Fred, Mrs. Wilson's little boy, is grieved to be called in when he wants to play soldier. His mother comforts him by showing him his father's bugle and telling him its story. His father's valiant part in the Civil War brought him the bugle from the hands of President Lincoln. Fred, fourteen years later, goes as a soldier in the Spanish War, taking his father's bugle with him. In a desperate charge against a Spanish fort the color bearer is wounded, and Fred seizes the colors and carries them forward. He is about to plant the flag on the captured fort when he is shot and, in his dying moments, sends his father's bugle back to his mother, who places it reverently above the portraits of her husband and her son.