Golden Treasure

It doesn't help to think about it, and yet people do think about it even far away in the peaceful town at home. There the drummer and his wife thought of it, for, of course, Peter was in the war.

It was the day of battle; the sun was not yet up, but it was morning. After a sleepless night spent in talking about their boy, the drummer and his wife had finally fallen asleep, for they knew that wherever he was God's hand was protecting him. And the father dreamed that the war was over, that the soldiers came home, and Peter was wearing a silver cross on his breast; but the mother dreamed that she walked into the church and looked at the painted pictures and the carved angels with the gilded hair and that her own dear boy, her heart's Golden Treasure, stood among the angels clad in white, and sang as sweetly as surely only the angels can sing, and was carried up into the sunshine with them, nodding tenderly to his mother.

"My Golden Treasure!" she cried, and awoke in the same instant. "Now I know that our Lord has taken him!" Then she folded her hands, leaned her head against the cotton bed curtain, and wept. "Where has he found rest? In the wide common grave they dig for so many of the brave dead, or in the deep waters of the marsh? No one will know his grave! No holy words will be read over it!" Silently the Lord's Prayer passed over her lips; her head drooped in fatigue, and she fell asleep.

Days pass by, in wakeful hours and in dreams.

It was toward evening, and a rainbow arched over the battlefield; it touched the edge of the wood and the deep marsh. There is an old saying that where the rainbow touches the earth a treasure lies buried, a golden treasure. And here was one. No one thought about the little drummer except his mother, and that's why she had dreamed of him. Not a hair of his head had been injured, not a single golden hair. "Dr-rum-a-lum, dr-rum-a-lum! There he is, there he is!" would the drum have said, and his mother would have sung, had she seen or dreamed this.