"My grandfather died in the front of battle, Miss Helen,—to make men free. My father was a soldier. The first bauble that I can remember playing with as a child was a medal of honour with its red, white and blue ribbon which was given to him for some daring service to the flag, I know not what. That medal and his good name was all that he left to me. I lost the medal before I knew what it stood for, and I have temporarily laid aside the name of Graham; but none the less is the memory of that bronze eagle-and-star an inspiration to me to a life work creditable to the name. "When I enlisted I was really taking a large financial burden from my mother, and if, after my first term of enlistment was up, I was unthinking of her, it was because out of the blood of my fathers and my army experience had been born a life ambition which filled all my thoughts: the ambition to be a soldier. I was off my guard, for I had never thought of my mother as having a human frailty. When she came to place herself in my care I noticed, as I had not a month before, how far spent was her strength, and I was alarmed at the sudden change in her appearance. This change had come to her as it comes to many—with the moment of her surrender to the inevitable. Men and women may stand with determined and unshaken front against the assaults of weakness until it wins into the very citadel of their strength and possesses everything save the flag which flies at the tower-top. So with my mother: she had stood to her duty till there remained of her wonderful energies only her unshaken resolution, and when that flag was hauled down there was nothing left to surrender." Everything in the man’s tribute to his mother—sentiment and metaphor—appealed to Helen, and the tears came to her lashes. "But she still has the strength to be vastly ambitious for her son, Miss Helen. Death itself will hardly weaken that. She talks to me of little beside the day when I shall be an officer in the army." "You aspire to a commission, then?" "Yes; and it is for that reason that I desire the President shall not know now that I am the man who carried him out of danger at Valencia. I know that naturally he will be grateful, and I wish to make no draft upon his gratitude till I ask for that commission. I expect much difficulty, and I wish to marshal at one moment every circumstance in my favour." "As papa says, ’attack with horse, foot and guns,’" said Helen. "Yes, that’s the idea. I had hoped that by the end of a second term of enlistment my preparedness together with your father’s friendliness and a growing liberality in public sentiment toward men of my race would win for me my heart’s desire—a lieutenancy of cavalry." "Your race will not count against you, Hayward," said Helen. "Papa has no such provincial notions as that. And I am sure he will not be ungrateful."