T 
 
 & 
 
 MARTEN A 
 
 AND OTHEF^STORjES 
 
 OF THE WARJIME 
 
 BY 
 

Marsena 
 
 and Other Stones of the Wartime 
 
Marsena 
 
 and Other Stories of the Wartime 
 
 BY 
 
 HAROLD FREDERIC 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS 
 1894 
 
., 
 
 Copyright, 1894, by 
 Charles Scribncr s Sons 
 
 TROW DIMCTOKY 
 AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 
 NEW YORK 
 
To MY FRIEND 
 EDMUND JUDSON MOFFAT 
 
 M119741 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Marsena, / 
 
 The War Widow, 97 
 
 The Eve of the Fourth, 149 
 
 My Aunt Susan, 185 
 
Marsena 
 

MARSENA 
 
 I. / 
 
 MARSENA PULFORD, what time the vil 
 lage of Octavius knew him, was a slen 
 der and tall man, apparently skirting upon the 
 thirties, with sloping shoulders and a romantic 
 aspect. 
 
 It was not alone his flowing black hair, and 
 his broad shirt-collars turned down after the as 
 certained manner of the British poets, which 
 stamped him in our humble minds as a living 
 brother to " The Corsair," " The Last of the 
 Suliotes," and other heroic personages en 
 graved in the albums and keepsakes of the pe 
 riod. His face, with its darkling eyes and dis 
 tinguished features, conveyed wherever it went 
 an impression of proudly silent melancholy. 
 In those days that is, just before the war 
 one could not look so convincingly and uni 
 formly sad as Marsena did without raising the 
 general presumption of having been crossed in 
 love. We had a respectful feeling, in his case, 
 
Marsena 
 
 that the lady ought to have been named Inez, 
 or at the very least Oriana. 
 
 Although he went to the Presbyterian 
 Church with entire regularity, was never seen 
 in public cave in a long-tailed black coat, and 
 in the win-ter: Wore gloves instead of mittens, 
 the .local conscience had always, I think, sun- 
 ,dry reservations about the moral character of 
 his past . It would not have been reckoned 
 against him, then, that he was obviously poor. 
 We had not learned in those primitive times to 
 measure people by dollar-mark standards. Un 
 der ordinary conditions, too, the fact that he 
 came from New England had indeed lived in 
 Boston must have counted rather in his favor 
 than otherwise. But it was known that he had 
 been an artist, a professional painter of pictures 
 and portraits, and we understood in Octaviiis 
 that this involved acquaintanceship, if not even 
 familiarity, with all sorts of occult and deleteri 
 ous phases of city life. 
 
 Our village held all vice, and especially the 
 vice of other and larger places, in stern rep 
 robation. Yet, though it turned this matter 
 of the newcomer s previous occupation over a 
 good deal in its mind, Marsena carried him 
 self with such a gentle picturesqueness of sub 
 dued sorrow that these suspicions were dis- 
 
 
Marsena 
 
 armed, or, at the worst, only added to the 
 fascinated interest with which Octavius watched 
 his spare and solitary figure upon its streets, and 
 noted the progress of his efforts to find a footing 
 for himself in its social economy. 
 
 It was taken for granted among us that he 
 possessed a fine and well-cultivated mind, to 
 match that thoughtful countenance and that 
 dignified deportment. This assumption con 
 tinued to hold its own in the face of a long se 
 ries of failures in the attempt to draw him out. 
 Almost everybody who was anybody at one 
 time or another tried to tap Marsena s mental 
 reservoirs and all in vain. Beyond the bar 
 est commonplaces of civil conversation he could 
 never be tempted. Once, indeed, he had vol 
 unteered to the Rev. Mr. Bunce the statement 
 that he regarded Washington Allston as in 
 several respects superior to Copley ; but as no 
 one in Octavius knew who these men were, the 
 remark did not help us much. It was quoted 
 frequently, however, as indicating the lofty and 
 recondite nature of the thoughts with which 
 Mr. Pulford occupied his intellect. As it be 
 came more apparent, too, that his reserve must 
 be the outgrowth of some crushing and incur 
 able heart grief, people grew to defer to it and 
 to avoid vexing his silent moods with talk. 
 
 5 
 
Marsena 
 
 Thus, when he had been a resident and 
 neighbor for over two years, though no one 
 knew him at all well, the whole community re 
 garded him with kindly and even respectful 
 emotions, and the girls in particular felt that he 
 was a distinct acquisition to the place. 
 
 I have said that Marsena Pulford was poor. 
 Hardly anybody in Octavius ever knew to 
 what pathetic depths his poverty during the 
 second winter descended. There was a period 
 of several months, in sober truth, during which 
 he fed himself upon six or seven cents a day. 
 As he was too proud to dream of asking credit 
 at the grocer s and butcher s, and walked about 
 more primly erect than ever, meantime, in his 
 frock-coat and gloves, no idea of these priva 
 tions got abroad. And at the end of this long 
 evil winter there came a remarkable spring, 
 which altered in a violent way the fortunes of 
 millions of people among them Marsena. 
 We have to do with events somewhat subse 
 quent to that even, and with the period of Mr. 
 Pulford s prosperity. 
 
 The last discredited strips of snow up in the 
 
 ravines on the hill-sides were melting away ; the 
 
 robins had come again, and were bustling busily 
 
 across between the willows, already in the leaf, 
 
 6 
 
Mar sena 
 
 and the budded elms ; men were going about 
 the village streets without their overcoats, and 
 boys were telling exciting tales about the suck 
 ers in the creek ; our old friend Homer Sage 
 had returned from his winter s sojourn in the 
 county poorhouse at Thessaly, and could be seen 
 daily sitting in the sunshine on the broad stoop 
 of the Excelsior Hotel. It was April of 1862. 
 A whole year had gone by since that sudden 
 and memorable turn in Marsena Pulford s luck. 
 So far from there being signs now of a possible 
 adverse change, this new springtide brought 
 such an increase of good fortune, with its at 
 tendant responsibilities, that Marsena was un 
 able to bear the halcyon burden alone. He 
 took in a partner to help him, and then the 
 firm jointly hired a boy. The partner painted 
 a signboard to mark this double event, in bold 
 red letters of independent form upon a yellow 
 ground : 
 
 PULFORD & SHULL. 
 EMPIRE STATE PORTRAIT ATHENAEUM AND 
 
 STUDIO. 
 War Likenesses at Peace Prices. 
 
 Marsena discouraged the idea of hanging this 
 out on the street ; and, as a compromise, it was 
 finally placed at the end of the operating-room, 
 
 7 
 
Marsena 
 
 where for years thereafter it served for the sit 
 ters to stare at when their skulls had been 
 clasped in the iron head-rest and they had been 
 adjured to look pleasant. A more modest and 
 conventional announcement of the new firm s 
 existence was put outside, and Octavius accept 
 ed it as proof that the liberal arts were at last 
 established within its borders on a firm and 
 lucrative basis. 
 
 The head of the firm was not much altered 
 by this great wave of prosperity. He had been 
 drilled by adversity into such careful ways with 
 his wardrobe that he did not need to get any 
 new clothes. Although the villagers, always 
 kindly, sought now with cordial effusiveness to 
 make him feel one of themselves, and although 
 he accepted all their invitations and showed 
 himself at every public meeting in his capacity 
 as a representative and even prominent citizen, 
 yet the heart of his mystery remained un- 
 plucked. Marsena was too busy in these days 
 to be much upon the streets. When he did 
 appear he still walked alone, slowly and with 
 an air of settled gloom. He saluted such pas 
 sers-by as he knew in stately silence. If they 
 stopped him or joined him in his progress, at the 
 most he would talk sparingly of the weather and 
 the roads. 
 
 8 
 
Marsena 
 
 Neither at the fortnightly sociables of the 
 Ladies Church Mite Society, given in turn at 
 the more important members homes, nor in the 
 more casual social assemblages of the place, did 
 Marsena ever unbend. It was not that he held 
 himself aloof, as some others did, from the 
 simple amusements of the evening. He nev 
 er shrank from bearing his part in "pillow," 
 " clap in and clap out," "post-office," or in 
 whatever other game was to be played, and he 
 went through the kissing penalties and rewards 
 involved without apparent aversion. It was 
 also to be noted, in fairness, that, if any one 
 smiled at him full in the face, he instantly smiled 
 in response. But neither smile nor chaste sa 
 lute served to lift for even the fleeting instant 
 that veil of reserve which hung over him. 
 
 Those who thought that by having Marsena 
 Pulford take their pictures they would get on 
 more intimate terms with him fell into grievous 
 error. He was more sententious and unap 
 proachable in his studio, as he called it, than 
 anywhere else. In the old days, before the 
 partnership, when he did everything him 
 self, his manner in the reception-room down 
 stairs, where he showed samples, gave the prices 
 of frames, and took orders, had no equal for 
 formal frigidity except his subsequent demean- 
 
Marsena 
 
 or in the operating-room upstairs. The girls 
 used to declare that they always emerged from 
 the gallery with " cold shivers all over them." 
 This, however, did not deter them from going 
 again, repeatedly, after the outbreak of the war 
 had started up the universal notion of being 
 photographed. 
 
 When the new partner came in, in this April 
 of 1862, Marsena was able to devote himself 
 exclusively to the technical business of the 
 camera and the dark-room, on the second floor. 
 He signalled this change by wearing now every 
 day an old russet-colored velveteen jacket, 
 which we had never seen before. This made 
 him look even more romantically melancholy 
 and picturesque than ever, and revived some 
 thing of the fascinating curiosity as to his hid 
 den past ; but it did nothing toward thawing 
 the ice-bound shell which somehow came at 
 every point between him and the good-fellow 
 ship of the community. 
 
 The partnership was scarcely a week old 
 when something happened. The new partner, 
 standing behind the little show-case in the 
 reception-room, transacted some preliminary 
 business with two customers who had come in. 
 Then, while the sound of their ascending foot 
 steps was still to be heard on the stairs, he has- 
 10 
 
Marsetia 
 
 tily left his post and entered the little work 
 room at the back of the counter. 
 
 " You couldn t guess in a baker s dozen of 
 tries who s gone upstairs," he said to the boy. 
 Without waiting for even one effort, he added : 
 "It s the Parmalee girl, and Dwight Ransom s 
 with her, and he s got a Lootenant s uniform 
 on, and they re goin to be took together ! " 
 
 "What of it?" asked the unimaginative 
 boy. He was bending over a crock of nitric 
 acid, transferring from it one by one to a tub 
 of water a lot of spoiled glass plates. The 
 sickening fumes from the jar, and the sting of 
 the acid on his cracked skin, still further dimin 
 ished his interest in contemporary sociology. 
 " Well, what of it?" he repeated, sulkily. 
 
 "Oh, I don t know," said the new partner, 
 in a listless, disappointed way. " It seemed 
 kind o curious, that s all. Holdin her head 
 up as high in the air as she does, you wouldn t 
 think she d so much as look at an ordinary 
 fellow like Dwight Ransom." 
 
 " I suppose this is a free country," remarked 
 the boy, rising to rest his back. 
 
 "Oh, my, yes," returned the other; "if 
 
 she s pleased, I m quite agreeable. And I 
 
 don t know, too I daresay she s gettin pretty 
 
 well along. May be she thinks they ain t any 
 
 ii 
 
Marsena 
 
 too much time to lose, and is making a grab 
 at what comes handiest. Still, I should a 
 thought she could a done better than Dwight. 
 I worked with him for a spell once, you 
 know." 
 
 There seemed to be very few people with 
 whom Newton Shull had not at one time or 
 another worked. Apparently there was no 
 craft or calling which he did not know some 
 thing about. The old phrase, "Jack of all 
 trades," must surely have been coined in 
 prophecy for him. He had turned up in Oc- 
 tavius originally, some years before, as the 
 general manager of a " Whaler s Life on the 
 Rolling Deep" show, which was specially 
 adapted for moral exhibitions in connection 
 with church fairs. Calamity, however, had 
 long marked this enterprise for its own, and at 
 our village its career culminated under the 
 auspices of a sheriffs officer. The boat, the 
 harpoons, the panorama sheet and rollers, the 
 whale s jaw, the music-box with its nautical 
 tunes these were sold and dispersed. Newton 
 Shull remained, and began work as a mender 
 of clocks. Incidentally, he cut out stencil- 
 plates for farmers to label their cheese- boxes 
 with, and painted or gilded ornamental designs 
 on chair-backs through perforated paper pat- 
 
 12 
 
Marsena 
 
 terns. For a time he was a maker of children s 
 sleds. In slack seasons he got jobs to help the 
 druggist, the tinsmith, the dentist, or the Town 
 Clerk, and was equally at home with each. He 
 was one of the founders of the Octavius Phil 
 harmonics, and offered to play any instrument 
 they liked, though his preference was for what 
 he called the bull fiddle. He spoke often of 
 having travelled as a bandsman with a circus. 
 We boys believed that he was quite capable of 
 riding a horse bareback as well. 
 
 When Marsena Pulford, then, decided that 
 he must have some help, Newton Shull was 
 obviously the man. How the arrangement 
 came to take the form of a partnership was 
 never explained, save on the conservative vil 
 lage theory that Marsena must have reasoned 
 that a partner would be safer with the cash-box 
 downstairs, while he was taking pictures up 
 stairs, than a mere hired man. More likely it 
 grew out of their temperamental affinity. Shull 
 was also a man of grave and depressed moods 
 (as, indeed, is the case with all who play the 
 bass viol), only his melancholy differed from 
 Marsena s in being of a tirelessly garrulous 
 character. This was not always an advantage. 
 When customers came in, in the afternoon, it 
 was his friendly impulse to engage them in 
 
 n 
 
Marsena 
 
 conversation at such length that frequently the 
 light would fail altogether before they got up 
 stairs. He recognized this tendency as a fault, 
 and manfully combated it leaving the recep 
 tion-room with abruptness at the earliest pos 
 sible moment, and talking to the boy in the 
 work-room instead. 
 
 Mr. Shull was a short, round man, with a 
 beard which was beginning to show gray under 
 the lip. His reception-room manners were ur 
 bane and persuasive to a degree, and he par 
 ticularly excelled in convincing people that the 
 portraits of themselves, which Marsena had sent 
 down to him in the dummy to be dried and 
 varnished, and which they hated vehemently at 
 first sight, were really unique and precious works 
 of art. He had also much success in inducing 
 country folks to despise the cheap ferrotype 
 which they had intended to have made, and 
 to adventure upon the costlier ambrotype, da 
 guerreotype, or even photograph instead. If 
 they did not go away with a family album or an 
 assortment of frames that would come in handy 
 as well, it was no fault of his. 
 
 He made these frames himself, on a bench 
 which he had fitted up in the work-room. Here 
 he constructed show-cases, too, cut out mats and 
 mounts, and did many other things as adjuncts 
 
 14 
 
Marsena 
 
 to the business, which honest Marsena had never 
 dreamed of. 
 
 " Yes," he went on now, " I carried a chain 
 for Dwight the best part o one whole summer, 
 when he was layin levels for that Nedahma Val 
 ley Railroad they were figurin on buildin . 
 Guess they ruther let him in over that job 
 though he paid me fair enough. It ain t much 
 of a business, that surveyin . You spend about 
 half your time in findin out for people the way 
 they could do things if they only had the money 
 to do em, and the other half in settlin miser 
 able farmers squabbles about the boundaries of 
 their land. You ve got to pay a man day s 
 wages for totin round your chain and axe and 
 stakes and, as like as not, you never get even 
 that money back, let alone any pay for yourself. 
 I know something about a good many trades, 
 and I say surveyin is pretty nigh the poorest 
 of email." 
 
 " George Washington was a surveyor," com 
 mented the boy, stooping down to his task once 
 more. 
 
 " Yes," admitted Mr. Shull ; * so he was, for 
 a fact. But then he had influence enough to 
 get government jobs. I don t say there ain t 
 money in that. If Dwight, now, could get a 
 berth on the canal, say, it ud be a horse of 
 
Marsena 
 
 another color. They say, there s some places 
 there that pay as much as $3 a day. That s how 
 George Washington got his start, and, besides, he 
 owned his own house and lot to begin with. 
 But you ll notice that he dropped survey in like 
 a hot potato the minute there was any soldierin 
 to do. He knew which side his bread was but 
 tered on ! " 
 
 " Well," said the boy, slapping the last plates 
 sharply into the tub, " that s just what Dwight s 
 doin too, ain t it ? " 
 
 " Yes," Mr. Shull conceded ; "but it ain t 
 the same thing. You won t find Dwight Ran 
 som gettin to be a general, or much of anything 
 else. He s a nice fellow enough, in his way, 
 of course ; but, somehow, after it s all said and 
 done, there ain t much to him. I always sort 
 o felt, when I was out with him, that by good 
 rights I ought to be working the level and him 
 hammerin in the stakes." 
 
 The boy sniffed audibly as he bore away the 
 acid-jar. Mr. Shull went over to the bench, 
 and took up a chisel with a meditative air. After 
 a moment he lifted his head and listened, with 
 aroused interest written all over his face. 
 
