"Without any arms or legs!" said the mother. "No, thank you, I'd rather keep my Golden Treasure whole!"
"Dr-rum! Dr-rum! Dr-rum!" beat the fire drum, and all the drums joined in. War really did come; the soldiers marched out, and the drummer's boy marched with them. "Red-top!" "Golden Treasure!" The mother wept; the father imagined him coming home famous; the state musician thought he would have been better off staying home and studying music.
"Red-top!" the soldiers said, and Peter laughed, but when some of them called him "Foxy" his mouth tightened and he looked straight ahead, as if that name did not concern him. The boy was smart, carefree, and good-humored, and that made him a favorite with his older comrades. Many nights he had to sleep under the open sky, in rain and mist, wet to the skin; but his good humor never failed. His drumsticks beat, "Dr-rum-a-lum! Everybody up!" Yes, he was certainly a born drummer boy.
It was a day of battle; the sun was not yet up, but it was morning; the air was cold and the fight was hot; the morning was foggy, but there was a still heavier fog from gunpowder. Bullets and grenades flew overhead and into heads, bodies, and limbs; still the command was "Forward!" One after another sank to his knees with bleeding temple and pale white face. The little drummer boy's color was still healthy; he wasn't hurt at all. With flashing eyes he watched the regimental dog running before him, and the animal was really happy, as if the whole thing were in fun and they were firing the bullets only to play with him.
"March! Forward, march!" was the command given the drummers; but sometimes orders have to be changed, with good reason, and now the word was, "Retreat!" But the little drummer boy still sounded, "March forward!" not understanding that the orders had been changed. The soldiers obeyed the drum, and it was lucky they did, for the mistake resulted in victory.
Lives and limbs were lost in the battle. The grenade tears away the flesh in bleeding fragments; the grenade sets fire to the straw heap where the poor wounded has dragged himself, to lie forsaken for many hours, forsaken perhaps until dead. 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.
With song and hurrah, and wearing the green leaves of victory, the regiment marched home, when the war was over and peace had come. The regimental dog jumped and ran in wide circles, as though trying to make the journey three times longer.
Days passed and weeks passed, and at last Peter entered his parents' room; he was as brown as a hermit, his eyes bright, and his face as radiant as the sunshine. His mother held him in her arms and kissed his lips, his eyes, his red hair. She had her boy home again; he had no silver decoration on his breast, as his father had dreamed, but then he was unharmed, which his mother had not dreamed. And there was great joy; they laughed and they wept. And Peter embraced the old fire drum. "The old thing is still standing here!" he said. And his father beat a tattoo on it. "There's as much fuss as though there were a big fire in town!" said the drum to itself. "Fire in the roof, fire in the hearts! Golden Treasure! Dr-rum, dr-rum, dr-rum!"