Flowers offered to take the prince around the camp and

"Say, ma, what is it?" persisted Maude. "Will Louis ever walk?"

"Loui'll never walk," answered the little fellow, shaking his brown curls, and tearing in twain a picture-book which his father had bought him the day before.

"Maude," said Mrs. Kennedy, drawing her daughter to her side, "I must tell somebody or my heart will burst," and laying her head upon the table she wept aloud.

"Don't try, ma, Loui' good," lisped the infant on the floor, while Mrs. Kennedy, drying at last her tears, told to the wondering Maude that Louis was not like other children--that he would probably never have the use of his feet--that a hunch was growing on his back--and he in time would be--she could not say "deformed," and so she said at last--"he'll be forever lame."

Poor little Maude! How all her childish dreams were blasted! She had anticipated so much pleasure in guiding her brother's tottering footsteps, in leading him to school, to church, and everywhere, and she could not have him lame.

"Oh, Louis, Louis!" she cried, winding her arms around his neck, as if she would thus avert the dreaded evil.

Very wonderfully the child looked up into her eyes, and raising his waxen hand he wiped her tears away, saying as he did so, "Loui' love Maude."

With a choking sob Maude kissed her baby brother, then going back to her mother, whose head still lay upon the table, she whispered, "We will love poor Louis all the more, you and I."

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