 There had been audible from the floor above, 
 at intervals, the customary noises of the camera 
 being wheeled about to different points under 
 16 
 
Marsena 
 
 the skylight. There came echoing downward 
 now quite other and most unfamiliar sounds 
 the clatter of animated, even gay, conversation, 
 punctuated by frank outbursts of laughter. New 
 ton Shull could hardly believe his ears : but they 
 certainly did tell him that there were three par 
 ties to that merriment overhead. It was so 
 strange that he laid aside the chisel, and tiptoed 
 out into the reception-room, with a notion of 
 listening at the stair door. Then he even more 
 hurriedly ran back again. They were coming 
 downstairs. 
 
 It might have been a whole wedding-party 
 that trooped down the resounding stairway, the 
 voices rising above the clump of Dwight s artil 
 lery boots and sword on step after step, and 
 overflowed into the stuffy little reception-room 
 with a cheerful tumult of babble. The new 
 partner and the boy looked at each other, then 
 directed a joint stare of bewilderment toward 
 the door. 
 
 Julia Parmalee had pushed her way behind 
 the show-case, and stood in the entrance to the 
 work-room, peering about her with an affectation 
 of excited curiosity which she may have thought 
 pretty and playful, but which the boy, at least, 
 held to be absurd. 
 
 She had been talking thirteen to the dozen all 
 
Marsena 
 
 the time. " Oh, I really must see everything ! " 
 she rattled on now. " If I could be trusted 
 alone in the dark-room with you, Mr. Pulford, 
 I surely may be allowed to explore all these 
 minor mysteries. Oh, I see," she added, glanc 
 ing round, and incidentally looking quite 
 through Mr. Shull and the boy, as if they had 
 been transparent : " here s where the frames and 
 the washing are done. How interesting ! " 
 
 What really was interesting was the face of 
 Marsena Pulford, discernible in the shadow over 
 her shoulder. No one in Octavius had ever seen 
 such a beaming smile on his saturnine counte 
 nance before. 
 
 18 
 
II. 
 
 NEXT to the War, the chief topic of inter 
 est and conversation in Octavius at this 
 time was easily Miss Julia Parmalee. 
 
 To begin with, her family had for two gen 
 erations or more been the most important fam 
 ily in the village. When Lafayette stopped 
 here to receive an address of welcome, on his 
 tour through the State in 1825, it was a Par 
 malee who read that address, and who also, as 
 tradition runs, made on his own account sev 
 eral remarks to the hero in the French lan 
 guage, all of which were understood. The 
 elder son of this man has a secure place in his 
 tory. He is the Judge Parmalee whose portrait 
 hangs in the Court House, and whose learned 
 work on " The Treaties of the Tuscarora Na 
 tion," handsomely bound in morocco, used to 
 have a place of honor on the parlor table of 
 every well-to-do and cultured Octavius home. 
 
 This Judge was a banker, too, and did 
 pretty well for himself in a number of other 
 commercial paths. He it was who built the 
 
 19 
 
Marsena 
 
 big Parmalee house, with a stone wall in front 
 and the great garden and orchard stretching 
 back to the next street, and the buff-colored 
 statues on either side of the gravelled walk, 
 where the Second National Dearborn County 
 Bank now stands. The Judge had no chil 
 dren, and, on his widow s death, the property 
 went to his much younger brother Charles, 
 who, from having been as a stripling on some 
 forgotten Governor s staff, bore through life 
 the title of Colonel in the local speech. 
 
 This Colonel Parmalee had a certain dis 
 tinction, too, though not of a martial charac 
 ter. His home was in New York, and for 
 many years Octavius never laid eyes on him. 
 He was understood to occupy a respected place 
 among American men of letters, though exactly 
 what he wrote did not come to our knowledge. 
 It was said that he had been at Brook Farm. 
 I have not been able to find any one who re 
 members him there, but the report is of use as 
 showing the impression of superior intellectual 
 force which he created, even by hearsay, in his 
 native village. When he finally came back to 
 us, to play his part as the head of the Parmalee 
 house, we saw at intervals, when the sun was 
 warm and the sidewalks were dry, the lean and 
 bent figure of an old man, with a very yellow 
 20 
 
Marsena 
 
 face and a sharp-edged brown wig, moving 
 feebly about with a thick gray shawl over his 
 shoulders. His housekeeper was an elderly 
 maiden cousin, who seemed never to come out 
 at all, whether the sun was shining or not. 
 
 There were three or four of the Colonel s 
 daughters all tall, well-made girls, with strik 
 ingly dark skins, and what we took to be gyp- 
 syish faces. Their appearance certainly bore 
 out the rumor that their mother had been an 
 opera - singer some said an Italian, others a 
 lady of Louisiana Creole extraction. No infor 
 mation, except that she was dead, ever came 
 to hand about this person. Her daughters, 
 however, were very much in evidence. They 
 seemed always to wear white dresses, and they 
 were always to be seen somewhere, either on 
 their lawn playing croquet, or in the streets, or 
 at the windows of their house. The conscious 
 ness of their existence pervaded the whole vil 
 lage from morning till night. To watch their 
 goings and comings, and to speculate upon the 
 identity and business of the friends from strange 
 parts who were continually arriving to visit 
 them, grew to be quite the standing occupation 
 of the idler portion of the community. 
 
 Before such of our young people as naturally 
 took the lead in these matters had had time to 
 21 
 
Mar sen a 
 
 decide how best to utilize for the general good 
 this influx of beauty, wealth, and ancestral 
 dignity, the village was startled by an unlooked- 
 for occurrence. A red carpet was spread one 
 forenoon from the curb to the doorway of the 
 Episcopal Church : the old-fashioned Parmalee 
 carriage turned out, with its driver clasping 
 white reins in white cotton gloves ; we had a 
 confused glimpse of the dark Parmalee girls 
 with bouquets in their hands, and dressed 
 rather more in white than usual : and then as 
 tonished Octavius learned that two of them 
 had been married, right there under its very 
 eyes, and had departed with their husbands. 
 It gave an angry twist to the discovery to find 
 that the bridegrooms were both strangers, 
 presumably from New York. 
 
 This episode had the figurative effect of 
 doubling or trebling the height of that stone 
 wall which stood between the Parmalee place 
 and the public. Such budding hopes and 
 projects of intimacy as our villagers may have 
 entertained toward these polished new-comers 
 fell nipped and lifeless on the stroke. Shortly 
 afterward that is to say, in the autumn of 
 1860 the family went away, and the big house 
 was shut up. News came in time that the 
 Colonel was dead : something was said about 
 
 22 
 
Marsena 
 
 another daughter s marriage ; then the war 
 broke out, and gave us other things to think of. 
 We forgot all about the Parmalees. 
 
 It must have been in the last weeks of 1861 
 that our vagrant attention was recalled to the 
 subject by the appearance in the village of an 
 elderly married couple of servants, who took 
 up their quarters in the long empty mansion, 
 and began fitting it once more for habitation. 
 They set all the chimneys smoking, shov 
 elled the garden paths clear of snow, laid in 
 huge supplies of firewood, vegetables, and the 
 like, and turned the whole place inside out in a 
 vigorous convulsion of housecleaning. Their 
 preparations were on such a bold, large scale 
 that we assumed the property must have passed 
 to some voluminous collateral branch of the 
 family, hitherto unknown to us. It came in 
 deed to be stated among us, with an air of cer 
 tainty, that a remote relation named Amos or 
 Erasmus Parmalee, with eight or more children 
 and a numerous adult household, was coming 
 to live there. The legend of this wholly 
 mythical personage had nearly a fortnight s 
 vogue, and reached a point of distinctness 
 where we clearly understood that the coming 
 stranger was a violent secessionist. This 
 seemed to open up a troubled and sinister pros- 
 
 23 
 
Marsena 
 
 pect before loyal Octavius, and there was a 
 good deal of plain talk in the barroom of the 
 Excelsior Hotel as to how this impending 
 crisis should be met. 
 
 It was just after New Year s that our suspense 
 was ended. The new Parmalees came, and 
 Octavius noted with a sort of disappointed sur 
 prise that they turned out to be merely a shorn 
 and trivial remnant of the old Parmalees. 
 They were in fact only a couple of women 
 the elderly maiden cousin who had presided 
 before over the Colonel s household, and the 
 youngest of his daughters, by name Miss Julia. 
 What was more, word was now passed round 
 upon authority that these were the sole remain 
 ing members of the family that there never 
 had been any Amos or Erasmus Parmalee at 
 all. 
 
 The discovery cast the more heroic of our 
 village home-guards into a temporary depres 
 sion. It could hardly have been otherwise, 
 for here were all their fine and strong resolves, 
 their publicly registered vows about scowling at 
 the odious Southern sympathizer in the street, 
 about a " horning " party outside his house at 
 night, about, perhaps, actually riding him on a 
 rail all brought to nothing. A less earnest 
 body of men might have suspected in the situa- 
 
 24 
 
Marsena 
 
 tion some elements of the ridiculous. They let 
 themselves down gently, however, and with a 
 certain dignified sense of consolation that they 
 had, at all events, shown unmistakably how 
 they would have dealt with Amos or Erasmus 
 Parmalee if there had been such a man, and he 
 had moved to Octavius and had ventured to 
 flaunt his rebel sentiments in their outraged 
 faces. 
 
 The village, as a whole, consoled itself on 
 more tangible grounds. It has been stated 
 that Miss Julia Parmalee arrived at the family 
 homestead in early January. Before April had 
 brought the buds and birds, this young woman 
 had become President of the St. Mark s Episco 
 pal Ladies Aid Society ; had organized a local 
 branch of the Sanitary Commission, and as 
 sumed active control of all its executive and 
 clerical functions ; had committed the princi 
 pal people of the community to holding a grand 
 festival and fair in May for the Field Hospital 
 and nurse fund ; had exhibited in the chief 
 store window on Main Street a crayon por 
 trait of her late father, and four water-color 
 drawings of European scenery, all her own 
 handiwork ; had published over her signature, 
 in the Thessaly Batmer of Liberty, an original 
 and spirited poem on " Pale Columbia, Shriek 
 
 25 
 
Mar sen a 
 
 to Arms ! " which no one could read without 
 patriotic thrills; and had been reported, on 
 more or less warrant of appearances, to be en 
 gaged to four different young men of the place. 
 Truly a remarkable young woman ! 
 
 We were only able in a dim kind of way to 
 identify her with one of the group of girls in 
 white dresses whom the village had stared at 
 and studied from a distance two years before. 
 There was no mystery about it, however : she 
 was the youngest of them. They had all looked 
 so much alike, with their precocious growth, 
 their olive skins and foreign features, that we 
 were quite surprised to find now that this one, 
 regarded by herself, must be a great deal 
 younger than the others. Perhaps it was only 
 our rustic shyness which had imputed to the 
 sisterhood, in that earlier experience, the haut 
 eur and icy reserve of the rich and exclusive. 
 We recognized now that if the others were at 
 all like Julia, we had made an absurd mistake. 
 It was impossible that anyone could be freer 
 from arrogance or pretence than Octavius found 
 her to be. There were some, indeed, who 
 deemed her emancipation almost too complete. 
 
 Some there were, too, who denied that she 
 was beautiful, or even very good - looking. 
 There is an old daguerreotype of her as she was 
 26 
 
Marsena 
 
 in those days or rather as she seemed to be to 
 the unskilled sunbeams of the sixties which 
 gives these censorious people the lie direct. It 
 is true that her hair is confined in a net at 
 the sides and drawn stiffly across her temples 
 from the parting. The full throat rises sheer 
 from a flat horizon of striped dress goods, and 
 is offered no relief whatever by the wide fall 
 ing- away collar of coarse lace. And oh ! the 
 strangeness of that frock ! The shoulder seams 
 are to be looked for half-way down the upper 
 arm, the sleeves swell themselves out into shape 
 less bags, the waist front might be the cover of 
 a chair, of a guitar, of the documents in a cor 
 poration suit of anything under the sun rather 
 than the form of a charming girl. Yet, when 
 you look at this thin old picture, all the same, 
 you feel that you understand how it was that 
 Julia Parmalee took the shine out of all the 
 other girls in Octavius. 
 
 This is the likeness of her which always 
 seemed to me the best, but Marsena Pulford 
 made a great many others as well. When you 
 reflect, indeed, that his output of portraits of 
 Julia Parmalee was limited in time to the two 
 months of April and May, their number sug 
 gests that he could hardly have done anything 
 else the while. 
 
Marsena 
 
 The first of this large series of pictures was 
 the one which Marsena liked least. It is true 
 that Julia looked well in it, standing erect, 
 with a proud, fine backward tilt to her dark 
 face and a delicately formed white hand resting 
 gracefully on the back of a chair. But it hap 
 pened that in that chair was seated Lieut. 
 Dwight Ransom, all spick and span in his new 
 uniform, with his big gauntlets and sword hilt 
 brought prominently forward, and with a kind 
 of fatuous smile on his ruddy face, as if he felt 
 the presence of those fair fingers on the chair- 
 back, so teasingly close to his shoulder-strap. 
 
 Marsena, in truth, had a strong impulse to 
 run a destroying thumbnail over the seated fig 
 ure on this plate, when the action of the de 
 veloper began to reveal its outlines under the 
 faint yellow light in the dark-room. Of all the 
 myriad pictures he had washed and drained 
 and nursed in their wet growth over this tank, 
 no other had ever stirred up in his breast such 
 a swift and sharp hostility. He lavished the 
 deadly cyanide upon that portion of the plate, 
 too, with grim unction, and noted the results 
 with a scornful curl on his lip. Like his part 
 ner downstairs, he was wondering what on 
 earth possessed Miss Parmalee to take up with a 
 Dwight Ransom. The frown was still on his 
 28 
 
Mcir sen a 
 
 brow when he opened the dark-room door. 
 Then he started back, flushed red, and labored 
 at an embarrassed smile. Miss Parmalee had 
 left her place, and stood right in front of him, 
 so near that he almost ran against her. She 
 beamed confidently and reassuringly upon him. 
 
 " Oh, I want to come in and see you do 
 all that," she exclaimed, with vivacity. " It 
 didn t occur to me till after you d shut the 
 door, or I d have asked to come in with you. 
 I have the greatest curiosity about all these 
 matters. Oh, it is all done ? That s too bad ! 
 But you can make another one and that I can 
 see from the beginning. You know, I m some 
 thing of an artist myself; I ve taken lessons for 
 years and this all interests me so much ! No, 
 Lieutenant ! " she called out from where she 
 was standing just inside the open door, at 
 sound of her companion s rising " you stay 
 where you are ! There s going to be another, 
 and it s such trouble to get you posed properly. 
 Try and keep exactly as you were ! 
 
 Thus it happened that she stood very close 
 to Marsena, as he took out another plate, 
 flooded it with the sweet-smelling, pungent 
 collodion, and, with furtive precautions against 
 the light, lowered it down into the silver bath. 
 Then he had to shut the door, and she was still 
 29 
 
Mar sen a 
 
 there just beside him. He heard himself pre 
 tending to explain the processes of the films to 
 her, but his mind was concentrated instead upon 
 a suggestion of perfume which she had brought 
 into the reeking little cupboard of a room, and 
 which mingled languorously with the scents of 
 ether and creosote in the air. He had known 
 her by sight for but a couple of months ; he 
 had been introduced to her only a week or so 
 ago, and that in the most casual way ; yet, 
 strange enough, he could feel his hand trem 
 bling as it perfunctorily moved the plate dipper 
 up and down in the bath. 
 
 A gentle voice fell upon the darkness. " Do 
 you know, Mr. Pulford," it murmured, " I 
 felt sure that you were an artist, the very first 
 time I saw you." 
 
 Marsena heaved a long sigh a sigh with a 
 tremulous catch in it, as where sorrow and 
 sweet solace should meet. " I did start out to 
 be one," he answered, "but I I never 
 amounted to anything at it. I tried for years, 
 but I wasn t any good. I had to give it up 
 at last and take to this instead." 
 
 He lifted the plate with caution, bent to 
 look obliquely across its surface, and lowered it 
 again. Then all at once he turned abruptly 
 and faced her. They were so close to each 
 
 30 
 
Marsena 
 
 other that even in the obscure gloom she caught 
 the sudden flash of resolution in his eyes. 
 
 " I ll tell you what I never told any other 
 living soul," he said, beginning with husky 
 eagerness, but lapsing now into grave delib 
 eration of emphasis: " I hate this like 
 pizen ! 
 
 In the silence which followed, Marsena 
 mechanically took the plate from the bath, fas 
 tened it in the holder, and stepped to the door. 
 Then he halted, to prolong for one little instant 
 this tender spell of magic which had stolen over 
 him. Here, in the close darkness beside him, 
 was a sorceress, a siren, who had at a glance 
 read his sore heart s deepest secret at a word 
 drawn the confession of his maimed and em 
 bittered pride. It was like being shut up with 
 an angel, who was also a beautiful woman. 
 Oh, the wonder of it ! Broad sunlit landscapes 
 with Italian skies seemed to be forming them 
 selves before his mind s eye ; his soul sang 
 songs within him. He very nearly dropped 
 the plate-holder. 
 
