In the dim dawning of the August morning Little Kemper's bugle sounded the morning reveille. Thaine was just dreaming of home and he thought the first bugle note was the call for him up the stairway of the Sunflower Inn. His windows looked out on the Aydelot wheatfields and the grove beyond, and every morning the sunrise across the level eastern prairie made a picture only the hand of the Infinite could paint. This morning he opened his eyes on a far different scene. The reveille became a call to arms and the troops fell into line ready for battle. Before the sun had reached the zenith the line was whipped end to end, as Binford of Indiana had said it might be. In this engagement on the sandy plain about the little village of Peit-Tsang, Thaine with his comrades saw what it meant to lead that battle line. He saw the brave little Japanese mowed down like standing grain before the reaper's sickle. He saw the ranks move swiftly up to take the places of the fallen, never wavering nor retreating, rushing to certain death as to places of vantage in a coronal pageantry. The Filipino's Mauser was as deadly as the older style gun of the Boxer. A bullet aimed true does a bullet's work. But in this battle that raged about Peit-Tsang Thaine quickly discovered that this was no fight in a Filipino jungle. Here was real war, as big and terrible above the campaigns he had known in Luzon as the purpose in it was big above loyalty to the flag and extension of American dominion and ideals. When the thing was ended with the routing of the Boxer forces, of the sixteen thousand that went into battle a tithe of one-tenth of their number lay dead on the plains--sixteen hundred men, the cost of conquest in a far wilderness. The heaviest toll fell on the brave Japanese who had led in the attack. Thaine Aydelot did not dream of home that night. He slept on his arms the heavy sleep of utter weariness, which Little Kemper's bugle call broke at three o'clock the next morning. Before the August sun had crawled over the eastern horizon the armies were swinging up the Peiho river toward Peking. The American troops were leading the column now, as Thaine Aydelot had wished they might, and in all that followed after the day at Peit-Tsang the Stars and Stripes, brave token of a brave people, floated above the front lines of soldiery, even to the end of the struggle.