his name means nothing to our children, who see it on the bronze statue set up by the rich John Barclay to commemorate our soldier dead. But John was our first war hero. And when he brought his battle scars home that September night in '61, for hours before the stage drove across Sycamore Creek the boy was filled with a nameless dread that he might be spanked. They carried him on a cot to his mother's house, and put him in the great carved four-poster bed, and in the morning Miss Lucy came and hovered over him, and they talked of Captain Ward to her heart's content, and the boy told Miss Lucy the gossip of the hospital,--that Captain Ward was to be made a major,--and she kissed him and petted him until he was glad none of the boys was around to see the sickening spectacle. And then Miss Lucy and Mrs. Barclay told the child of their plans,--that Miss Lucy was going to war as a nurse, and that Mrs. Barclay was to teach the Sycamore Ridge school during the winter. And in a few weeks John was out of the hero business, working in Culpepper's store after school, and getting used to a limp that stayed with him all his life. The next spring he traded a carbine that he brought home from the army for an Indian pony, and then he began business for himself. He organized the cows of the town into a town herd and took them every morning to pasture on the prairie. All day he rode in the open air, and the town boys came out to play with him, and they explored the cave by his mother's house, and with their sling-shots killed quails and prairie chickens and cooked them, and they played war through the long summer days. But John did not grow as the other boys grew; he remained undersized, and his limp put him at a disadvantage; so he had few fights, but he learned cunning, and got his way by strategy rather than by force--but he always had his way. He was strong; the memory of what he had seen and what he had been that one awful day in the battle made lines on his face; sometimes at night he would wake screaming, when he dreamed he was running away from the surgeon with the bloody knife in his teeth and that the man was going to throw an arm at him. And when he wished to bring Ellen Culpepper to time he would begin in a low terrorful voice, "And I saw--the man--take--a--g-r-e-a-t l-o-n-g knife d-r-i-p-p-i-n-g with r-e-d-b-l-o-o-d out of his t-e-e-t-h and go slish, k-slish," but he never got farther than this, for the girl would begin shaking, and if they were alone, would run to him and grab him and put her hand to his mouth to make him stop. And so his twelfth year passed under the open sky in the sunshine in summer and in winter working after school in town where men were wanting, and where a boy could always find work. He grew brown and lean, and as his voice grew squeaky and he sang alto in the school, he became more and more crafty and masterful. The fact that his mother was the teacher, did not give him more rights in school than other boys, for she was a sensible woman, but it gave him a prestige on the