 The soft, hovering, half touch of a hand 
 upon his arm, the cool, restful tones of the 
 voice in the darkness, came to complete the 
 witchery. 
 
 "I know," she said, "I can sympathize 
 
Marsena 
 
 with you. I also had my dreams, my aspira 
 tions. But you are wrong to think that you 
 have failed. Why, this beautiful work of yours, 
 it all is Art pure Art. No person who really 
 knows could look at it and not see that. No, 
 Mr. Pulford, you do yourself an injustice ; be 
 lieve me, you do. Why, you couldn t help 
 being an artist if you tried ; it s born in you. 
 It shows in everything you do. I saw it from 
 the very first." 
 
 The unmistakable sound of Dwight Ransom s 
 large artillery boots moving on the floor outside 
 intervened here, and Marsena hurriedly opened 
 the door. The Lieutenant glanced with good- 
 natured raillery at the couple who stood re 
 vealed, blinking in the sharp light. 
 
 " One of my legs got asleep," he remarked, 
 by way of explanation, "so I had to get up 
 and stamp around. I began to think," he 
 added, "that you folks were going to set up 
 housekeeping in there, and not come out any 
 more at all." 
 
 " Don t be vulgar, if you please," said Julia 
 Parmalee, with a dash of asperity in what pur 
 ported to be a bantering tone. " We were 
 talking of matters quite beyond you of Art, if 
 you desire to know. Mr. Pulford and I dis 
 cover that we have a great many opinions and 
 
 32 
 
Marsena 
 
 sentiments about Art in common. It is a feel 
 ing that no one can understand unless they 
 have it. 
 
 " It s the same with getting one s leg asleep," 
 said Dwight, " quite the same, I assure you ; " 
 and then came the laughter which Newton Shull 
 heard downstairs. 
 
 33 
 
III. 
 
 A DAY or two later Battery G left Octavius 
 for the seat of war. 
 
 It was not nearly so imposing an event as a 
 good many others which had stirred the com 
 munity during the previous twelve months. 
 There were already two regiments in the field 
 recruited from our end of Dearborn County, 
 and in these at least six or seven companies 
 were made up wholly of Octavius men. There 
 had been big crowds, with speeches and music 
 by the band, to see them off at the old depot. 
 
 When they returned, their short term of ser 
 vice having expired, there were still more fer 
 vent demonstrations, to which zest was added 
 by the knowledge that they were all to enlist 
 again, and then we shortly celebrated their sec 
 ond departure. Some there were who returned 
 in mute and cold finality term of enlistment 
 and life alike cut short and these were borne 
 through our streets with sombre martial pagean 
 try, the long wail of the funeral march reach 
 ing out to include the whole valley side in its 
 
 34 
 
Marsena 
 
 note of lamentation. Besides all this, hardly a 
 week passed that those of us who hung about 
 the station could not see a train full of troops 
 on their way to or from the South* A year of 
 these experiences had left us seasoned veterans 
 in sightseeing, by no means to be fluttered by 
 trifles. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the village did not take 
 Battery G very seriously. To begin with, it 
 mustered only some dozen men, at least so far 
 as our local contribution went, and there was 
 a feeling that we couldn t be expected to go 
 much out of our way for such a paltry number. 
 Then, again, an artillery force was somehow 
 out of joint with our notion of what Octavius 
 should do to help suppress the Rebellion. In 
 fantrymen with muskets we could all under 
 stand could all be, if necessary. Many of 
 the farmer boys round about, too, made good 
 cavalrymen, because they knew both how to ride 
 and how to groom a horse. But in the name 
 of all that was mysterious, why artillerymen ? 
 There had never been a cannon within fifty 
 miles of Octavius ; that is, since the Revolu 
 tion. Certainly none of our citizens had the 
 least idea how to fire one off. These enlisted 
 men of Battery G were no better posted than 
 the rest ; it would take them a three days 
 
 35 
 
Marsena 
 
 journey to reach the point where for the first 
 time they were to see their strange weapon of 
 warfare. This seemed to us rather foolish. 
 
 Moreover, there was a government proclama 
 tion just out, it was said, discontinuing further 
 enlistments and disbanding the recruiting of 
 fices scattered over the North. This appeared 
 to imply that the war was about over, or at 
 least that they had more soldiers already than 
 they knew what to do with. There were some 
 who questioned whether, under these circum 
 stances, it was worth while for Battery G to go 
 at all. 
 
 But go it did, and at the last moment quite 
 a throng of people found themselves gathered 
 at the station to say good- by. A good many 
 of these were the relations and friends of the 
 dozen ordinary recruits, who would not even 
 get their uniforms and swords till they reached 
 Tecumseh. But the larger portion, I should 
 think, had come on account of Lieutenant Ran 
 som. 
 
 Dwight was hail-fellow-well-met with more 
 people within a radius of twenty miles or so, 
 probably, than any other man in the district. 
 He was a good-looking young man, rather 
 stocky in build and deeply sunburned. Through 
 the decent months of the year he was always 
 
 36 
 
Marsena 
 
 out of doors, either tramping over the country 
 with a level over his shoulder, or improving 
 the days with a shotgun or fish pole. At these 
 seasons he was generally to be found of an 
 evening at the barber s shop, where he told 
 more new stories than any one else. When 
 winter came his chief work was in his office, 
 drawing maps and plans. He let his beard 
 grow then, and spent his leisure for the most 
 part playing checkers at the Excelsior Hotel. 
 
 His habitual free-and-easy dress and amiable 
 laxity of manners tended to obscure in the vil 
 lage mind the facts that he came from one of 
 the best families of the section, that he had 
 been through college, and that he had some 
 means of his own. His mother and sisters were 
 very respectable people indeed, and had one 
 of the most expensive pews in the Episcopal 
 Church. It was not observed, however, that 
 D wight ever accompanied them thither or that 
 he devoted much of his time to their society at 
 home. It began to be remarked, here and 
 there, that it was getting to be about time for 
 Dwight Ransom to steady down, if he was ever 
 going to. Although everybody liked him and 
 was glad to see him about, an impression was 
 gradually shaping itself that he never would 
 amount to much. 
 
 37 
 
Mar sen a 
 
 All at once Dwight staggered the public con 
 sciousness by putting on his best clothes one 
 Sunday and going with his folks to church. 
 Those who saw him on the way there could not 
 make it out at all, except on the hypothesis 
 that there had been a death in the family. 
 Those who encountered him upon his return 
 from the sacred edifice, however, found a clue 
 to the mystery ready made. He was walking 
 home with Julia Parmalee. 
 
 There were others whose passionate desire it 
 was to walk home with Julia. They had been 
 enlivening Octavius with public displays of 
 their rivalry for something like two months 
 when Dwight appeared on the scene as a com 
 petitor. Easy - going as he was in ordinary 
 matters, he revealed himself now to be a hust 
 ler in the courts of love. It took him but a 
 single day to drive the teller of the bank from 
 the field. The Principal of the Seminary, a 
 rising young lawyer, and the head bookkeeper 
 at the freight -house, severally went by the board 
 within a fortnight. 
 
 There remained old Dr. Conger s son Emory, 
 who was of a tougher fibre and gave Dwight 
 several added weeks of combat. He enjoyed 
 the advantage of having nothing whatever to 
 do. He possessed, moreover, a remarkably 
 
 38 
 
Marsena 
 
 varied wardrobe and white hands, and loomed 
 unique among the males of our town in his 
 ability to play on the piano. With such aids a 
 young man may go far in a quiet neighborhood, 
 and for a time Emory Conger certainly seemed 
 to be holding his own, if not more. His dis 
 comfiture, when it came, was dramatic in its 
 swift completeness. One forenoon we saw 
 Dwight on the street in a new and resplen 
 dent officer s uniform, and learned that he had 
 been commissioned to raise a battery. That 
 very evening the doctor s son left town, and 
 the news went round that Lieutenant Ransom 
 was engaged to Miss Parmalee. 
 
 An impression prevailed that Dwight would 
 not have objected to let the matter rest there. 
 He had gained his point, and might well regard 
 the battery and the War itself as things which 
 had served their purpose and could now be dis 
 pensed with. No one would have blamed him 
 much for feeling that way about it. 
 
 But this was not Julia s view. She adopted 
 the battery for her own while it was still little 
 more than a name, and swept it forward with 
 such a swirling rush of enthusiasm that the men 
 were all enlisted, the organization settled, and 
 the date of departure for the front sternly fas 
 tened, before anybody could lay a hand to the 
 
 39 
 
Ma r sen a 
 
 brakes. Her St. Mark s Ladies Aid Society 
 presented Dvvight with a sword. Her branch 
 of the Sanitary Commission voted to entertain 
 the battery with a hot meal in the depot yard 
 before it took the train. We have seen how 
 she went and had herself photographed stand 
 ing proudly behind the belted and martial 
 Dwight. After these things it was impossible 
 for Battery G to back out. 
 
 The artillerymen had a bright blue sky and 
 a warm sunlit noontide for their departure. 
 Even the most cynical of those who had come 
 to see them off yielded toward the end to the 
 genial influence of the weather and the impulse 
 of good-fellowship, and joined in the hand 
 shaking at the car windows, and in the volley 
 of cheers which were raised as the train drew 
 slowly out of the yard. 
 
 At this moment the ladies of the Sanitary 
 Commission had to bestir themselves to save the 
 remnant of oranges and sandwiches on their 
 tables from the swooping raid of the youth of 
 Octavius, and, what with administering cuffs 
 and shakings, and keeping their garments out 
 of the way of coffee-cups overturned in the 
 scramble, had no time to watch Julia Parmalee. 
 
 The men gathered in the yard kept her 
 steadily in view, however, as she stood promi- 
 40 
 
Mar sena 
 
 nently in front of the throng, on the top of a 
 baggage truck, and waved her handkerchief un 
 til the train had dwindled into nothingness 
 down the valley. These observers had an eye 
 also on three young men who had got as near 
 this truck as possible. Interest in Dwight and 
 his battery was already giving place to curiosity 
 as to which of these three the bank-teller, the 
 freight-house clerk, or the rising young lawyer 
 would win the chance of helping Julia down 
 off her perch. 
 
 No one was prepared for what really hap 
 pened. Miss Parmalee turned and looked 
 thoughtfully, one might say abstractedly, about 
 her. Somehow she seemed not to see any of 
 the hands which were eagerly uplifted toward 
 her. Instead, her musing gaze roved lightly 
 over the predatory scuffle among the tables, 
 over the ancient depot building, over the as 
 sembled throng of citizens in the background, 
 then wandered nearer, with the pretty inconse 
 quence of a butterfly s flight. Of course it 
 was the farewell to Dwight which had left that 
 soft, rosy flush in her dark, round cheeks. 
 The glance that she was sending idly fluttering 
 here and there did not seem so obviously con 
 nected with the Lieutenant. Of a sudden it 
 halted and went into a smile. 
 
Marsena 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Pulford ! May I trouble you ? " 
 she said in very distinct tones, bending for 
 ward over the edge of the truck, and holding 
 forth two white and most shapely hands. 
 
 Marsena was standing fully six feet away. 
 Like the others, he had been looking at Miss 
 Parmalee, but with no hint of expectation in 
 his eyes. This abrupt summons seemed to sur 
 prise him even more than it did the crowd. 
 He started, changed color, fixed a wistful, al 
 most pleading stare upon the sunlit vacancy 
 just above the head of the enchantress, and con 
 fusedly fumbled with his glove tips, as if to 
 make bare his hands for this great function. 
 Then, straightening himself, he slowly moved 
 toward her like one in a trance. 
 
 The rivals edged out of Marsena s way in 
 dumfounded silence, as if he had been walking 
 in his sleep, and waking were dangerous. He 
 came up, made a formal bow, and lifted his 
 gloved hands in chivalrous pretence of guiding 
 the graceful little jump which brought Miss 
 Parmalee to the ground all with a pale, mo 
 tionless face upon which shone a solemn ec 
 stasy. 
 
 It was Marsena s habit, when out of doors, 
 to carry his right hand in the breast of his 
 frock-coat. As he made an angle of his elbow 
 42 
 
Marsena 
 
 now, from sheer force of custom, Julia promptly 
 took the movement as a proffer of physical sup 
 port, and availed herself of it. Marsena felt 
 himself thrilling from top to toe at the touch 
 of her hand upon his sleeve. If there rose in 
 his mind an awkward consciousness that this 
 sort of thing was unusual in Octavius by day 
 light, the embarrassment was only momentary. 
 He held himself proudly erect, and marched 
 out of the depot yard with Miss Parmalee on 
 his arm. 
 
 As Homer Sage remarked that evening on 
 the stoop of the Excelsior Hotel, this event 
 made the departure of Battery G seem by com 
 parison very small potatoes indeed. 
 
 It was impossible for the twain not to realize 
 that everybody was looking at them, as they 
 made their way up the shady side of the main 
 street. But there is another language of the 
 hands than that taught in deaf-mute schools, 
 and Julia s hand seemed to tell Marsena s arm 
 distinctly that she didn t care a bit. As for 
 him, after that first nervous minute or two, the 
 experience was all joy joy so profound and 
 overwhelming that he could only ponder it in 
 dazzled silence. It is true that Julia was talk 
 ing rattling on with sprightly volubility about 
 all sorts of things but to Marsena her remarks 
 
 43 
 
Miirsena 
 
 no more invited answers than does so much 
 enthralling music. When she stopped for a 
 breath he did not remember what she had been 
 saying. He only knew how he felt. 
 
 " I wish you d come straight to the gallery 
 with me," he said ; " I d like first-rate to make 
 a real picture of you by yourself." 
 
 "Well, I swow ! " remarked Mr. Newton 
 Shall, along in the later afternoon ; "I didn t 
 expect we d make our salt to-day, with Mar- 
 sena away pretty near the whole forenoon, and 
 all the folks down to the depot, and here it 
 turns out way the best day we ve had yet. 
 Actually had to send people away ! " 
 
 " Guess that didn t worry him much," com 
 mented the boy, from where he sat on the 
 work-bench swinging his legs in idleness. 
 
 Mr. Shull nodded his head suggestively. 
 " No, I dare say not," he said. " I kind o 
 l>egrudge not bein an operator myself, when 
 such setters as that come in. She must have 
 been up there a full two hours them two all by 
 themselves and the countrymen loafin around 
 out in the reception-room there, stompin their 
 feet and grindin their teeth, jest tired to death 
 o waitin . It went agin my grain to tell them 
 last two lots they d have to come some other 
 
 44 
 
Marsena 
 
 day; but I dunno perhaps it s jest as well. 
 They ll go and tell it around that we ve got 
 more n we can do and that s good for busi 
 ness. But, all the same, it seemed to me as if 
 he took considerable more time than was really 
 needful. He can turn out four farmers in fifteen 
 minutes, if he puts on a spurt ; and here he was 
 a full two hours, and only five pictures of her to 
 show for it." 
 
 " Six," said the boy. 
 
 " Yes, so it was countin the one with her 
 hair let down," Mr. Shull admitted. " I dun- 
 no whether that one oughtn t to be a little ex- 
 try. I thought o tellin her that it would be, 
 on account of so much hair consumin more 
 chemicals ; but I dunno somehow she sort 
 o looked as if she knew better. Did you ever 
 notice them eyes o hern, how they look as if 
 they could see straight through you, and out on 
 the other side? " 
 
 The boy shook his head. "I don t bother 
 my head about women," he said. " Got some- 
 thin better to do." 
 
 "Guess that s a pretty good plan too," 
 mused Mr. Shull. " Somehow you can t seem 
 to make em out at all. Now, I ve been around 
 a good deal, and yet somehow I don t feel as if 
 I knew much about women. I m bound to say, 
 
 45 
 
Marseua 
 
 though," he added upon reflection, " they 
 know considerable about me." 
 
 " I suppose the first thing we know now," 
 remarked the boy, impatiently changing the 
 subject, " McClellan ll be in Richmond. They 
 say it s liable to happen now any day." 
 
 Newton Shu 11 was but a lukewarm patriot. 
 "They needn t hurry on my account," he 
 said. " It would be kind o mean to have the 
 whole thing fizzle out now, jest when the picture 
 business has begun to amount to something. 
 Why, we must have took in up ards of $11 to 
 day frames and all and two years ago we d 
 a been lucky to get in $3. Let s see : there s 
 two fifties and five thirty-five s, that s $2.75, 
 and the Dutch boy with the drum, that s $3.40, 
 counting the mat, and then there s Miss Par- 
 malee four daguerreotypes, and two negatives, 
 and small frames for each, and two large frames 
 for crayons she s going to do herself, and cord 
 and nails I suppose she ll think them ought 
 to be thrown in " 
 
 " What ! didn t you make her pay in ad 
 vance ?" asked the boy. " I thought every 
 body had to." 
 
