The sentry paused and, listened, wondering what kind of an animal was coming toward him in the darkness.

“Halt!  Who goes there?” he called, sharply.  The moon, peeping out at that instant, seemed to magnify the size of the great creature in his path.  He thought of the panther and the other wild beast, whatever it was, supposed to be roaming about in the woods.  Then the moon disappeared as suddenly as it had lighted up the scene, and the big paws still pattered on toward him in the darkness, regardless of his repeated challenge.

As the underbrush crackled again with the weight of the great body now almost upon him, the sentry raised his rifle.  A shot rang out, arousing the camp not yet fully settled to sleep.  The echo bounded back from the startled hills, and rolled away over the peaceful farms and orchards, growing fainter and fainter, until only a whisper of it reached the white tent where the Little Colonel lay dreaming.  Then the moon shone out again, and the sentry, going a few paces forward, looked down in horror at the silent form stretched out at his feet.

CHAPTER XVI

“TAPS”

The corporal of the guard went running in the direction of the shot, and here and there an inquiring head, was thrust out of a tent.

“Only a dog shot, sir,” he was heard to call out in answer to some officer’s question, as he passed back down the line.  “Sentry took him for a wild beast escaped from the show.”

Somebody laughed in reply, and the men who had been aroused by the noise turned over and went to sleep.  They did not know that the corporal hurried on down to the guard-house, and that as a result of his report there was a hasty summons for the surgeon.  They did not know that it was Hero whom the sentry bent over, gulping down a feeling in his throat that nearly choked him, as he saw the blood welling out of the dog’s shaggy white breast, and slowly stiffening the silky hair of his beautiful yellow coat.

The surgeon knelt down beside the dog, and as the clouds hid the moon again, he turned the light of his lantern on the wound for a careful examination.

“That was a cracking good shot, Bently,” he said.  “He never knew what stopped him.”

The sentry turned his head away.  “I wouldn’t have been the one to take that dog’s life for anything in the world!” he exclaimed.  “I’d pretty near as soon have killed a man.  It never entered my head that any tame animal would come leaping out of the woods that way at this time of night.  He loomed up nearly as big as a lion when the moon shone out on him.  The next minute it was all dark again, and I heard his big soft feet come pattering through the leaves, straight on toward me.  It flashed over me that it must be one of those escaped circus animals, so I just let loose and blazed away at him.”

The surgeon stood up and looked down at the still form at his feet.  “It’s too bad,” he said.  “He was a grand old dog, the finest St. Bernard I ever saw.  How that little girl loved him!  It will just about break her heart when she finds out what’s happened to him.”