The Little Colonel's Hero Part 5

"I wish I could do something like that!" she exclaimed, earnestly. "I used to wish that I could go out like Joan of Arc to do some great thing that would make people write books about me, and carve me on statues, and paint pictures and sing songs in my honah, but I believe that now I'd rathah do something bettah than ride off to battle on a prancin' white chargah.

Thank you, Majah, for tellin' me the story. I'm goin' for a walk now. May I take Hero?"

A few minutes later the two were wandering along beside the water together, the Little Colonel dreaming day-dreams of valiant deeds that she might do some day, so that kings would send _her_ a Gold Cross of Remembrance, and men would say with uncovered heads, as the old Major had done, "If America ever writes a woman's name in her temple of fame, that one should be the name of Lloyd Sherman--_The Little Colonel_!"

CHAPTER VI.

THE WONDER-BALL'S BEST GIFT

As the time drew near for them to move northward, Lloyd began counting the hours still left to her to spend with her new-found friends.

"Only two moah days, mothah," she sighed "Only two moah times to go walking with Hero. It seems to me that I _can't_ say good-bye and go away, and nevah see him again as long as I live!"

"He is going with us part of the way," answered Mrs. Sherman. "The Major told us last night that he had decided to visit his niece who lives at Zurich. We will stop first for a few days at a little town called Zug, beside a lake of the same name. There is a William Tell chapel near there that the Major wants to show us, and he will go up the Rigi with us. I think he dreads parting with you fully as much as you do from Hero. His eyes follow every movement you make. So many times in speaking of you he has called you Christine."

"I know," answered Lloyd, thoughtfully. "He seems to mix me up with her in his thoughts, all the time. He is so old I suppose he is absent-minded.

When I'm as old as he is, I won't want to travel around as he does. I'll want to settle down in some comfortable place and stay there."

"From what he said last night, I judge that this is the last time he expects to visit that part of Switzerland. When he was a little boy he used to visit his grandmother, who lived near Zug. The chalet where she lived is still standing, and he wants to see it once more, he said, before he dies."

"He must know lots of stories about the place," said Lloyd.

"He does. He has tramped all over the mountain back of the town after wild strawberries, followed the peasants to the mowing, and gone to many a fete in the village. We are fortunate to have such an interesting guide."

"I wish that Betty could be with us to hear all the stories he tells us,"

said Lloyd, beginning to look forward to the journey with more pleasure, now that she knew there was a prospect of being entertained by the Major.

Usually she grew tired of the confinement in the little railway carriages where there were no aisles to walk up and down in, and fidgeted and yawned and asked the time of day at every station.

During the first part of the journey toward Zug, the Major had little to say. He leaned wearily back in his seat with his eyes closed much of the time. But as they began pa.s.sing places that were connected with interesting scenes of his childhood, he roused himself, and pointed them out with as much enjoyment as if he were a schoolboy, coming home on his first vacation.

"See those queer little towers still left standing on the remnants of the old town wall," he said as they approached Zug. "The lake front rests on a soft, s.h.i.+fting substratum of sand, and there is danger, when the water is unusually low, that it may not be able to support the weight of the houses built upon it. One day, over four hundred years ago, part of the wall and some of the towers sank down into the lake with twenty-six houses.

"I have heard my grandmother tell of it, many a time, as she heard the tale from her grandmother. Many lives were lost that day, and there was a great panic. Later in the day, some one saw a cradle floating out in the lake, and when it was drawn in, there lay a baby, cooing and kicking up his heels as happily as if cradle-rides on the water were common occurrences. He was the little son of the town clerk, and grew up to be one of my ancestors. Grandmother was very fond of telling that tale, how the baby smiled on his rescuers, and what a fine, pleasant man he grew up to be, beloved by the whole village.

"It has not been much over a dozen years since another piece of the town sank down into the water. A long stretch of lake front with houses and gardens and barns was sucked under."

"How dreadful!" exclaimed Lloyd, with a s.h.i.+ver. "Let us go somewhere else, Papa Jack," she begged. "I don't want to sleep in a place where the bottom may drop out any minute."

Her father laughed at her fears, and the Major a.s.sured her that they would not take her to a hotel near the water's edge.

"We are going to the other side of the town, to an inn that stands close against the mountainside. The inn-keeper is an old friend of mine, who has lived here all his life."

In spite of all they said to quiet her fears, the Little Colonel was far from feeling comfortable, and took small pleasure at first in going to see the sights of the quaint little town. She was glad when they pushed away from the pier next morning, in the steamboat that was to take them across the lake to the William Tell chapel. She dreaded to return, but a handful of letters from Lloydsboro Valley, and one apiece from Betty and Eugenia that she found awaiting her at the inn, made her forget the s.h.i.+fting sands below her. She read and re-read some of them, answered several, and then began to look for the Major and Hero. They were nowhere to be found.

They went away directly after lunch, her father told her, to the chalet on the mountain back of the town. "You will have to be content with my humble society," he added. "You can't expect to be always escorted by t.i.tled soldiers and heroes."

"Now you're teasin'," said Lloyd, with a playful pout. "But I do wish that the Majah had left Hero. There are so few times left for us to go walkin'

togethah."

"I'm afraid that you look oftener at that dog than you do at the scenery and the foreign sights that you came over here to see," said her father, with a smile. "You can see dogs in Lloydsboro Valley any day."

