Colonel Goff kissed her again and again, and reaching out, gripped my hand. "Thank God, Jack! Elsie," he added, "you’re not to talk now, but sleep again. I’ll do as you say." "Now look here," she said in her old teasing way, "don’t you for a moment—don’t you try any funny things on me. I’m as well as any of you, and I’m going to get up, right soon. And I don’t want ever to hear of that dream I had again," she said, raising a commanding little finger at us. "We have both been very foolish, Daddy, you and me," she went on, "foolish and unseeing; but now we’re both going to be very sensible and brave, so you’ll all go out but Marget, and Mr. Jack." She turned to me, her eyes smiling in the old way, "You’ll kiss me good-by now till you come to see us at Carfax Hall—you and—and—" She clasped my neck, kissing me quickly, "Good-by, my bonny, bonny Prince! I’ll bring her back to you, see if I don’t!" *CHAPTER IV* *THE CALL OF THE DRUM* The Tennessee troops were to make a last parade before leaving for the war in the Philippines. All the night before they left a strange, weird feeling had been upon me. For hours I could not sleep, and when I did it seemed as if I were going down a dimly remembered path, hearing a far-off call in far-away mountains, the battle cry of my ancient Aryan people rallying against the Mongrel and the Mongol. Then I awoke with the fire of battle in my heart and the hot sweat of the conflict beaded over my face, to call it a dream. But it was no dream. There are dreams, and there is that which is more than dreams. There is the spirit’s walk into wayside lands. I rose and dressed. I went out for calmness among my trees. They had been my friends, my thousand-voiced leaf-whispering friends. But in this strange feeling, this fighting mood which, despite all my efforts, had overwhelmed me, I cared for them no longer. And they scorned me. Not one leaf whispered to me. I had not one friend among them. They were no longer my brothers in green. They were merely trees. My soul had been torn up to its very roots by the Hand that had planted it and told to grow into another soul or die! Everything I had held to in life had reversed itself on me. Every star-enthroned truth which I had worshipped had fallen to earth, a clay idol to mock me with its grinning lying lips of dirt! I had been turned out from my home unjustly; the love of my very life was gone, dead, perhaps; and Elsie— Nothing since the tragedy that had fallen to Eloise had cut into my soul like that nightmare leap over a rock wall into cold air and the stinging whirl of yellow water and the glory of her courage and unselfishness as she had said, "I’ll bring her back to you, Jack—see if I don’t!"