 " You got to humor some folks," explained 
 Mr. Shull, with a note of regret in his voice. 
 " These big bugs with plenty o money always 
 46 
 
Marsena 
 
 have to be waited on. It ain t right, but it has 
 to be. Besides, you can always slide on an ex 
 tra quarter or so when you send in the bill. 
 That sort o evens the thing up. Now, in her 
 case, for instance, where we d charge ordinary 
 folks a dollar for two daguerreotypes, we can 
 send her in a bill for " 
 
 Neither Mr. Shtill nor the boy had heard 
 Marsena s descending steps on the staircase, yet 
 at this moment he entered the little work-room 
 and walked across it to the bay window, where 
 the printing was done. There was an unusual 
 degree of abstraction in his face and mien un- 
 nsual even for him and he drummed absent- 
 mindedly on the panes as he stood looking out 
 at the street or the sky, or whatever it was his 
 listless gaze beheld. 
 
 " How much do you think it ud be safe 
 to stick Miss Parmalee apiece for them da 
 guerreotypes ? asked Newton Shull of his 
 partner. 
 
 Marsena turned and stared for a moment as 
 if he doubted having heard aright. Then he 
 made curt answer : " She is not to be charged 
 anything at all. They were made for her as 
 presents." 
 
 It was the other partner s turn to stare. 
 
 " Well, of course if you say it s all right," 
 
 47 
 
Marsena 
 
 he managed to get out, " but I suppose on the 
 
 frames we can " 
 
 The frames are presents, too, said Mar 
 sena, with decision. 
 
IV. 
 
 DURING the fortnight or three weeks fol 
 lowing the departure of Battery G it be 
 came clear to everyone that the War was as 
 good as over. It had lasted already a whole 
 year, but now the end was obviously at hand. 
 The Union Army had the Rebels cooped up 
 in Yorktown the identical place where the 
 British had been compelled to surrender at the 
 close of the Revolution and it was impossible 
 that they should get away. The very coincid 
 ence of locality was enough in itself to con 
 vince the most skeptical. 
 
 We read that Fitz John Porter had a balloon 
 fastened by a rope, in which he daily went up 
 and took a look through his field-glasses at the 
 Rebels, all miserably huddled together in their 
 trap, awaiting their doom. Our soldiers wrote 
 home now that final victory could only be a 
 matter of a few weeks, or months at the most. 
 Some of them said they would surely be home 
 by haying time. Their letters no longer dwelt 
 
 49 
 
Mar sen a 
 
 upon battles, or the prospect of battles, but 
 gossiped about the jealousies and quarrels 
 among our generals, who seemed to dislike 
 one another much more than they did the 
 common enemy, and told us long and quite in 
 credible tales about the mud in Virginia. No 
 soldier s letter that spring was complete with 
 out a chapter on the mud. There were stories 
 about mules and their contraband drivers being 
 bodily sunk out of sight in these weltering seas 
 of mire, and of new boots being made for the 
 officers to come up to their armpits, which we 
 hardly knew whether to believe or not. But 
 about the fact that peace was practically within 
 view there could be no doubt. 
 
 Under the influence of this mood, Miss Par- 
 malee s ambitious project for a grand fair and 
 festival in aid of the Field Hospital and Nurse 
 Fund naturally languished. If the War was 
 coming to a close so soon, there could be no 
 use in going to so much worry and trouble, 
 to say nothing of the expense. 
 
 Miss Julia seemed to take this view of it 
 herself. She ceased active preparations for the 
 fair, and printed in the Thessaly Banner of 
 Liberty a beautiful poem over her own name 
 entitled "The Dove-like Dawn of White- 
 winged Peace." She also got herself some 
 
 50 
 
Marsena 
 
 new and summery dresses, of gay tints and very 
 fashionable form, and went to be photographed 
 in each. Her almost daily presence at the 
 gallery came, indeed, to be a leading topic of 
 conversation in Octavius. Some said that she 
 was taking lessons of Marsena learning to make 
 photographs but others put a different con 
 struction on the matter and winked as they did 
 so. 
 
 As for Marsena, he moved about the streets 
 these days with his head among the stars, in a 
 state of rapt and reverent exaltation. He had 
 never been what might be called a talker, but 
 now it was as much as the best of us could do 
 to get any kind of word from him. He did 
 not seem to talk to Julia any more than to the 
 general public, but just luxuriated with a dumb 
 solemnity of joy in her company, sitting some 
 times for hours beside her on the piazza of the 
 Parmalee house, or focusing her pretty image 
 with silent delight on the ground glass of his 
 best camera day after day, or walking with her, 
 arm in arm, to the Episcopal church on Sun 
 days. He had always been a Presbyterian be 
 fore, but now he bore himself in the prominent 
 Parmalee pew at St. Mark s with stately correct 
 ness, rising, kneeling, seating himself, just as 
 the others did, and helping Miss Julia hold her 
 
Marsena 
 
 Prayer Book with an air of having known the 
 ritual from childhood. 
 
 No doubt a good many people felt that all 
 this was rough on the absent Dwight Ransom, 
 and probably some of them talked openly about 
 it ; but interest in this aspect of the case was 
 swallowed up in the larger attention now given 
 to Marsena Pulford himself. It began to be 
 reported that he really came of an extraordina 
 rily good family in New England, and that an 
 uncle of his had been in Congress. The legend 
 that he had means of his own did not take 
 much root, but it was admitted that he must 
 now be simply coining money. Some went so 
 far as to estimate his annual profits as high as 
 $1,500, which sounded to the average Octa- 
 vian like a dream. It was commonly under 
 stood that he had abandoned an earlier inten 
 tion to buy a house and lot of his own. and 
 this clearly seemed to show that he counted 
 upon going presently to live in the Parmalee 
 mansion. People speculated with idle curiosity 
 as to the likelihood of this coming to pass l>e- 
 fore the War ended and Battery G returned 
 home. 
 
 Suddenly great and stirring news fell upon the 
 startled North and set Octavius thrilling with 
 excitement, along with every other community 
 
 52 
 
Marsena 
 
 far and near. It was in the first week or so of 
 May that the surprise came ; the Rebels, whom 
 we had supposed to be securely locked up in 
 Yorktown, with no alternative save starvation 
 or surrender, decided not to remain there any 
 longer, and accordingly marched comfortably 
 off in the direction of Richmond ! 
 
 Quick upon the heels of this came tidings that 
 the Union Army was in pursuit, and that there 
 had been savage fighting with the Confederate 
 rear-guard at Williamsburg. The papers said 
 that the War, so far from ending, must now be 
 fought all over again. The marvellous story of 
 the Monitor and Merrimac sent our men folks 
 into a frenzy of patriotic fervor. Our women 
 learned with sinking hearts that the new Corps 
 which included our Dearborn County regiments 
 was to bear the brunt of the conflict in this 
 changed order of things. We were all off again 
 in a hysterical whirl of emotions now pride, 
 now horror, now bitter wrath on top. 
 
 In the middle of all this the famous Field 
 Hospital and Nurse Fund Fair was held. The 
 project had slumbered the while people thought 
 peace so near. It sprang up with renewed and 
 vigorous life the moment the echo of those guns 
 at Williamsburg reached our ears. And of course 
 at its head was Julia Parmalee. 
 
 53 
 
Marsena 
 
 It would take a long time and a powerful ran 
 sacking of memory to catalogue the remarkable 
 things which this active young woman did tow 
 ard making that fair the success it undoubtedly 
 was. Even more notable were the things which 
 she coaxed, argued, or shamed other folks into 
 doing for it. Years afterward there were old 
 people who would tell you. that Octavius had 
 never been quite the same place since. 
 
 For one thing, instead of the Fireman s Hall, 
 with its dingy aspect and somewhat rowdyish 
 associations, the fair was held in the Court 
 House, and we all understood that MisS Julia 
 had been able to secure this favor on account of 
 her late uncle, the Judge, when anyone else 
 would have been refused. It was tinder her tire 
 less and ubiquitous supervision that this solemn 
 old interior now took on a gay and festal face. 
 Under the inspiration of her glance the members 
 of the Fire Company and the Alert Baseball Club 
 vied with each other in borrowing flags and 
 hanging them from the most inaccessible and 
 adventurous points. The rivalry between the 
 local Freemasons and Odd Fellows was utilized 
 to build temporary booths at the sides and down 
 the centre on a floor laid over the benches by 
 the Carpenters Benevolent Association. The 
 ladies organizations of the various churches, out 
 
 54 
 
Marsena 
 
 of devotion to the Union and jealousy of one 
 another, did all the rest. 
 
 At the sides were the stalls for the sale of 
 useful household articles, and sedate and elderly 
 matrons found themselves now dragged from the 
 mild obscurity of homes where they did their 
 own work, and thrust forward to preside over the 
 sales in these booths, while thrifty, not to say 
 penurious, merchants came and stood around 
 and regarded with amazement the merchandise 
 which they had been wheedled into contributing 
 gratis out of their own stores. The suggestion 
 that they should now buy it back again paral 
 yzed their faculties, and imparted a distinct re 
 straint to the festivities at the sides of the big 
 court-room. 
 
 In the centre was a double row of booths for 
 the sale of articles not so strictly useful, and 
 here the young people congregated. All the 
 girls of Octavius seemed to have been gathered 
 here the pretty ones and the plain ones, the 
 saucy ones and the shy, the maidens who were 
 "getting along" and the damsels not yet out 
 of their teens. Stiff, spreading crinolines 
 brushed juvenile pantalettes, and the dark head 
 of long, shaving-like ringlets contrasted itself 
 with the bold waterfall of blonde hair. These 
 girls did not know one another very well, save 
 
 55 
 
Mar sen a 
 
 by little groups formed around the nucleus of a 
 church association, and very few of them knew 
 Miss Parmalee at all, except, of course, by sight. 
 But now, astonishing to relate, she recognized 
 them by name as old friends, shook hands 
 warmly right and left, and blithely set them all 
 to work and at their ease. The idea of selling 
 things to young men abashed them by its weird 
 and unmaidenly novelty. She showed them how 
 it should be done bringing forward for the 
 purpose a sheepishly obstinate drug-store clerk, 
 and publicly dragooning him into paying eighty 
 cents for a leather dog-collar, despite his pro 
 tests that he had no dog and hated the whole 
 canine species, and could get such a strap as 
 that anywhere for fifteen cents all amid the 
 greatest merriment. Her influence was so per 
 vasive, indeed, that even the nicest girls soon 
 got into a state of giggling familiarity with com 
 parative strangers, which gave their elders con 
 cern, and which in some cases it took many 
 months to straighten out again. But for the 
 time all was sparkling gaiety. On the second 
 and final evening, after the oyster supper, the 
 Philharmonics played and a choir of girls sang 
 patriotic songs. Then the gas was turned down 
 and the stereopticon show began. 
 
 As the last concerted achievement of the 
 
 56 
 
Marsena 
 
 firm of Pulford & Shull, this magic-lantern per 
 formance is still remembered. The idea of 
 it, of course, was Julia s. She suggested it to 
 Marsena, and he gladly volunteered to make 
 any number of positive plates from appropriate 
 pictures and portraits for the purpose. Then 
 she pressed Newton Shull into the service to 
 get a stereopticon on hire, to rig up the plat 
 form and canvas for it, and finally to consent 
 to quit his post among the Philharmonics when 
 the music ceased, and to go off up into the 
 gallery to work the slides. He also, during 
 Marsena s absence one day, made a slide on 
 his own account. 
 
 Mr. Shull had not taken very kindly to the 
 idea when Miss Julia first broached it to him. 
 
 "No, I don t know as I ever worked a 
 stereopticon," he said, striving to look with 
 cold placidity into the winsome and beaming 
 smile with which she confronted him one day 
 out in the reception-room. She had never 
 smiled at him before or pretended even to know 
 his name. " I guess you d better hire a man 
 up from Tecumseh to bring the machine and 
 run it himself." 
 
 " But you can do it so much better, my 
 dear Mr. Shull ! " she urged. " You do every 
 thing so much better ! Mr. Pulford often says 
 
 57 
 
Marsena 
 
 that he never knew such a handy man in all 
 his life. It seems that there is literally nothing 
 that you can t do except perhaps refuse a 
 lady a great personal favor." 
 
 Miss Julia put this last so delicately, and 
 with such a pretty little arch nod of the head 
 and turn of the eyes, that Newton Shull sur 
 rendered at discretion. He promised every 
 thing on the spot, and he kept his word. In 
 fact, he more than kept it. 
 
 The great evening came, as I have said, and 
 when the lights were turned down to ex 
 tinction s verge those who were nearest the 
 front could distinguish the vacant chair which 
 Mr. Shull had been occupying, with his bass 
 viol leaning against it. They whispered from 
 one to another that he had gone up in the 
 gallery to work this new-fangled contrivance. 
 Then came a flashing broad disk of light on the 
 screen above the judges bench, a spreading 
 sibilant murmur of interest, and the show be 
 gan. 
 
 It was an oddly limited collection of pictures 
 mainly thin and feeble copies of newspaper 
 engravings, photographic portraits, and ideal 
 heads from the magazines. Winfield Scott 
 followed in the wake of Kossuth, and Gari 
 baldi led the way for John C. Fremont and 
 
 58 
 
Marsena 
 
 Lola Montez. There was applause for the 
 long, homely, familiar face of Lincoln, and a 
 derisive snicker for the likeness of Jeff Davis 
 turned upside down. Then came local heroes 
 from the district round about Gen. Boyce, 
 Col. Mclntyre, and young Adjt. Heron, who 
 had died so bravely at Ball s Bluff mixed with 
 some landscapes and statuary, and a comic cari 
 cature or two. The rapt assemblage murmured 
 its recognitions, sighed its deeper emotions, 
 chuckled over the funny plates deeming it all 
 a most delightful entertainment. From time 
 to time there were long hitches, marked by a 
 curious spluttering noise above, and the abor 
 tive flashes of meaningless light on the screen/ 
 and the explanation was passed about in under 
 tones that Mr. Shull was having difficulties 
 with the machine. 
 
 It was after the longest of these delays that, 
 all at once, an extremely vivid picture was 
 jerked suddenly upon the canvas, and, after a 
 few preliminary twitches, settled in place to 
 stare us out of countenance. There was no 
 room for mistake. It was the portrait of Miss 
 Julia Parmalee standing proudly erect in statu 
 esque posture, with one hand resting on the 
 back of a chair, and seated in this chair was 
 Lieut. Dwight Ransom, smiling amiably. 
 
 59 
 
Mar sena 
 
 There was a moment s deadly hush, while 
 we gazed at this unlooked-for apparition. It 
 seemed, upon examination, as if there was a 
 certain irony in the Lieutenant s grin. Some 
 one in the darkness emitted an abrupt snort of 
 amusement, and a general titter arose, hung in 
 the air for an awkward instant, and then was 
 drowned by a generous burst of applause. 
 While the people were still clapping their 
 hands the picture was withdrawn from the 
 screen, and we heard Newton Shull call down 
 from his perch in the gallery : 
 
 * You kin turn up the lights now. They 
 ain t no more to this." 
 
 In another minute we were sitting once again 
 in the broad glare of the gaslight, blinking 
 confusedly at one another, and with a dazed 
 consciousness that something rather embarrass 
 ing had happened. The boldest of us began 
 to steal glances across to where Miss Parmalee 
 and Marsena sat, just in front of the steps to 
 the bench. 
 
 What Miss Julia felt was beyond guessing, 
 but there she was, at any rate, bending over 
 and talking vivaciously, all smiles and collected 
 nerves, to a lady two seats removed. But Mar 
 sena displayed no such presence of mind. He 
 sat bolt upright, with an extraordinarily white 
 60 
 
Mar sena 
 
 face and a drooping jaw, staring fixedly at the 
 empty canvas on the wall before him. Such 
 absolute astonishment was never depicted on 
 human visage before. 
 
 Perhaps from native inability to mind his 
 own business, perhaps with a kindly view of 
 saving an anxious situation, the Baptist minister 
 rose now to his feet, coughed loudly to secure 
 attention, and began some florid remarks about 
 the success of the fair, the especial beauty of 
 the lantern exhibition they had just witnessed, 
 and the felicitous way in which it had termi 
 nated with a portrait of the beautiful and dis 
 tinguished young lady to whose genius and 
 unwearying efforts they were all so deeply 
 indebted. In these times of national travail 
 and distress, he said, there was a peculiar satis 
 faction in seeing her portrait accompanied by 
 that of one of the courageous and noble young 
 men who had sprung to the defence of their 
 country. The poet had averred, he continued, 
 that none but the brave deserved the fair, and 
 so on, and so on. 
 
 Miss Julia listened to it all with her head on 
 one side and a modestly deprecatory half-smile 
 on her face. At its finish she rose, turned to 
 face everybody, made a pert, laughing little 
 bow, and sat down again, apparently all happi- 
 61 
 
Marsena 
 
 ness. But it was noted that Marsena did not 
 take his pained and fascinated gaze from that 
 mocking white screen on the wall straight in 
 front. 
 
