At the Post dinner of August 16, 1912, the ranks of Captain Jack’s company had dwindled to four old men. There was Uncle Joe Fodder, the commander; Martin Chisholm, who made his money in the grist-mill; Henry Weston, who for seven years had been an inmate of the State Soldier’s Home; and—old Wilbur Nieson, who spent his days hanging around the street corners and stores. The reunion ended as forty-six other reunions had ended, excepting that they did not talk their battles over again so vehemently as on former occasions. Indeed, they had talked themselves out. They were “waiting” now, and the old bottle of wine set in the center of their table was a symbol of fatalism, mute testimony to the inexorable law of human life. Next day we reported it as usual in our local paper. At about ten-thirty o’clock of the following evening—to be exact, the seventeenth day of August, 1912—Mrs. Samuel Hod, wife of the _Telegraph’s_ editor, while working in her kitchen, heard a frightful scream come from somewhere in the neighborhood. Mrs. Hod rushed to the door. Outside was a clear, warm summer night. Across the picket fence that separated the Hod yard from the rear yards of the houses facing on Pleasant Street, she could see a light in the kitchen of the Fuller boy’s house—young Jack Fuller, grandson of Dashing Captain Jack of years gone by. The neighborhood was very quiet during those two minutes she stood there listening in her fright. Then suddenly that scream was repeated—sharp, clear, terrible! It came from the home across the picket fence. It was Betty Fuller screaming. From the agony in the cries something ghastly had happened. Mrs. Hod ran through her house and called to her husband. Sam helped his wife over the back fence and they made their way under the Fuller clothes-line, through the back shed, and into the little sitting-room. Betty Fuller was down on the floor. She was face downward, her head protected by her arm. Two feet from her, between the reading-table and the door into the dining-room, was her nine-months-old baby. Holding himself unsteadily between the casings of the hall door was young Jack, his face the color of cold ashes, his lips parched, drops of sweat, heavy as glycerin, standing on his forehead. “What’s happened?” demanded Sam. But he saw what had happened; and his wife saw; and so did the neighbors. The baby’s crib was mute witness to what had occurred. It was overturned—between Jack and his little family. “Betty! Betty!” cried Mrs. Hod, kneeling down to the young mother’s assistance. “My baby! My only, only, little baby!” moaned the girl. “Tell me,” roared Sam to the father, “how did this happen?” “I came in—sick—I guess—I guess—I didn’t see the kid’s crib. I fell over against it! I knocked it over—” The neighbor woman had picked up the little body. “It’s—dead!” she whispered hoarsely. Sam whirled on Jack.