Page:Arthur Stringer-The Loom of Destiny.djvu/43

The Fly in the Ointment and one stocking was hanging down. But that military band was all he saw or heard. When he got big like Sandy McPherson he was going to be a soldier. He was going to bayonet Indians and cannonade cities, and shoot people dead, right through their stomach and insides, and save the general's life at the end of the battle, and get sixteen gold medals, and then— But the boy, of a sudden, started, paled, and wilted. The music withered out, the soldiers faded. The gleam left his eye, and the martial poise ebbed from his fallen shoulders. Peering at him from the curb, he saw a pair of cold, green, relentless eyes! The glory and the dream were gone!

At the next street he fell away from the lines, cut across five side streets, hobbled home, and waited for the green eyes to come back. After that, he knew what would happen. The green eyes came. When the flogging was over he went up to bed without supper. He did n't care very much if it really was true that he was going to be a bad man and a drunkard as his father had 31