 They walked in silence that evening to al 
 most the gate of the Parmalee mansion. Julia 
 had taken his arm, as usual ; but Marsena could 
 not but feel that the touch was different. It 
 was in the nature of a relief to him that for 
 once she did not talk. His heart was too sore, 
 his brain too bewildered, for the task of even 
 a one-sided conversation, such as theirs was 
 wont to be. Then all at once the silence grew 
 terrible to him a weight to be lifted at all 
 hazards on the instant. 
 
 " Shull must have made that last slide him 
 self," he blurted out. " I never dreamt of its 
 being made." 
 
 " I thought it came out very well indeed," 
 remarked Miss Parmalee, " especially his uni 
 form. You could quite see the eagles on the 
 buttons. You must thank Mr. Shull for me." 
 
 "I ll speak to him in the morning about 
 it," said Marsena, with gloomy emphasis. He 
 sighed, bit his lip, fixed an intent gaze upon 
 the big dark bulk of the Parmalee house loom 
 ing before them, and spoke again. " There s 
 62 
 
Marsena 
 
 something that I want to say to you, though, 
 that won t keep till morning." 
 
 A tiny movement of the hand on his arm 
 was the only response. 
 
 "I see now," Marsena went on, "that I 
 ain t been making any real headway with you 
 at all. I thought well I don t know as I 
 know just what I did think but I guess now 
 that it was a mistake." 
 
 Yes there was a distinct flutter of the little 
 gloved hand. It put a wild thought into Mar 
 sena s head. 
 
 " Would you," he began boldly " I never 
 spoke of it before but would you that is, if 
 I was to enlist and go to the War would 
 that make any difference ? you know what I 
 mean. 
 
 She looked up at him with magnetic sweet 
 ness in her dusky, shadowed glance. " How 
 can any able-bodied young patriot hesitate at 
 such a time as this? " she made answer, and 
 pressed his arm. 
 
V. 
 
 IT was in this same May, not more than a 
 week after the momentous episode of the 
 Field Hospital and Nurse Fund Fair, that Mar- 
 sena Pulford went off to the War. 
 
 There was no ostentation about his depart 
 ure. He had indeed been gone for a day or 
 two before it became known in Octavius that 
 his absence from town meant that he had en 
 listed down at Tecumseh. We learned that he 
 had started as a common private, but every 
 body made sure that a man of his distinguished 
 appearance and deportment would speedily get 
 a commission. Everybody, too, had a theory 
 of some sort as to the motives for this sudden 
 and strange behavior of his. These theories 
 agreed in linking Miss Parmalee with the affair, 
 but there were hopeless divergencies as to the 
 exact part she played in it. One party held 
 that Marsena had been driven to seek death on 
 the tented field by despair at having been 
 given the "mitten." Others insisted that he 
 had not been given the " mitten " at all, but 
 
 64 
 
Marsena 
 
 had gone because her well - known martial 
 ardor made the sacrifice of her betrothed neces 
 sary to her peace of mind. A minority took 
 the view which Homer Sage promulgated from 
 his tilted-back chair on the stoop of the Excel 
 sior Hotel. 
 
 "They ain t nothin settled betwixt em, M 
 this student of human nature declared. " She 
 jest dared him to go, and he went. And 
 if you only give her time, she ll have the 
 whole male unmarried population of Octavius, 
 between the ages of sixteen and sixty, down 
 there wallerin around in the Virginny swamps, 
 feedin the muskeeters and makin a bid for 
 glory." 
 
 But in a few days there came the terribly ex 
 citing news of Seven Pines and Fair Oaks 
 that first great combat of the revived war in the 
 East and we ceased to bother our heads about 
 the photographer and his love. The enlisting 
 fever sprang up again, and our young men be 
 gan to make their way by dozens and scores to 
 the recruiting office at Tecumseh. There were 
 more farewells, more tears and prayers, not to 
 mention several funerals of soldiers killed at 
 Hanover Court House, where that Fifth Corps, 
 which contained most of our volunteers, had its 
 first spring smell of blood. And soon there - 
 
 65 
 
Marsena 
 
 after burst upon us the awful sustained carnage 
 of the Seven Days fighting, which drove out of 
 our minds even the recollection that Miss Julia 
 Parmalee herself had volunteered for active ser 
 vice in the Sanitary Commission, and gone 
 South to take up her work. 
 
 And so July 3d came, bringing with it the 
 bare tidings of that closing desperate battle of 
 the week at Malvern Hill, and the movement of 
 what was left of the Army of the Potomac to 
 a safe resting place on the James River. We 
 were beginning to get the details of local inter 
 est by the slow single wire from Thessaly, and 
 sickening enough they were. The village 
 streets were filled with silent, horror-stricken 
 crowds. The whole community seemed to 
 have but a single face, repeated upon the 
 mental vision at every step a terrible face 
 with distended, empty eyes, riven brows, and 
 an open drawn mouth like the old Greek mask 
 of tragedy. 
 
 " I swan ! I don t know whether to keep 
 open to-morrow or not," said Mr. Newton 
 Shtill, for perhaps the twentieth time, as he 
 wandered once again from the reception-room 
 into the little workshop behind. " In some 
 ways it s kind of agin my principles to work 
 on Independence Day but, then again, if I 
 66 
 
Mar sena 
 
 thought there was likely to be a good many 
 farmers comin into town " 
 
 " They ll be plenty of em coming in," said 
 the boy, over his shoulder, "but they ll steer 
 clear of here. 
 
 " I m fraid so," sighed Mr. Shull. He ad 
 vanced a listless step or two and gazed with de 
 jected apathy at the newspaper map tacked to 
 the wall, on which the boy was making red and 
 blue crosses with a colored pencil. "I don t 
 see much good o that," he said. " Still, of 
 course, if it eases your mind any 
 
 "That s where the fightin finished," ob 
 served the boy, pointing to a big mark on the 
 map. " That s Malvern Hill there, and here 
 down where the river takes the big bend that s 
 Harrison s Landing, where the army s movin 
 to. See them seven rings? Them are the 
 battles, one each day, as our men forced their 
 way down through the Chickahominy swamps, 
 beginnin up in the corner with Beaver Dam 
 Creek. If the map was a little higher it ud 
 show the Pamunkey, where they started from. 
 My uncle says that the whole mistake was in 
 ever abandoning the Pamunkey. 
 
 " Pa-monkey or Ma-monkey," said Newton 
 Shull, gloomily, "it wouldn t be no comfort to 
 me to see it, even on a map. It s jest taken and 
 
 67 
 
Marsena 
 
 busted me and my business here clean as a 
 whistle. We ain t paid expenses two days in a 
 week sence Marseny went. Here I ve got now 
 so t I kin take a plain, everyday sort o picture 
 jest about as well as he did a little streakid 
 sometimes, perhaps, and more or less pinholes 
 but still pretty middlin fair on an average, 
 and then, darn my buttons if they don t all 
 stop comin . It positively don t seem to me as 
 if there was a single human bein in Dearborn 
 County that ud have his picture took as a gift. 
 All they want now is to have enlargements 
 thrown up from little likenesses of their men 
 folks that have been killed, and them I don t 
 know how to do no more n a babe unborn." 
 
 " You knew well enough how to make that 
 stereopticon slide," remarked the boy with se 
 verity. 
 
 " Yes," mused Mr. Shull, "that darned 
 thing that made a peck o trouble, didn t it ? 
 I dun no what on earth possessed me ; I kind 
 o seemed to git the notion of doin it into my 
 head all to once t, and somehow I never dreamt 
 of its rilin Marseny so; you couldn t tell 
 that a man ud be so blamed touchy as all that, 
 could you ? and I dunno, like as not he d a 
 enlisted any how. But I do wish he d showed 
 me how to make them pesky enlargements afore 
 
Marsena 
 
 he went. If I d only seen him do one, even 
 once, I could a picked the thing up, but I 
 never did. It s just my luck ! " 
 
 " Say," said the boy, looking up with a sud 
 den thought, "do you know what my mother 
 heard yesterday ? It s all over the place that 
 before Marseny left he went to Squire Scher- 
 merhorn s and made his will, and left every 
 thing he s got to the Parmalee girl, in case he 
 gits killed. So, if anything happens she d be 
 your partner, wouldn t she? " 
 
 Newton Shull stared with surprise. " Well, 
 now, that beats creation," he said, after a lit 
 tle. " Somehow you know that never occurred 
 to me, and yet, of course, that ud be jest his 
 style." 
 
 "Yes, sir," repeated the other, " they say 
 he s left her every identical thing." 
 
 " It s allus that way in this world," reflected 
 Mr. Shull, sadly. " Them that don t need it 
 one solitary atom, they re eternally gettin 
 every mortal thing left to em. Why, that 
 girl s so rich already she don t know what to 
 do with her money. If I was her, I bet a 
 cooky I wouldn t go pikin off to the battle 
 field, doin nursin and tyin on bandages, and 
 fannin men while they were gittin their legs 
 cut off. No, sirree; I d let the Sanitary Com- 
 69 
 
Marsena 
 
 mission scuffle along without me, I can tell 
 you ! A boss and buggy and a fust-class two- 
 dollar-a-day hotel, and goin to the theatre jest 
 when I took the notion that d be good 
 enough for me." 
 
 " I suppose the sign then ud be Shull & 
 Parmalee, wouldn t it ? " queried the boy. 
 
 "Well, now, I ain t so sure about that," 
 said Mr. Shull, thoughtfully. " It might be 
 that, bein a woman, her name ud come first, 
 out o politeness. But then, of course, most 
 prob ly she d want to sell out instid, and then 
 I d make the valuation, and she could give me 
 time. Or she might want to stay in, only on 
 the quiet, you know what they call a silent 
 partner." 
 
 " Nobody d ever call her a silent partner," 
 observed the boy. " She couldn t keep still if 
 she tried." 
 
 "I wouldn t care how much she talked," 
 said Mr. Shull, " if she only put enough more 
 money into the business. I didn t take much 
 to her, somehow, along at fust, but the more 
 I ve seen of her the more I like the cut of her 
 jib. She s got go in her, that gal has; she 
 jest figures out what she wants, and then she 
 sails in and gits it. It don t matter who the 
 man is, she jest takes and winds him round her 
 70 
 
Marsena 
 
 little finger. Why, Marseny, here, he wasn t 
 no more than so much putty in her hands. I 
 lost all patience with him. You wouldn t 
 catch me being run by a woman that way. 
 
 " So far s I could see," suggested the other, 
 "she seemed to git pretty much all she 
 wanted out of you, too. You were dancin* 
 round, helpin her at the fair there, like a hen 
 on a hot griddle." 
 
 "It was all on his account," put in the 
 partner, with emphasis. " Jest to please him ; 
 he seemed so much sot on her bein humored 
 in everything. I did feel kind o foolish about 
 it at the time I never somehow believed much 
 in doin work for nothin but maybe it was 
 all for the best. If what they say about his 
 makin a will is true, why it won t do me no 
 harm to be on good terms with her in case 
 in case " 
 
 Mr. Shull was standing at the window, and 
 his idle gaze had been vaguely taking in the 
 general prospect of the street below the while 
 he spoke. At this moment he discovered that 
 some one on the opposite sidewalk was making 
 vehement gestures to attract his attention. He 
 lifted the sash and put his head out to listen, 
 but the message came across loud enough for 
 even the boy inside to hear. 
 
M.irsena 
 
 "You d better hurry round to the telegraph 
 office!" this hoarse, anonymous voice cried. 
 "Malvern Hill list is a-comin in and they 
 say your pardner s been shot shot bad, too ! " 
 
 Newton Shull drew in his head and stood for 
 some moments staring blankly at the map on 
 the wall. " Well, I swan ! " he began, with 
 confused hesitation, " I dunno it seems to me 
 well, yes, I guess prob ly the best thing 11 
 be for her to put more money into the business 
 yes, that s the plan and we kin hire an 
 operator up from Tecumseh." 
 
 But there was no one to pass an opinion on 
 his project. The boy had snatched his hat, 
 and could be heard even now dashing his way 
 furiously down the outer stairs. 
 
 The summer dusk had l>egun to gather be 
 fore Octavitis heard all that was to be learned 
 of the frightful calamity which had befallen 
 its absent sons. The local roll of death and 
 disaster from Gaines s Mill earlier in the week 
 had seemed incredibly awful. This new bud 
 get of horrors from Malvern was far worse. 
 
 "Wa n t the rest of the North doin any 
 thing at all?" a wild-eyed, disheveled old 
 farmer cried out in a shaking, half-frenzied 
 shriek from the press of the crowd round the 
 72 
 
Marsena 
 
 telegraph office. "Do they think Dearborn 
 County s got to suppress this whole damned 
 rebellion single-handed ? " 
 
 It seemed to the dazed and horrified throng 
 as if some such idea must be in the minds of 
 the rest of the Union. Surely no other little 
 community or big community, either could 
 have had such a hideous blow dealt to it as this 
 under which Octavius reeled. The list of the 
 week for the county, including Gaines s Mill, 
 showed one hundred and eight men dead out 
 right, and very nearly five hundred more 
 wounded in battle. It was too shocking for 
 comprehension. 
 
 As evening drew on, men gathered the nerve 
 to say to one another that there was something 
 very glorious in the way the two regiments had 
 been thrust into the front, and had shown 
 themselves heroically fit for that grim honor. 
 They tried, too, to extract solace from the news 
 that the regiments in question had been men 
 tioned by name in the general despatches as 
 having distinguished themselves and their coun 
 ty above all the rest but it was an empty and 
 heart-sickened pretense at best, and when, 
 about dark, the women folks, who had waited 
 in vain for them to come home to supper, be 
 gan to appear on the skirts of the crowd, it was 
 
 73 
 
Marsena 
 
 given up altogether. In after years Octavius 
 got so that it could cheer those sinister names 
 of Gaines s Mill and Malvern Hill, and swell 
 with pride at the memories they evoked. But 
 that evening no one cheered. It was too terri 
 ble. 
 
 There was, indeed, a single partial excep 
 tion to this rule. The regular service of news 
 had ceased in those days, before the duplex 
 invention, the single wire had most melancholy 
 limitations but the throng still lingered ; and 
 when, in the failing light, the postmaster was 
 seen to step up again on the chair by the door 
 with a bit of paper in his hand, a solemn hush 
 ran over the assemblage. 
 
 "It is a private telegram sent to me person 
 ally," he explained, in the loud, clear tones of 
 one who had earned his office by years of stump 
 speaking; "but it is intended for you all, I 
 should presume." 
 
 The silent crowd pushed nearer, and listened 
 with strained attention as this despatch was 
 read : 
 
 HEADQUARTERS SANITARY COMMISSION, 
 HARRISON S LANDING, VA., Wednesday Morning. 
 To POSTMASTER OCTAVIUS, N. Y. : 
 
 No words can describe magnificent record soldiers of 
 Dearborn County, especially Starbuck, made past week. 
 
 74 
 
Mar sen a 
 
 I bless fate which identified my poor services with such 
 superb heroism. After second sleepless night, Col. 
 Starbuck now reposing peacefully ; doctor says crisis 
 past ; he surely recover, though process be slow. You 
 will learn with pride he been brevetted Brigadier, fact 
 which it was my privilege to announce to him last even 
 ing. He feebly thanked me, murmuring, " Tell 
 them at home." 
 
 " JULIA FARM ALEE." 
 
 In the silence which ensued the postmaster 
 held the paper up and scanned it narrowly by 
 the waning light. " There is something else," 
 he said " Oh, yes, I see ; < Franked despatch 
 Sanitary Commission. That s all. 
 
 Another figure was seen suddenly clambering 
 upon the chair, with an .arm around the post 
 master for support. It was the teller of the 
 bank. He waved his free arm excitedly, as he 
 faced the crowd, and cried : 
 
 " Our women are as brave as our men ! 
 Three cheers for Miss Julia Parmalee ! Hip- 
 hip ! " 
 
 The loyal teller s first " Hurrah ! " fell upon 
 the air quite by itself. Perhaps a dozen voices 
 helped him half- heartedly with the second. 
 The third died off again miserably, and he 
 stepped down off the chair amid a general con 
 sciousness of failure. 
 
 "Who the hell is Starbuck?" was to be 
 
 75 
 
Mar sen a 
 
 heard in whispered interrogatory passed along 
 through the throng. Hardly anybody could 
 answer. Boyce we knew, and Mclntyre, and 
 many others, but Starbuck was a mystery. 
 Then it was explained that it must be the son 
 of old Alanson Starbuck, of Juno Mills, who 
 had gone away to Pniladelphia seven or eight 
 years before. He had not enlisted with any 
 Dearborn County regiment, but held a staff 
 appointment of some kind, presumably in a 
 Pennsylvania command. We were quite un 
 able to work up any emotion over him. 
 
 In fact, the more we thought it over, the 
 more we were disposed to resent this planting 
 of Starbuck upon us, in the very van of Dear 
 born County s heroes. His father was a rich 
 old curmudgeon, whom no one liked. The son 
 was nothing to us whatever. 
 
