The woman looked blankly at him, with eyes that seemed watching for
something--something that never came. Billy dared not trust himself
to say another word. He finally set the child down and turned away.
In a few minutes the "procession" was in full swing, Billy and his
father, in one of the carriages, being driven beneath arches and
banners, and handclasped on all sides. Somehow, he got through that
uproarious day smiling, but shy as usual, but when night came he was
tired and utterly undone, and "turned in" early. But sleep would not
come. Then he arose and crept to his little bedroom window, standing
there a long, long time alone in the dark--thinking. How glorious it all
had been!--the glad, loyal faces of his boy friends, the magnificent
welcome home--if only they could have brought Jack Morrison back with
them! Oh! Billy would have given up all the glory, the music, the
cheers, the banners, to get away from the haunting memory of a woman's
white, suffering face and black-robed figure, and the feel of the
clinging hands of a tiny fatherless boy! His eyes did not see the homely
street at his feet--the dying rockets and fireworks glaring against the
sky. He saw only a simple grave in the open veldt in far-away Africa--a
grave that he, himself, had heaped with stones formed in the one word
"Canada." At the recollection of it, poor Billy buried his aching head
in his hands. The glory had paled and vanished. There was nothing left
of this terrible war but the misery, the mourning, the heartbreak of
it all!
The Brotherhood
"What is the silver chain for, Queetah?" asked the boy, lifting the
tomahawk* and running the curious links between his thumb and fingers.
"I never saw one before."
[*The tomahawk and avenging knife spoken of in the story are both
in the possession of the writer, the knife having been buried for
seventy-three years on the estate where she was born.]
The Mohawk smiled. "That is because few tomahawks content themselves
with times of peace. While war lives, you will never see a silver chain
worn by an Iroquois, nor will you see it on anything he possesses," he
answered.
"Then it is the badge of peace?" questioned the boy.
"The badge of peace--yes," replied Queetah.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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