"But none like Hero," cried the Little Colonel, loyally. "And I _am_ noticin' the sights, Papa Jack. I think there was nevah anything moah beautiful than these mountains, and I just love it heah when it is so sunny and still. Listen to the goat-bells tinklin' away up yondah where that haymakah is climbing with a pack of hay tied on his shouldahs! And how deep and sweet the church-bell sounds down heah in the valley as it tolls across the watah! The lake looks as blue as the sapphires in mothah's necklace. The pictuah it makes for me is one of the loveliest things that my wondah-ball has unrolled. n.o.body could have a bettah birthday present than this trip has been. The only thing about it that has made me unhappy for a minute is that I must leave Hero and nevah see him again. He follows me just as well now as he does his mastah."

The Major came back from his long climb up the mountain, very tired. "It is more than I should have undertaken the first day," he said, "but back here in the scenes of my boyhood I find it hard to realise that I am an old, old man. I'll be rested in the morning, however, ready for whatever comes."

But in the morning he was still much exhausted, and came down-stairs leaning heavily on his cane. He asked to be excused from going up on the Rigi with them. He said that he would stay at home and sit in the sun and rest. They offered to postpone the trip, but he insisted on their going without him. They must be moving on to Zurich, soon, he reminded them, and they might not have another day of such perfect weather, for the excursion.

Hero stood looking from the Major in his chair, to the Little Colonel, standing with her hat and jacket on, ready to start. He could not understand why he and his master should be left behind, and walked from one to the other, wagging his tail and looking up questioningly into their faces.

"Go, if you wish," said the Major, kindly patting his head. "Go and take good care of thy little Christine. Let no harm befall her this day!" The dog bounded away as if glad of the permission, but at the door turned back, and seeing that the Major was not following, picked up his hat in his mouth. Then, carrying it back to the Major, stood looking up into his master's face, wagging his tail.

The Major took the hat and laid it on the table beside him. "No, not to-day, good friend," he said, smiling at the dog's evident wish to have him go also. "You may go without me, this time. Call him, Christine, if you wish his company."

"Come Hero, come on," called Lloyd. "It's all right."

The Major waved his hand toward her, saying, "Go, Hero. Guard her well and bring her back safely. The dear little Christine!" The name was uttered almost in a whisper.

With a quick, short bark, Hero started after the Little Colonel, staying so closely by her side that they entered the train together before the guard could protest. If he could have resisted the appealing look in the Little Colonel's eyes as she threw an arm protectingly around Hero's neck, he could not find it in his heart to refuse the silver that Papa Jack slipped into his hand; so for once the two comrades travelled side by side. Hero sat next the window, and looked out anxiously, as the little mountain engine toiled up the steep ascent, nearer and nearer to the top.

It was noon when they reached the hotel on the summit where they stopped for lunch.

"How solemn it makes you feel to be up so high above all the world!" said Lloyd, in an awed tone, as they walked around that afternoon, and took turns looking through the great telescope, at the valley spread out like a map below them.

"How tiny the lake looks, and the town is like a toy village! I thought that the top of a mountain went up to a fine point like a church steeple, and that there wouldn't be a place to stand on when you got there. Seems that way when you look up at it from the valley. It doesn't seem possible that it is big enough to have hotels built on it and lots and lots of room left ovah. When the Majah said to Hero, in such a solemn way, 'Take good care of thy little Christine, let no harm befall her this day,' I thought maybe he wanted Hero to hold my dress in his teeth, so that I couldn't fall off."

Mrs. Sherman laughed and Mr. Sherman said, "Do you know that you are actually up above the clouds? What seems to be mist, rolling over the valley down there like a dense fog, is really cloud. In a short time we shall not be able to see through it."

"Oh, oh!" cried the Little Colonel, in astonishment. "Really, Papa Jack? I always thought that if I could get up into the clouds I could reach out and touch the moon and the stars. Of co'se I know bettah now, but I should think I'd be neah enough to see them."

"No," answered her father, "that is one of the sad facts of life. No matter how loudly we may cry for the moon, it is hung too high for us to reach, and the 'forget-me-nots of the angels,' as Longfellow calls the stars, are not for hands like ours to pick. But in a very little while I think that we shall see the lightning below us. Those clouds down there are full of rain. They may rise high enough to give us a wetting, so it would be wise for us to hurry back to the hotel."

"It is the strangest thing that evah happened to me in all my life!" said Lloyd a few minutes later, as they sat on the hotel piazza, watching the storm below them. Overhead the summer sun was s.h.i.+ning brightly, but just below the heavy storm clouds rolled, veiling all the valley from sight.

They could see the forked tongues of lightning darting back and forth far below them, and hear the heavy rumble of thunder.

"It seems so wondahful to think that we are safe up above the storm. Look!

There is a rainbow! And there is anothah and anothah! Oh, it is so beautiful, I'm glad it rained!"

The storm, that had lasted for nearly an hour, gradually cleared away till the valley lay spread out before them once more, in the suns.h.i.+ne, green and dripping from the summer shower.

"Well," said the Little Colonel, as they started homeward, "aftah this I'll remembah that no mattah how hard it rains the sun is always s.h.i.+ning somewhere. It nevah hides itself from us. It is the valley that gets behind the clouds, just as if it was puttin' a handkerchief ovah its face when it wanted to cry. It's a comfort to know that the sun keeps s.h.i.+ning, on right on, unchanged."

It was nearly dark when they reached the little inn again in Zug. The narrow streets were wet, and the eaves of the houses still dripping. The landlord came out to meet them with an anxious face. "Your friend, the old Major," he said, in his broken English, "he have not yet return. I fear the storm for him was bad."

"Where did he go?" inquired Mr. Sherman. "I did not know that he intended leaving the hotel at all to-day. He did not seem well."