 As at last, in the deepening twilight, the 
 people reluctantly began moving toward home, 
 such conversation as they had the heart for 
 seemed to be exclusively centred upon Miss 
 Parmalee, and this queer despatch of hers. 
 Slow-paced, strolling groups wended their way 
 along the main street, and then up this side 
 thoroughfare and that, passing in every block 
 some dark and close-shuttered house of mourn 
 ing, and instinctively sinking still lower their 
 
 76 
 
Marsena 
 
 muffled tones as they passed, and carrying in 
 their breasts, heaven only knows what torturing 
 loads of anguish and stricken despair but find 
 ing a certain relief in dwelling, instead, upon 
 this lighter topic. 
 
 One of these groups an elderly lady in 
 black attire and two younger women of sober 
 mien walked apart from the others and ex 
 changed no words at all until, turning a corner, 
 their way led them past the Parmalee house. 
 The looming bulk of the old mansion and the 
 fragrant spaciousness of the garden about it 
 seemed to attract the attention of Mrs. Ransom 
 and her daughters. They halted as by a com 
 mon impulse, and fastened a hostile gaze upon 
 the shadowy outlines of the house and its sur 
 rounding foliage. 
 
 " If Dwight dies of his wound," the mother 
 said, in a voice all chilled to calmness, " his 
 murderess will live in there." 
 
 "I always hated her!" said one of the 
 daughters, with a shudder. 
 
 "But he isn t going to die, mamma," put 
 in the other. " You mustn t think of such a 
 thing ! You know how healthy he always has 
 been, and this is only his shoulder. For my 
 part, we may think ourselves very fortunate. 
 Remember how many have been killed or mor- 
 
 77 
 
Mar sen a 
 
 tally wounded. It seems as if half the people 
 we know are in mourning. We get off very 
 lightly with Dwight only wounded. Did you 
 happen to hear the details about Mr. Pulford ? 
 you know, the photographer someone was 
 saying that he was mortally wounded." 
 
 " She sent him to his death, then, too," said 
 the elder Miss Ransom, raising her clenched 
 hand against the black shadow of the house. 
 
 " I don t care about that man," broke in ihe 
 mother, icily. " Nobody knows anything of 
 him, or where he came from. People ran after 
 him because he was good-looking, but he never 
 seemed to me to know enough to come in 
 when it rained. If she made a fool of him, it 
 was his own lookout. But Dwight my 
 Dwight ! " 
 
 The mother s mannered voice broke into a 
 gasp, and she bent her head helplessly. The 
 daughters went to her side, and the group 
 passed on into the darkness. 
 
VI. 
 
 IT was a dark, soft, summer night in Virginia, 
 that of the ist of July. After the tropical 
 heat of the day, the air was being mercifully 
 cooled, here on the hilltop, by a gentle breeze, 
 laden with just a moist suggestion of the mist 
 rising from the river flats and marshes down be 
 low. It was not Mother Nature s fault that 
 this zephyr stirring along the parched brow of 
 the hill did not bear with it, too, the scents of 
 fruits and flowers, of new-mown hay and the 
 yellow grain in shock, and minister soothingly 
 to rest and pleasant dreams. 
 
 Instead, this breeze, moving mildly in the 
 darkness, was one vile, embodied stench of sul 
 phur and blood, and pestilential abominations. 
 Go where you would, there was no escaping 
 this insufferable burden of foul smells. If they 
 were a horror on the hilltop, they were worse 
 below. 
 
 It was one of the occasions on which Man 
 had expended all his powers to prove his supe 
 riority to Nature. The elements in their wild- 
 
 79 
 
Mar sena 
 
 est and most savage mood could never have 
 wrought such butchery as this. The vine- 
 wrapped fences, stretching down from the pla 
 teau toward the meadow lands below, were but 
 tressed by piles of dead men, some in butternut, 
 some in blue. Clumps of stiffened bodies 
 curled supine at the base of every stump on the 
 fringe of the woodland to the right and among 
 the tumbled sheaves of grain to the left. Out 
 in the open, the broad, sloping hillside and the 
 valley bottom lay literally hidden under ridge 
 upon ridge of smashed and riddled human 
 forms, and the heaped debris of human battle. 
 The clouds hung thick and close above, as if 
 to keep the stars from beholding this repellent 
 sample of earth s titanic beast, Man, at his 
 worst. An Egyptian blackness was over it all. 
 At intervals a lightning flash from the crest 
 of the outermost knoll tore this evil pall of 
 darkness asunder, and then, with a roar and a 
 scream, a spluttering line of vivid flame would 
 arch its sinister way across the sky. A thou 
 sand little dots of light moved and zigzagged 
 ceaselessly on the wide expanse of obscurity 
 underneath this crest, and when the bursts 
 of wrathful fireworks came from overhead it 
 could be seen that these were lanterns being 
 borne about in and out among the winrows of 
 80 
 
Marsena 
 
 maimed and slain. Above all, through all, 
 without even an instant s lull, there arose a ter 
 rible babel of chorused groans and prayers and 
 howls and curses. This noise could be heard 
 for miles almost as far as the boom of the how 
 itzers above could carry and at a distance 
 sounded like the moaning of a storm through a 
 great pine- forest. Near at hand, it sounded 
 like nothing else this side of hell. 
 
 An hour or so after nightfall the battery on 
 the crest of the knoll stopped firing. The wails 
 and shrieks from the slope below went on all 
 through the night, and the lanterns of the search 
 parties burned till the morning sunlight put 
 them out. 
 
 Up on the top of the hill a broad expanse 
 of rolling plateaus the scene wore a different 
 aspect. At widely separated points bonfires 
 and glittering lights showed where some gen 
 eral of the victorious army held his headquarters 
 in a farm-house ; and unless one pried too curi 
 ously about these parts, there were few enough 
 evidences on the summit of the day s barbaric 
 doings. 
 
 The chief of these houses a stately and an 
 cient structure, built in colonial days of brick 
 proudly brought from Europe had begun the 
 forenoon of the battle as the headquarters of 
 81 
 
Marsena 
 
 the Fifth Corps. Then the General and his 
 staff had reduced their needs to a couple of 
 rooms, to leave space for wounded men. Then 
 they had moved out altogether, to let the whole 
 house be used as a hospital. Then as the back 
 wash of calamity from the line of conflict 
 swelled in size and volume, the stables and 
 barns had been turned over to the medical staff. 
 Later, as the savage evening fight went on, tons 
 of new hay had been brought out and strewn in 
 sheltered places under the open sky to serve as 
 beds for the sufferers. Before night fell, even 
 these impromptu hospitals were overtaxed, and 
 rows of stricken soldiers lay on the bare ground. 
 The day of intelligent and efficient hospital 
 service had not yet dawned for our army. The 
 breakdown of what service we had had, under 
 the frightful stress of the battles culminating in 
 this blood-soaked Malvern Hill, is a matter of 
 history, and it can be viewed the more calmly 
 now as the collapse of itself brought about an 
 improved condition of affairs. But at the time 
 it was a woful thing, with a lax and conflict 
 ing organization, insufficient material, a ridicu 
 lous lack of nurses, a mere handful of really 
 competent surgeons and, most of all, a great 
 crowd of volunteer medical students and igno 
 rant practitioners, who flocked southward for 
 82 
 
Marsena 
 
 the mere excitement and practice of sawing, 
 cutting, slashing right and left. So it was that 
 army surgery lent new terrors to death on the 
 battle-field in the year 1862. 
 
 The sky overhead was just beginning to show 
 the ashen touch of twilight, when two men ly 
 ing stretched on the hay in a corner of the 
 smaller barn -yard chanced to turn on their 
 hard couch and to recognize each other. It 
 was a slow and almost scowling recognition, 
 and at first bore no fruit of words. 
 
 One was in the dress of a lieutenant of artil 
 lery, muddy and begrimed with smoke, and 
 having its right shoulder torn or cut open from 
 collar to elbow. The man himself had now 
 such a waving, tangled growth of chestnut 
 beard and so grimly blackened a face, that it 
 would have been hard to place him as our easy 
 going, smiling D wight Ransom. 
 
 The new movement had not brought ease, 
 and now, after a few grunts of pain and impa 
 tience, he got himself laboriously up in a sitting 
 posture, dragged a knapsack within reach up to 
 support his back, and looked at his companion 
 again. 
 
 " I heard that you were down here some 
 where," he remarked, at last. " My sister 
 wrote me." 
 
 83 
 
Marsena 
 
 Marsena Pulford stared up at him, made a 
 little nodding motion of the head, and turned 
 his glance again into the sky straight above, 
 lie also was a spectacle of dry mud and dust, 
 and was bearded to the eyes. 
 
 " Where are you hit?" asked Dwight, after 
 a pause. 
 
 For answer, Marsena slowly, and with an ef 
 fort, put a hand to his breast to the left, below 
 the heart. " Here, somewhere," he said, in a 
 low, dry-lipped murmur. He did not look at 
 Dwight again, but presently asked, " Could 
 you fix me settin up too?" 
 
 " I guess so," responded Dwight. With 
 the help of his unhurt arm he clambered to his 
 feet and began moving dizzily about among the 
 row of wounded men to his left. These groaned 
 or snarled at him as he passed over them, but 
 to this he paid no attention whatever. He re 
 turned from the end of the line, bringing two 
 knapsacks and the battered frame of a drum, in 
 which some one had been trying to carry water, 
 and with some difficulty arranged these in a sat 
 isfactory heap. Then he knelt, pushed his arm 
 under Marsena s shoulders, and lifted him up and 
 backward to the support. P>oth men grimaced 
 and winced under the smart of the effort, and for 
 some minutes sat in silence, with closed eyes. 
 
 84 
 
Marsena 
 
 When they opened them finally it was with a 
 sudden start at the sound of a woman s voice. 
 Their ears had for long hours been inured to a 
 ceaseless din of other noises an ear-splitting 
 confusion of cannon and musketry roar from 
 the field less than an eighth of a mile away, of 
 yelping shells overhead, and of screams and 
 hoarse shouts all about them. Yet their senses 
 caught this strange note of a woman s voice as 
 if it had fallen upon the hush of midnight. 
 
 They looked up, and beheld Miss Julia Par- 
 malee ! 
 
 Upon such a background of heated squalor, 
 dirt, and murderous disorder, it did not seem 
 surprising to them that this lady should present 
 a picture of cool, fresh neatness. She wore a 
 snow-white nurse s cap, and broad, spotless 
 bands of white linen were crossed over the 
 shoulders of her pale dove-colored dress. Her 
 dark face, dusky pink at the cheeks, glowed 
 with a proud excitement. Her big brown eyes 
 swept along the row of recumbent figures at 
 her feet with the glance of a born conqueror. 
 
 " This is not a fit place for him," she said. 
 "It is absurd to bring a gentleman an officer 
 of the headquarters staff out to such a place 
 as this ! " 
 
 Then the two volunteers from Octavius saw 
 
 85 
 
Marsena 
 
 that behind her were four men, bearing a laden 
 stretcher, and that at her side was a regimental 
 hospital steward, who also looked speculatively 
 along the rows of sufferers. 
 
 "It s the best thing we can do, anyway," 
 he replied, not over politely; "and for that 
 matter, there s hardly room here." 
 
 "Oh, there d be no trouble about that," 
 retorted Miss Julia, calmly. " We could move 
 any of these people here. The General told 
 me I was always to do just what I thought 
 best. I am sure that if I could see him now 
 he would insist at once that Colonel Star- 
 buck should have a bed to himself, inside the 
 house." 
 
 "I ll bet he wouldn t!" said the hospital 
 steward, with emphasis. 
 
 "Perhaps you don t realize," put in Miss 
 Julia, coldly, " that Colonel Starbuck is a staff 
 officer and a friend of mine." 
 
 "I don t care if he was on all the staffs 
 there are," said the hospital steward, "he s 
 got to take his chance with the rest. And it 
 don t matter about his being a friend, either; 
 we ain t playing favorites much just now. I 
 don t see no room here, Miss. You ll have to 
 take him out in the open lot there." 
 
 "Oh, never! " protested Miss Julia, vehe- 
 86 
 
Mar sena 
 
 mently. " It s disgraceful ! Why, the place is 
 under fire there. I saw them running away 
 from a shell there only a minute ago. No, if 
 we can t do anything better, we ll have one of 
 these men moved." 
 
 "Well, do something pretty quick ! " growl 
 ed one of the men supporting the stretcher. 
 
 Miss Parmalee had looked two or three times 
 in an absent-minded way at the two men on 
 the ground nearest her obviously without rec 
 ognizing either of them. There was a definite 
 purpose in the glance she now bent upon 
 Dwight Ransom a glance framed in the re 
 sourceful smile he remembered so well. 
 
 " You seem to be able to sit up, my man," 
 she said, ingratiatingly, to him ; " would you 
 be so very kind as to let me have that place 
 for Colonel Starbuck, here he is on the head 
 quarters staff and I am sure we should be so 
 much obliged. You will easily get a nice place 
 somewhere else for yourself. Oh, thank you so 
 much ! It is so good of you ! 
 
 Suppressing a groan at the pain the move 
 ment involved, and without a word, Dwight 
 lifted himself slowly to his feet, and stepped 
 aside, waving a hand toward the hay and 
 knapsack in token of their surrender. 
 
 Then Miss Julia helped lift from the litter the 
 
 87 
 
Mai sena 
 
 object of her anxiety. Colonel Starbuck was 
 of a slender, genteel figure, and had the top of 
 his head swathed heavily in bandages. He wore 
 long, curly, brown side-whiskers, and his chin 
 had been shaved that very morning. This was 
 enough in itself to indicate that he belonged to 
 the headquarters staff, but the fact was pro 
 claimed afresh by everything else about him 
 his speckless uniform, his spick-and-span gaunt 
 lets, his carefully polished boots, the glittering 
 newness of his shoulder-straps, sword scabbard, 
 buttons, and spurs. It was clear that, what 
 ever else had happened, his line of communi 
 cation with the headquarters baggage train 
 had never been interrupted. 
 
 " It is so kind of you ! " Miss Parmalee mur 
 mured again, when the staff officer had been 
 helped off the stretcher, and in a dazed and 
 languid way had settled himself down into the 
 place vacated for him. " Would you " - she 
 whispered, looking up now, and noting that 
 the hospital steward and the litter-men had 
 gone away " would you mind stepping over 
 to the house, or to one of the tents beyond 
 you ll find him somewhere and asking Dr. 
 Willoughby to come at once ? Tell him it is 
 for Colonel Starbuck of the headquarters staff, 
 and you d better mention my name Miss 
 88 
 
Marsena 
 
 Parmalee, of the Sanitary Commission. You 
 won t forget the name Parmalee? " 
 
 " I don t fancy I shall forget it," said Dwight, 
 gravely. " I ve got a better memory than 
 some. 
 
 Miss Julia caught the tone of voice on the 
 instant, and looked upward again from where 
 she knelt beside the Colonel, with a swift smile. 
 
 "Why, it s Mr. Ransom, I do believe!" 
 she exclaimed. " I should never have known 
 you with your beard. It s so good of you to 
 take this trouble you always were so oblig 
 ing ! Any one will tell you where Dr. Wil- 
 loughby is. He s the surgeon of the Eigh 
 teenth, you know. I m sure he ll come at 
 once to please me and time is so precious, 
 you know ! " 
 
 Without further words, Dwight moved off 
 slowly and unsteadily toward the house. 
 
 Miss Parmalee, seating herself so that some 
 of her mouse-tinted draperies almost touched 
 the face of Dwight s companion, unhooked a 
 fan from her girdle and began softly fanning 
 Colonel Star buck. " The doctor won t be 
 long," she said, in low, cooing tones, after a 
 little ; " do you feel easier now? " 
 
 " I am rather dizzy still, and a little faint," 
 replied the Colonel, languorously. " That 
 89 
 
Mar sena 
 
 fanning is so delicious though, that I m really 
 very happy. At least I would be if I weren t 
 nervous about you. You have been through 
 such tremendous exertions all day out in the 
 sun, amid all these horrid sights and this in 
 fernal roar without a parasol, too. Are you 
 quite sure it has not been too much for you ? " 
 
 "You are always so thoughtful of others, 
 dear Colonel Starbuck," murmured Miss Julia, 
 reducing the fanning to a gentle, measured 
 movement, and fixing her lustrous eyes pen 
 sively upon the clouds above the horizon. 
 " You never think of yourself ! " 
 
 " Only to think how happy my fate is, to be 
 rescued and nursed by an angel," sighed the 
 Colonel. 
 
 A smile of gentle deprecation played upon 
 Miss Julia s red lips, and imparted to her eyes 
 the expression they would wear if they had 
 been gazing upon a tenderly entrancing vision 
 in the sky. Then, all at once ; she gave a little 
 start of aroused attention, looked puzzled, and 
 after a moment s pause bent her head over 
 close to the Colonel s. 
 
 " The man behind me has taken tight hold 
 of my dress," she whispered, hurriedly. "I 
 don t want to turn around, but can you see him ? 
 He isn t having a fit or anything, is he? " 
 90 
 
Marsena 
 
 Colonel Starbuck lifted himself a trifle, and 
 looked across. "No," he whispered in re 
 turn, " he appears to be asleep. Probably he 
 is dreaming. He is a corporal some infantry 
 regiment. They do manage to get so what 
 shall I say so unwashed ! Shall I move his 
 hand for you ? 
 
