So, daddy, get a dragon that will jump into my bed Each morning when the sun comes up, and sniff about my head The way old Fido does, and let the market garden go To some real ogre-killer, like Great Jacky was, you know. A BLOW FOR CUBA. BY WILLIAM BANKS, JUN. It was a very hot day even for Cuba. Every living thing moved listlessly. The great Spanish flag, hanging from the tall slender staff just inside the gate of the fort, drooped like the wings of a tired bird. The sentries were almost gasping for breath. In the barracks the men grumbled and railed at the fate which had brought them from home and friends to fight in a country where fever thinned their ranks far more effectively than did the bullets of the insurgents. On a slight hill about a mile from the fort a man and a youth were lolling lazily on the ground. The lad was about eighteen years of age, tall, well-built, and unmistakably an American. His companion, a native Cuban, was at least thirty years old, short, but with a frame denoting immense strength. They had been watching the fort for an hour or more through a powerful field-glass, and following closely the movements of the sentries on the wall nearest them. "Pah!" said the lad at last, "they're only a lot of boys." The man smiled at him meaningly, and the lad blushed. "I know," he continued, hesitatingly, "that you're thinking I'm just a boy too; but," proudly, "I'm an American." "So," answered the man, softly; "and had I a few score such lads as you in my command I'd strike a great blow for Cuba to-day." "How, Captain Marto?" was the eager question. "By taking yonder fort by storm," was the quiet reply. The youth's father was a prisoner in the fort, and the incidents which led up to his capture may be here described. For five years Mr. Hinton, a native of Pennsylvania State, had resided with his son Ben in Havana, where he carried on business as a general merchant. His wife had died while on a visit to her old American home. Among Cubans Mr. Hinton was well known as a sympathizer in their cause. Immediately on receipt of the news in Havana that General Antonio Maceo had taken the field he decided to lend his active aid to the Cuban leader. Not wishing his son to share in the dangers of a struggle in which he knew that the Spaniards would show no mercy to any who took up arms against them, Mr. Hinton had suggested that Ben go back to relatives in America. This proposition the lad stoutly opposed. Ben knew by heart the stories of the brave efforts which the Cubans had so often made in their attempts to throw off the Spanish yoke. The names of Maceo, Gomez, Marto, and other revolutionists were held in high estimation by him, and, with that intense love of freedom inherited by every American boy, he had determined, long before he knew his father's views on the subject, to strike a blow in the coming struggle for Cuban independence. His father was at last compelled to consent to Ben's accompanying him.