side, but on the face toward the sea, were rough jutting points that would give a climber certain footholds, and near the top smooth ledges.