With Keith safely covered up in a hammock, they lingered on the porch long after the stars came out, and the dew lay heavy on the roses.  They were building other air-castles now, to be rebuilt some day, as Jonesy’s home had been; only these were still larger and better.  The older people were planning, too, and all the good that grew out of that quiet evening talk can never be known until that day comes when the King shall read all the names in his Hall of the Shields.

“It has been such a beautiful day,” said Virginia, leaning her head happily against her mother’s shoulder.  Then she started up, suddenly remembering something.  “Oh, papa!” she cried, “let’s end it as they do at the fort, with the bugle-call.  I’ll run and get my old bugle, and you play ‘taps.’”

A few minutes later the silvery notes went floating out on the warm night air, through all the peaceful valley; over the mounds in the little churchyard, wreathed now with their fresh memorial roses; past “The Locusts” where the Little Colonel lay a-dreaming.  Over the woods and fields they floated, until they reached the flag that kept its fluttering vigil over “Fairchance.”

Jonesy sat up in bed to listen.  Many a reveille would sound before his full awakening to all that the two little knights had made possible for him, but the sweet, dim dream of the future that stole into his grateful little heart was an earnest of what was in store for him.  Then the bugle-call, falling through the starlight like a benediction, closed the happy day with its peaceful “Good night.”

THE END.