A Young Hero

The sun was high when Phil woke next morning, to find the weary Doctor sleeping still; but he started up at a touch, and hearing them about, their hostess came and tapped at the door to say that breakfast was ready, and later on when they stepped out she looked sadly at them, for she had news.

“I woke at daylight,” she said. “There were guns firing, and the fighting has been going on ever since. Quick! Come and eat your breakfast and go. It is not safe for that little fellow to be staying here.”

Phil had no appetite to finish that breakfast. Before it was half done he had started to his feet, to run to the door, full of dread for his father, for one after the other came the reports of heavy guns in the distance, and from much nearer the rattle of musketry, telling that instead of leaving the terrible encounters far behind, either they had marched right amongst it or the opposing armies had suddenly turned in their direction.

There was no time to waste. The Doctor pressed money upon their kind hostess, but she refused it angrily, and hurried them from the house.

“Go that way!” she said, pointing towards where the sky looked light and clear, for away behind the house clouds were rising like to those in a storm; but they were clouds of smoke slowly gathering above a city miles away, and the gloom increased.

But Phil’s hostess had not let him go away empty-handed.

“You’ll want something to eat by and by,” she said, and then the little fellow looked at her wonderingly, her parting word sounded to his English ears so strange, for she said “adieu” and not “good-bye.”

“Walk fast, boy,” said the Doctor, almost harshly; “we must rest by and by.”

They hurried on for quite two hours, and then, hot and weary, the old man suffering as hardly as the boy, they slackened their pace, and once more making for a patch of woodland, rested for a while in the shade. But not for long.