“Three cheers for the girl that saved the flag from the hands of the enemy!” “_Hip, hip, hurrah! Hip, hip, hurrah!_” It was the Edgewood minister, whose full, vibrant voice was of the sort to move a crowd. His words rang out into the clear air and were carried from lip to lip. Hands clapped, feet stamped, hats swung, while the loud huzzahs might almost have wakened the echoes on old Mount Ossipee. The tall, loose-jointed man sat down in the wagon suddenly and took up the reins. “They're gettin' a little mite personal, and I guess it's 'bout time for you to be goin', Simpson!” The tone was jocular, but the red mustaches drooped, and the half-hearted cut he gave to start the white mare on her homeward journey showed that he was not in his usual devil-may-care mood. “Durn his skin!” he burst out in a vindictive undertone, as the mare swung into her long gait. “It's a lie! I thought 'twas somebody's wash! I hain't an enemy!” While the crowd at the raising dispersed in happy family groups to their picnics in the woods; while the Goddess of Liberty, Uncle Sam, Columbia, and the proud States lunched grandly in the Grange hall with distinguished guests and scarred veterans of two wars, the lonely man drove, and drove, and drove through silent woods and dull, sleepy villages, never alighting to replenish his wardrobe or his stock of swapping material. At dusk he reached a miserable tumble-down house on the edge of a pond. The faithful wife with the sad mouth and the habitual look of anxiety in her faded eyes came to the door at the sound of wheels and went doggedly to the horse-shed to help him unharness. “You didn't expect to see me back tonight, did ye?” he asked satirically; “leastwise not with this same horse? Well, I'm here! You needn't be scairt to look under the wagon seat, there hain't nothin' there, not even my supper, so I hope you're suited for once! No, I guess I hain't goin' to be an angel right away, neither. There wa'n't nothin' but flags layin' roun' loose down Riverboro way, 'n' whatever they say, I hain't sech a hound as to steal a flag!” It was natural that young Riverboro should have red, white, and blue dreams on the night after the new flag was raised. A stranger thing, perhaps, is the fact that Abner Simpson should lie down on his hard bed with the flutter of bunting before his eyes, and a whirl of unaccustomed words in his mind. “For it's your star, my star, all our stars together.” “I'm sick of goin' it alone,” he thought; “I guess I'll try the other road for a spell;” and with that he fell asleep. Seventh Chronicle. THE LITTLE PROPHET I