 Miss Julia shook her head, with an arch 
 little half smile. 
 
 "No, poor man," she murmured. " It gives 
 me almost a sense of the romantic. Perhaps 
 he is dreaming of home of some one dear to 
 him. Corporals do have their romances, you 
 know, as well as " 
 
 "As well as colonels," the staff officer play 
 fully finished the sentence for her. " Well, 
 I congratulate him, if his is a thousandth part 
 as joyful as mine." 
 
 "Oh, then, you have one!" pursued Miss 
 Parmalee, allowing her eyes to sparkle for an 
 instant before they were coyly raised again to 
 the clouds. Darkness was gathering there 
 rapidly. 
 
 " Why pretend that you don t understand ? " 
 pleaded Colonel Starbuck and there seemed to 
 be no answer forthcoming. The fan moved 
 even more sedately now, with a tender flutter 
 at the end of each downward sweep. 
 
Marsena 
 
 Presently the preoccupation of the couple 
 one might not call it silence in such an un 
 broken uproar as rose around them and 
 smashed through the air above was inter 
 rupted by the appearance of a young, sharp- 
 faced man, who marched straight across the 
 yard toward them and, halting, spoke hur 
 riedly. 
 
 " I was asked specially to come here for a 
 moment," he said, "but it can only be a 
 minute. We re just over our heads in work. 
 What is it? " 
 
 Miss Parmalee looked at the young man with 
 a favorless eye. He was unshaven, dishevelled, 
 brusque of manner and speech. He was bare 
 headed, and his unimportant figure was almost 
 hidden beneath a huge, revoltingly stained 
 apron. 
 
 "Tasked for my friend, Dr. Willoughby," 
 she said. But if he could not come, I must in 
 sist upon immediate attention for Colonel Star- 
 buck here an officer of the headquarter staff. 
 
 While she spoke the young surgeon had 
 thrown himself on one knee, adroitly though 
 roughly lifted the Colonel s bandages, run an 
 inquiring finger over his skull, and plumped 
 the linen back again. He sprang to his feet 
 with an impatient grunt. " Paltry scalp 
 
Marsena 
 
 wound," he snorted. Then, turning on his 
 heel, he almost knocked against Dwight Ran 
 som, who had come slowly up behind him. 
 
 "You had no business to drag me off for 
 foolishness of this sort," he said, in vexed 
 tones. "Here are thousands of men waiting 
 their turn who really need help, and I ve been 
 working twenty hours a day for a week, and 
 couldn t keep up with the work if every day 
 had two hundred hours. It s ridiculous ! " 
 
 Dwight shrugged his unhurt shoulder. " I 
 didn t ask you for myself," he replied. " I m 
 quite willing to wait my turn but the lady 
 here she asked me to bring help " 
 
 "It can t be that this gentleman under 
 stands," put in Miss Julia, " that his assistance 
 was desired for an officer of the headquarters 
 staff." 
 
 " Madame," said the young surgeon, " with 
 your permission, damn the headquarters staff! " 
 and, turning abruptly, he strode off. 
 
 " I will go and see the General myself," ex 
 claimed Miss Parmalee, flushing with wrath. 
 "I will see whether he will permit the Sani 
 tary Commission to be affronted in this out 
 rageous 
 
 She stopped short. Her indignant effort to 
 rise to her feet had been checked by a hand on 
 
 93 
 
Marsena 
 
 firmly the ground, which held in its grasp a 
 fold of her skirt. She turned, pulled the cloth 
 from the clutch of the tightened fingers, looked 
 at the hand as it sprawled limply on the grass, 
 and gave a little, shuddering, half-hysterical 
 laugh. " Mercy me ! " was what she said. 
 
 "You know who it is, don t you?" asked 
 Dwight Ransom. 
 
 The meaning in his voice struck Miss Julia, 
 and she bent a careful scrutiny through the 
 dusk upon the face of the man stretched out 
 beside her. His head had slipped sidewise on 
 the knapsack, and his bearded chin was unnatu 
 rally sunk into his collar. Through the grime 
 on his face could be discerned an unearthly 
 pallor. His wide-open eyes seemed staring 
 fixedly, reproachfully, at the hand which had 
 lost its hold upon Miss Julia s dress. 
 
 " It does seem as if I d seen the face before 
 somewhere," she remarked, " but I don t ap 
 pear to place it. It is getting so dark, too. 
 No, I can t imagine. Who is it? " 
 
 She had risen to her feet and was peering 
 down at the dead man, her pretty brows knitted 
 in perplexity. 
 
 "He recognized you! " said Dwight, with 
 significant gravity. " It s Marsena Pulford." 
 
 "Oh, poor man !" exclaimed Julia. "If 
 
 94 
 
Marsena 
 
 he d only spoken to me I would gladly have 
 fanned him, too. But I was so anxious about 
 the Colonel here that I never took a fair look 
 at him. I dare say I shouldn t have recognized 
 him, even then. Beards do change one so, 
 don t they ! " 
 
 Then she turned to Colonel Starbuck and 
 made answer to the inquiry of his lifted eye 
 brows. 
 
 " The unfortunate man," she explained, 
 "was our village photographer. I sat to him 
 for my picture several times. I think I have 
 one of them over at the Commission tent now." 
 
 " I ll go this minute and seize it ! " the gal 
 lant Colonel vowed, getting to his feet. 
 
 " Take care ! We unprotected females have 
 a man trap there ! Julia warned him ; but fear 
 did not deter the staff officer from taking her 
 arm and leaning on it as they walked away in 
 the twilight. 
 
 Then the night fell, and Dwight buried 
 Marsena. 
 
 95 
 
The War Widow 
 
THE WAR WIDOW 
 
 I. 
 
 A LTHOUGH we had been one man short 
 JL\ all day, and there was a plain threat of 
 rain in the hot air, everybody left the hay-field 
 long before sundown. It was too much to ask 
 of human nature to stay off up in the remote 
 meadows, when such remarkable things were 
 happening down around the house. 
 
 Marcellus Jones and I were in the pasture, 
 watching the dog get the cows together for the 
 homeward march. He did it so well and, 
 withal, so willingly, that there was no call for 
 us to trouble ourselves in keeping up with him. 
 We waited instead at the open bars until the 
 hay -wagon had passed through, rocking so 
 heavily in the ancient pitch-hole, as it . did so, 
 that the driver was nearly thrown off his perch 
 on the top of the high load. Then we put up 
 the bars, and fell in close behind the hay 
 makers. A rich cloud of dust, far ahead on the 
 road, suggested that the dog was doing his work 
 
 99 
 
The War Widow 
 
 even too willingly, but for the once we feared 
 no rebuke. Almost anything might be con 
 doned that day. 
 
 Five grown-up men walked abreast down the 
 highway, in the shadow of the towering wagon 
 mow, clad much alike in battered straw hats, 
 gray woollen shirts open at the neck, and rough 
 old trousers bulging over the swollen, creased 
 ankles of thick boots. One had a scythe on 
 his arm ; two others bore forks over their 
 shoulders. By request, Hi Tuckerman allowed 
 me to carry his sickle. 
 
 Although my present visit to the farm had 
 been of only a few days duration and those 
 days of strenuous activity darkened by a terri 
 ble grief I had come to be very friendly with 
 Mr. Tuckerman. He took a good deal more 
 notice of me than the others did; and, when 
 chance and leisure afforded, addressed the bulk 
 of his remarks to me. This favoritism, though 
 it fascinated me, was not without its embarrass 
 ing side. Hi Tuckerman had taken part in 
 the battle of Gaines s Mill two years before, 
 and had been shot straight through the tongue. 
 One could still see the deep scar on each of his 
 cheeks, a sunken and hairless pit in among his 
 sandy beard. His heroism in the war and 
 his good qualities as a citizen had earned for 
 100 
 
The War Widow 
 
 him the esteem of his neighbors, and they saw 
 to it that he never wanted for work. But 
 their present respect for him stopped short of 
 the pretence that they enjoyed hearing him 
 talk. Whenever he attempted conversation, 
 people moved away, or began boisterous dia 
 logues with one another to drown him out. 
 Being a sensitive man, he had come to prefer 
 silence to these rebuffs among those he knew. 
 But he still had a try at the occasional polite 
 stranger and I suppose it was in this capacity 
 that I won his heart. Though I never of my 
 own initiative understood a word he said, Mar- 
 cellus sometimes interpreted a sentence or so 
 for me, and I listened to all the rest with a 
 fraudulently wise face. To give only a solitary 
 illustration of the tax thus levied on our friend 
 ship, I may mention that when Hi Tuckerman 
 said " Aah /-ah-aa/i /-uh," he meant " Rap- 
 pahannock," and he did this rather better than 
 a good many other words. 
 
 " Rappahannock," alas! was a word we 
 heard often enough in those days, along with 
 Chickahominy and Rapiclan, and that odd 
 Chattahoochee, the sound of which raised al- 
 ways in my boyish mind the notion that the 
 geography - makers must have achieved it in 
 their baby-talk period. These strange South - 
 101 
 
The War Widow 
 
 ern river names and many more were as fa 
 miliar to the ears of these four other untrav- 
 elled Dearborn County farmers as the noise of 
 their own shallow Nedahma rattling over its 
 pebbles in the valley yonder. Only when 
 their slow fancy fitted substance to these names 
 they saw in mind s eye dark, sinister, swampy 
 currents, deep and silent, and discolored with 
 human blood. 
 
 Two of these men who strode along behind 
 the wagon were young half -uncles of mine, 
 Myron and Warren Turnbull, stout, thick- 
 shouldered, honest fellows not much out of 
 their teens, who worked hard, said little, and 
 were always lumped together in speech, by their 
 family, the hired help, and the neighbors, as 
 "the boys." They asserted themselves so 
 rarely, and took everything as it came with 
 such docility, that I myself, being in my elev 
 enth year, thought of them as very young in 
 deed. Next them walked a man, hired just 
 for the haying, named Philleo, and then, scuf 
 fling along over the uneven humps and hollows 
 on the outer edge of the road, came Si Hum- 
 maston, with the empty ginger-beer pail knock 
 ing against his knees. 
 
 As Tuckerman s " Hi " stood for Hiram, so 
 I assume the other s "Si" meant Silas, or 
 
 102 
 
The War Widow 
 
 possibly Cyrus. I dare say no one, not even 
 his mother, had ever called him by his full 
 name. I know that my companion, Marcellus 
 Jones, who wouldn t be thirteen until after 
 Thanksgiving, habitually addressed him as Si, 
 and almost daily I resolved that I would do so 
 myself. He was a man of more than fifty, I 
 should think, tall, lean, and what Marcellus 
 called " bible-backed." He had a short iron- 
 gray beard and long hair. Whenever there 
 was any very hard or steady work going, he 
 generally gave out and went to sit in the shade, 
 holding a hand flat over his heart, and shaking 
 his head dolefully. This kept a good many 
 from hiring him, and even in haying - time, 
 when everybody on two legs is of some use, I 
 fancy he would often have been left out if it 
 hadn t been for my grandparents. They re 
 spected him on account of his piety and his 
 moral character, and always had him down 
 when extra work began. He was said to be 
 the only hired man in the township who could 
 not be goaded in some way into swearing. 
 He looked at one slowly, with the mild expres 
 sion of a heifer calf. 
 
 We had come to the crown of the hill, and 
 the wagon started down the steeper incline, 
 with a great groaning of the brake. The men, 
 103 
 
The War Widow 
 
 by some tacit understanding, halted and over 
 looked the scene. 
 
 The big old stone farm-house part of which 
 is said to date almost to the Revolutionary 
 times was just below us, so near, indeed, that 
 Marcellus said he had once skipped a scaling- 
 stone from where we stood to its roof. The 
 dense, big-leafed foliage of a sap-bush, sheltered 
 in the basin which dipped from our feet, pretty 
 well hid this roof now from view. Farther on, 
 heavy patches of a paler, brighter green marked 
 the orchard, and framed one side of a cluster of 
 barns and stables, at the end of which three or 
 four belated cows were loitering by the trough. 
 It was so still that we could hear the clatter of 
 the stanchions as the rest of the herd sought 
 their places inside the milking-barn. 
 
 The men, though, had no eyes for all this, 
 but bent their gaze fixedly on the road, down 
 at the bottom. For a long way this thorough 
 fare was bordered by a "row of tall poplars, 
 which, as we were placed, receded from the 
 vision in so straight a line that they seemed 
 one high, fat tree. Beyond these one saw only 
 a line of richer green, where the vine-wrapped 
 rail-fences cleft their way between the ripening 
 fields. 
 
 " I d a took my oath it was them," said 
 104 
 
The War Widow 
 
 Philleo. " I can spot them grays as fur s I can 
 see em. They turned by the school - house 
 there, or I ll eat it, school-ma am n all. And 
 the buggy was follerin em, too." 
 
 "Yes, I thought it was them," said Myron, 
 shading his eyes with his brown hand. 
 
 " But they ought to got past the poplars by 
 this time, then," remarked Warren. 
 
 " Why, they ll be drivin as slow as molasses 
 in January," put in Si Hummaston. " When 
 you come to think of it, it ts pretty nigh the 
 same as a regular funeral. You mark my 
 words, your father 11 have walked them grays 
 every step of the road. I s pose he ll drive 
 himself he wouldn t trust bringin Alvy home 
 to nobody else, would he ? I know I wouldn t, 
 if the Lord had given me such a son ; but then 
 he didn t ! " 
 
 "No, He didn t!" commented the first 
 speaker, in an unnaturally loud tone of voice, 
 to break in upon the chance that Hi Tuck- 
 erman was going to try to talk. But Hi only 
 stretched out his arm, pointing the forefinger 
 toward the poplars. 
 
 Sure enough, something was in motion down 
 at the base of the shadows on the road. Then 
 it crept forward, out in the sunlight, and sep 
 arated itself into two vehicles. A farm wagon 
 105 
 
The War Widow 
 
 came first, drawn by a team of gray horses. 
 Close after it followed a buggy, with its black 
 top raised. Both advanced so slowly that they 
 seemed scarcely to be moving at all. 
 
 " Well, I swan ! " exclaimed Si Hummas- 
 ton, after a minute, " it s Dana Pi 11s bury driv- 
 in the wagon after all ! Well I dtinno yes, 
 I guess that s prob bly what I d a done too, 
 if I d b n your father. Yes, it does look more 
 correct, his follerin on behind, like that. I 
 s pose that s Alvy s widder in the buggy there 
 with him." 
 
 " Yes, that s Serena it looks like her little 
 girl with her," said Myron, gravely. 
 
 " I s pose we might s well be movin* along 
 down," observed his brother, and at that we 
 all started. 
 
 We walked more slowly now, matching our 
 gait to the snail-like progress of those coming 
 toward us. As we drew near to the gate, the 
 three hired men instinctively fell behind the 
 brothers, and in that position the group halted 
 on the grass, facing our drive- way where it left 
 the main road. Not a word was uttered by 
 any one. When at last the wagon came up, 
 Myron and Warren took off their hats, and the 
 others followed suit, all holding them poised at 
 the level of their shoulders. 
 1 06 
 
The War Widow 
 
 Dana Pillsbury, carrying himself rigidly up 
 right on the box-seat, drove past us with eyes 
 fixed straight ahead, and a face as coldly ex 
 pressionless as that of a wooden Indian. The 
 wagon was covered all over with rubber blank 
 ets, so that whatever it bore was hidden. Only 
 a few paces behind came the buggy, and my 
 grandfather, old Arphaxed Ttirnbull, went by 
 in his turn with the same averted, far-away 
 gaze, and the same resolutely stolid counte 
 nance. He held the restive young carriage 
 horse down to a decorous walk, a single firm 
 hand on the tight reins, without so much as 
 looking at it. The strong yellow light of the 
 declining sun poured full upon his long gray 
 beard, his shaven upper lip, his dark-skinned, 
 lean, domineering face and made me think of 
 some hard and gloomy old prophet seeing a 
 vision, in the back part of the Old Testament. 
 If that woman beside him, swathed in heavy 
 black raiment, and holding a child up against 
 her arm, was my Aunt Serena, I should never 
 have guessed it. 
 
 We put on our hats again, and walked up 
 the drive - way with measured step behind 
 the carriage till it stopped at the side-piazza 
 stoop. The wagon had passed on toward the 
 big new red barn and crossing its course I 
 107 
 
The War 
 
 saw my Aunt Em, bareheaded and with her 
 sleeves rolled up, going to the cow-barn with 
 a milking-pail in her hand. She was walking 
 quickly, as if in a great hurry. 
 
 "There s your Ma," I whispered to Marcel- 
 lus, assuming that he would share my surprise 
 at her rushing off like this, instead of waiting 
 to say How-d -do to Serena. He only 
 nodded knowingly, and said nothing. 
 
