“Time to haul her down,” Hugh looked to the west. It was sundown. The bugler sounded attention, the men all stood in line, facing the flag. The bugler played the salute to the colors, and just as the red ball dropped behind the blue ridge of mountains, Hugh slowly, slowly hauled down the flag. “That,” said one who watched the pretty ceremony, “is a survival of sun worship.” “Mithras, God of the Sunset, low on the Western main, Thou descending immortal, immortal to rise again! Now when the watch is ended, now when the wine is drawn, Mithras, also a soldier, keep us pure till the dawn!” (KIPLING.) IX GUESTS AT CAMP “Mithras, God of the Midnight, here where the great bull lies, Look on thy children in darkness. Oh take our sacrifice! Many roads Thou hast fashioned; all of them lead to the Light, Mithras, also a soldier, teach us to die aright!” (KIPLING.) About the time the lighter sank, I received a letter from the camp, asking for a man who spoke English, had some knowledge of accounts--a man, in fine, like Thompson--who would come to Messina. Belknap was shorthanded; the work was doubling up on them. Was there any chance of that nice boy, Flint? Would Thompson possibly reconsider? Thompson could not; Flint was in Egypt. I remember well the day the letter came, if not the date. I was in Florence, spending a few happy hours by the Arno, in the shadow of the Giglio, Giotto’s perfect tower, second among towers only to the Giralda of Seville. There had been a wonderful jaunt from Rome in an automobile, that reminded me of my mother’s stories of her wedding journey through Italy in a traveling carriage. The motor has brought back the romance to travel, that seemed banished forever when the last _vetturino_ sold his traveling carriage, driven out of business by the railroad. We four--Mr. Parrish the host, Miss Helen Lee, his niece, Charles, the Yankee chauffeur, and I--had passed through Umbria, Tuscany, visited Perugia and Gubbio, stopped at Assisi and Siena, looked at the gem, San Gimignano--but that’s another story. That golden day in Florence we hunted up our old friend, George de Forrest Brush, the painter, corralled him in his studio and carried him off willy-nilly to lunch at the Trattoria Aurora on the heights of Fiesole. It was too cold to eat in the garden, so after a long look at the blue Val d’Arno with its encircling mountains, the Carraras and the Apennines, we went into the bare little dining-room. Soon the two specialties of the inn smoked on the table, a dish of chicken cooked with red and yellow peppers--the sauce would make an anchorite greedy--and whole artichokes fried to a golden brown, served with melted butter. For those who wanted it, there was a flask of good red Chianti di Broglio; for all there was the rarer wine of friendship.