“When it comes—my Nat’s medal—it’s goin’ to set right up here, ’stead o’ this old thing—an’ the letters and the sermons in my shell box I got on my weddin’ trip.... Lawyer Ritchie told me to-day what it means, the name o’ that medal—Cross o’ War! It’s a decoration fur soldiers and earned by bravery.” She paused; then broke out suddenly: “I b’en a fool, settin’ here grievin’. My Nat was a hero, an’ I never knew it!... A hero’s folks hadn’t ought to cry. It’s a thing too big for that. Come here, you little Luke! Maw hain’t b’en real good to you an’ Tommy lately. You’re gittin’ all white an’ peaked. Too much frettin’ ’bout Nat. You an’ me’s got to stop it, I tell you. Folks round here ain’t goin’ to let us fret—” “Folks! Maw!” The words burst from the boy’s heart. “Did they find out?... You showed it to ’em? Uncle Clem—” Maw sniffed. “Clem! Oh, he was real took aback; but he don’t count in on this—not big enough.” Then triumph hastened her story. “It’s the big ones that’s mixin’ into this, Lukey. Seems like they’d heard somethin’ a spell back in one o’ the county papers, an’ we didn’t know.... Anyhow, when I first got into town I met Judge Geer. He had me right into his office in Masonic Hall, ’fore I could git my breath almost—had me settin’ in his private room, an’ sent his stenugifer out fur a cup o’ cawfee fur me. He had me give him the letter to read, an’ asked dare he make some copies. The stenugifer took ’em like lightnin’, right there. “The judge had a hard time of it, coughin’ an’ blowin’ over that letter. He’s goin’ to send some copies to the New York papers right off. He took me acrost the hall and interduced me to Lawyer Ritchie. Lawyer Ritchie, he read the letter too. ‘A hero!’ they called Nat; an’ me ‘A hero’s mother!’ “‘We ain’t goin’ to forgit this, Mis’ Haynes,’ Lawyer Ritchie said. ‘This here whole town’s proud o’ your Nat.’ ... My land! I couldn’t sense it all!... Me, Delia Haynes, gettin’ her hand wrung, ’count o’ anything Nat’d b’en doin’, by the big bugs round town! Judge Geer, he fetched ’em all out o’ their offices—Slade, the supervisor, and Fuller Brothers, and old Sumner Pratt—an’ all! An’ Ben Watson asked could he have a copy to put in the _Biweekly_. It’s goin’ to take the whole front page, with an editor’al inside. He said the Rockville Center News’d most likely copy it too. “I was like in a dream!... All I’d aimed to do was to let some o’ them folks know that those people acrost the ocean had thought well of our Nat, an’ here they was breakin’ their necks to git in on it too!... Goin’ down the street they was more of it. Lu Shiffer run right out o’ the hardware store an’ left the nails he was weighin’ to shake hands with me; and Jem Brand came; and Lan’lord Peters come out o’ the Valley House an’ spoke to me.... I felt awful public. An’ Jim Beckonridge come out of the Emporium to shake too.