 No one else said much of anything. Myron 
 and Warren shook hands in stiff solemnity with 
 the veiled and craped sister-in-law, when their 
 father had helped her and her daughter from 
 the buggy, and one of them remarked in a con 
 strained way that the hot spell seemed to keep 
 up right along. The new comers ascended the 
 steps to the open door, and the woman and 
 child went inside. Old Arphaxed turned on 
 the threshold, and seemed to behold us for the 
 first time. 
 
 " After you ve put out the horse," he said, 
 "I want the most of yeh to come up to the 
 new barn. Si Hummaston and Marcellus can 
 do the milkin ." 
 
 " I kind o rinched my wrist this forenoon," 
 put in Si, with a note of entreaty in his voice. 
 He wanted sorely to be one of the party at the 
 red barn. 
 
 1 08 
 
The War Widow 
 
 "Mebbe milkin 11 be good for it," said 
 Arphaxed, curtly. " You and Marcellus do 
 what I say, and keep Sidney with you." With 
 this he, too, went into the house. 
 
 109 
 
II. 
 
 IT wasn t an easy matter for even a member 
 of the family like myself to keep clearly and 
 untangled in his head all the relationships 
 which existed under this patriarchal Turnbull 
 roof. 
 
 Old Arphaxed had been married twice. His 
 first wife was the mother of two children, who 
 grew up, and the older of these was my father, 
 Wilbur Turnbull. He never liked farm-life, 
 and left home early, not without some hard 
 feeling, which neither father nor son ever quite 
 forgot. My father made a certain success of it 
 as a business man in Albany until, in the thir 
 ties, his health broke down. He died when I 
 was seven and, although he left some property, 
 my mother was forced to supplement this help 
 by herself going to work as forewoman in a 
 large store. She was too busy to have much 
 time for visiting, and I don t think there was 
 any great love lost between her and the people 
 on the farm ; but it was a good healthy place 
 for me to be sent to when the summer vacation 
 
 no 
 
The War Widow 
 
 came, and withal inexpensive, and so the first 
 of July each year generally found me out at the 
 homestead, where, indeed, nobody pretended 
 to be heatedly fond of me, but where I was 
 still treated well and enjoyed myself. This 
 year it was understood that my mother was 
 coming out to bring me home later on. 
 
 The other child of that first marriage was a 
 girl who was spoken of in youth as Emmeline, 
 but whom I knew now as Aunt Em. She was 
 a silent, tough-fibred, hard-working creature, 
 not at all good-looking, but relentlessly neat, 
 and the best cook I ever knew. Even when the 
 house was filled with extra hired men, no one 
 ever thought of getting in any female help, so 
 tireless and so resourceful was Em. She did 
 alHhe housework there was to do, from cellar 
 to garret, was continually lending a hand in the 
 men s chores, made more butter than the house 
 hold could eat up, managed a large kitchen- 
 garden, and still had a good deal of spare time, 
 which she spent in sitting out in the piazza in 
 a starched pink calico gown, knitting the while 
 she watched who went up and down the road. 
 When you knew her, you understood how it 
 was that the original Turnbulls had come into 
 that part of the country just after the Revolu 
 tion, and in a few years chopped down all the 
 in 
 
The War Widow 
 
 forests, dug up all the stumps, drained the swale- 
 lands, and turned the entire place from a wil 
 derness into a flourishing and fertile home for 
 civilized people. I used to feel, when I looked 
 at her, that she would have been quite equal to 
 doing the whole thing herself. 
 
 All at once, when she was something over 
 thirty, Em had up and married a mowing- 
 machine agent named Abel Jones, whom no one 
 knew anything about, and who, indeed, had 
 only been in the neighborhood for a week or 
 so. The family was struck dumb with amaze 
 ment. The idea of Em s dallying with the 
 notion of matrimony had never crossed any 
 body s mind. As a girl she had never had any 
 patience with husking-bees or dances or sleigh- 
 ride parties. No young man had ever seen her 
 home from anywhere, or had had the remotest 
 encouragement to hang around the house. She 
 had never been pretty so my mother told me 
 and as she got along in years grew dumpy 
 and thick in figure, with a plain, fat face, a 
 rather scowling brow, and an abrupt, ungracious 
 manner. She had no conversational gifts what 
 ever, and, through years of increasing taciturnity 
 and confirmed unsociability, built up in every 
 body s mind the conviction that, if there could 
 be a man so wild and unsettled in intellect as 
 112 
 
The War Widow 
 
 to suggest a tender thought to Em, he would 
 get his ears cuffed off his head for his pains. 
 
 Judge, then, how like a thunderbolt the 
 episode of the mowing - machine agent fell 
 upon the family. To bewildered astonishment 
 there soon enough succeeded rage. This Jones 
 was a curly headed man, with a crinkly black 
 beard like those of Joseph s brethren in the 
 Bible picture. He had no home and no prop 
 erty, and didn t seem to amount to much even 
 as a salesman of other people s goods. His 
 machine was quite the worst then in the market, 
 and it could not be learned that he had sold a 
 single one in the county. But he had married 
 Em, and it was calmly proposed that he should 
 henceforth regard the farm as his home. After 
 this point had been sullenly conceded, it turned 
 out that Jones was a widower, and had a boy 
 nine or ten years old, named Marcellus, who 
 was in a sort of orphan asylum in Vermont. 
 There were more angry scenes between father 
 and daughter, and a good deal more bad blood, 
 before it was finally agreed that the boy also 
 should come and live on the farm. 
 
 All this had happened in 1860 or 1861. 
 Jones had somewhat improved on acquaintance. 
 He knew about lightning-rods, and had been 
 able to fit out all the farm buildings with them 
 
The War Widow 
 
 at cost price. He had turned a little money 
 now and again in trades with hop-poles, butter- 
 firkins, shingles, and the like, and he was very 
 ingenious in mending and fixing up odds and 
 ends. He made shelves and painted the wood 
 work, and put a tar roof on the summer kitchen. 
 Even Martha, the second Mrs. Turnbull, came 
 finally to admit that he was handy about a 
 house. 
 
 This Martha became the head of the house 
 hold while Em was still a little girl. She was 
 a heavy woman, mentally as well as bodily, 
 rather prone to a peevish view of things, and 
 greatly given to pride in herself and her posi 
 tion, but honest, charitable in her way, and not 
 unkindly at heart. On the whole she was a 
 good stepmother, and Em probably got on 
 quite as well with her as she would have done 
 with her own mother even in the matter of 
 the mowing-machine agent. 
 
 To Martha three sons were born. The two 
 younger ones, Myron and Warren, have already 
 been seen. The eldest boy, Alva, was the 
 pride of the family, and, for that matter, of the 
 whole section. 
 
 Alva was the first Turnbull to go to college. 
 From his smallest boyhood it had been manifest 
 that he had great things before him, so hand- 
 114 
 
The War Widow 
 
 some and clever and winning a lad was he. 
 Through each of his schooling years he was the 
 honor man of his class, and he finished in a blaze 
 of glory by taking the Clark Prize, and prac 
 tically everything else within reach in the way 
 of academic distinctions. He studied law at 
 Octavius, in the office of Judge Schermerhorn, 
 and in a little time was not only that distin 
 guished man s partner, but distinctly the more 
 important figure in the firm. At the age of 
 twenty-five he was sent to the Assembly. The 
 next year they made him District Attorney, and 
 it was quite understood that it rested with him 
 whether he should be sent to Congress later on, 
 or be presented by the Dearborn County bar 
 for the next vacancy on the Supreme Court 
 bench. 
 
 At this point in his brilliant career he married 
 Miss Serena Wadsworth, of Wadsworth s Falls. 
 The wedding was one of the most imposing 
 social events the county had known, so it was 
 said, since the visit of Lafayette. The Wads- 
 worths were an older family, even, than the 
 Fairchilds, and infinitely more fastidious and 
 refined. The daughters of the household, in 
 deed, carried their refinement to such a pitch 
 that they lived an almost solitary life, and 
 grew to the parlous verge of old-maidhood 
 
The War Widow 
 
 simply because there was nobody good enough 
 to marry them. Alva Turnbull was, however, 
 up to the standard. It could not be said, of 
 course, that his home surroundings quite 
 matched those of his bride ; but, on the other 
 hand, she was nearly two years his senior, and 
 this was held to make matters about even. 
 
 In a year or so came the War, and nowhere 
 in the North did patriotic excitement run 
 higher than in this old abolition stronghold of 
 upper Dearborn. Public meetings were held, 
 and nearly a whole regiment was raised in Oc- 
 tavius and the surrounding towns alone. Alva 
 Turnbull made the most stirring and important 
 speech at the first big gathering, and sent a thrill 
 through the whole country side by claiming the 
 privilege of heading the list of volunteers. He 
 was made a captain by general acclaim, and 
 went off with his company in time to get chased 
 from the field of Bull Run. When he came 
 home on a furlough in 1863 he was a major, 
 and later on he rose to be lieutenant-colonel. 
 We understood vaguely that he might have 
 climbed vastly higher in promotion but for the 
 fact that he was too moral and conscientious to 
 get on very well with his immediate superior, 
 General Boyce, of Thessaly, who was noto 
 riously a drinking man. 
 116 
 
The War Widow 
 
 It was glory enough to have him at the farm, 
 on that visit of his, even as a major. His old 
 parents literally abased themselves at his feet, 
 quite tremulous in their awed pride at his great 
 ness. It made it almost too much to have 
 Serena there also, this fair, thin-faced, prim- 
 spoken daughter of the Wadsworths, and actu 
 ally to call her by her first name. It was hay 
 ing time, I remember, but the hired men that 
 year did not eat their meals with the family, 
 and there was even a question whether Marcel- 
 lus and I were socially advanced enough to 
 come to the table, where Serena and her hus 
 band were feeding themselves in state with a 
 novel kind of silver implement called a four- 
 tined fork. If Em hadn t put her foot down, 
 out to the kitchen we should both have gone, 
 I fancy. As it was, we sat decorously at the 
 far end of the table, and asked with great po 
 liteness to have things passed to us, which by 
 standing up we could have reached as well as 
 not. It was slow, but it made us feel immense 
 ly respectable, almost as if we had been born 
 Wadsworths ourselves. 
 
 We agreed that Serena was " stuck up," and 
 
 Marcellus reported Aunt Em as feeling that 
 
 her bringing along with her a nursemaid to be 
 
 waited on hand and foot, just to take care of a 
 
 117 
 
The War Widow 
 
 baby, was an imposition bordering upon the 
 intolerable. He said that that was the sort of 
 thing the English did until George Washing 
 ton rose and drove them out. But we both 
 felt that Alva was splendid. 
 
 He was a fine creature physically taller even 
 than old Arphaxed, with huge square shoulders 
 and a mighty frame. I could recall him as 
 without whiskers, but now he had a waving 
 lustrous brown beard, the longest and biggest I 
 ever saw. He didn t pay much attention to us 
 .boys, it was true ; but he was affable when we 
 came in his way, and he gave Myron and War 
 ren each a dollar bill when they went to Octa- 
 vius to see the Fourth of July doings. In the 
 evening some of the more important neighbors 
 would drop in, and then Alva would talk about 
 the War, and patriotism, and saving the Union, 
 till it was like listening to Congress itself. He 
 had a rich, big voice which filled the whole 
 room, so that the hired men could hear every 
 word out in the kitchen ; but it was even more 
 affecting to see him walking with his father 
 down under the poplars, with his hands making 
 orator s gestures as he spoke, and old Arphaxed 
 looking at him and listening with shining eyes. 
 
 Well, then, he and his wife went away to 
 visit her folks, and then we heard -he had left to 
 118 
 
The War Widow 
 
 join his regiment. From time to time he wrote 
 to his father letters full of high and loyal sen 
 timents, which were printed next week in the 
 Octavius Transcript, and the week after in the 
 Thessaly Banner of Liberty. Whenever any of 
 us thought about the War and who thought 
 much of anything else? it was always with 
 Alva as the predominant figure in every picture. 
 
 Sometimes the arrival of a letter for Aunt Em, 
 or a chance remark about a broken chair or a 
 clock hopelessly out of kilter, would recall for 
 the moment the fact that Abel Jones was also 
 at the seat of war. He had enlisted on that 
 very night when Alva headed the roll of honor, 
 and he had marched away in Alva s company. 
 Somehow he got no promotion, but remained 
 in the ranks. Not even the members of the 
 family were shown the letters Aunt Em re 
 ceived, much less the printers of the newspapers. 
 They were indeed poor misspelled scrawls, 
 about which no one displayed any interest or 
 questioned Aunt Em. Even Marcellus rarely 
 spoke of his father, and seemed to share to the 
 full the family s concentration of thought upon 
 Alva. 
 
 Thus matters stood when spring began to 
 play at being summer in the year of 64. The 
 birds came and the trees burst forth into green, 
 119 
 
The War Widow 
 
 the sun grew hotter and the days longer, the 
 strawberries hidden under the big leaves in our 
 yard started into shape, where the blossoms had 
 been, quite in the ordinary, annual way, with 
 us up North. But down where that dread thing 
 they called "The War" was going on, this 
 coming of warm weather meant more awful 
 massacre, more tortured hearts, and desolated 
 homes, than ever before. I can t be at all sure 
 how much later reading and associations have 
 helped out and patched up what seem to be my 
 boyish recollections of this period ; but it is, 
 at all events, much clearer in my mind than 
 are the occurrences of the week before last. 
 
 We heard a good deal about how r deep the 
 mud was in Virginia that spring. All the 
 photographs and tin-types of officers which 
 found their way to relatives at home, now, 
 showed them in boots that came up to their 
 thighs. Everybody understood that as soon as 
 this mud dried up a little, there were to be 
 most terrific doings. The two great lines of 
 armies lay scowling at each other, still on that 
 blood-soaked fighting ground between Wash 
 ington and Richmond where they were three 
 years before. Only now things were to go dif 
 ferently. A new general was at the head of 
 affairs, and he was going in, with jaws set and 
 120 
 
The War Widow 
 
 nerves of steel, to smash, kill, burn, annihilate, 
 sparing nothing, looking not to right or left, 
 till the red road had been hewed through to 
 Richmond. In the first week of May this 
 thing began a push forward all along the 
 line and the North, with scared eyes and flut 
 tering heart, held its breath. 
 
 My chief personal recollection of those his 
 toric forty days is that one morning I was 
 awakened early by a noise in my bedroom, and 
 saw my mother looking over the contents of 
 the big chest of drawers which stood against 
 the wall. She was getting out some black 
 articles of apparel. When she discovered that 
 I was awake, she told me in a low voice that 
 my Uncle Alva had been killed. Then a few 
 weeks later my school closed, and I was packed 
 off to the farm for the vacation. It will be 
 better to tell what had happened as I learned 
 it there from Marcellus and the others. 
 
 Along about the middle of May, the weekly 
 paper came up from Octavius, and old Arphaxed 
 Turnbull, as was his wont, read it over out on 
 the piazza before supper. Presently he called 
 his wife to him, and showed her something in 
 it. Martha went out into the kitchen, where 
 Aunt Em was getting the meal ready, and told 
 her, as gently as she could, that there was very 
 121 
 
The War Widow 
 
 bad news for her ; in fact, her husband, Abel 
 Jones, had been killed in the first day s battle 
 in the Wilderness, something like a week before. 
 Aunt Em said she didn t believe it, and Martha 
 brought in the paper and pointed out the fatal 
 line to her. It was not quite clear whether this 
 convinced Aunt Em or not. She finished get 
 ting supper, and sat silently through the meal, 
 afterwards, but she went upstairs to her room 
 before family prayers. The next day she was 
 about as usual, doing the work and saying 
 nothing. Marcellus told me that to the best 
 of his belief no one had said anything to her 
 on the subject. The old people were a shade 
 more ceremonious in their manner toward her, 
 and "the boys" and the hired men were on 
 the lookout to bring in water for her from the 
 well, and to spare her as much as possible in 
 the routine of chores, but no one talked about 
 Jones. Aunt Em did not put on mourning. 
 She made a black necktie for Marcellus to wear 
 to church, but stayed away from meeting her 
 self. 
 
 A little more than a fortnight afterwards, 
 Myron was walking down the road from the 
 meadows one afternoon, when he saw a man 
 on horseback coming up from the poplars, gal 
 loping like mad in a cloud of dust. The two 
 122 
 
The War Widow 
 
 met at the gate. The man was one of the hired 
 helps of the Wadsworths, and he had ridden as 
 hard as he could pelt from the Falls, fifteen miles 
 away, with a message, which now he gave 
 Myron to read. Both man and beast dripped 
 sweat, and trembled with fatigued excitement. 
 The youngster eyed them, and then gazed 
 meditatively at the sealed envelope in his 
 hand. 
 
 "I s pose you know what s inside?" he 
 asked, looking up at last. 
 
 The man in the saddle nodded, with a tell 
 tale look on his face, and breathing heavily. 
 
 Myron handed the letter back, and pushed 
 the gate open. " You d better go up and give 
 it to father yourself," he said. "I ain t got 
 the heart to face him jest now, at any rate." 
 
 Marcellus was fishing that afternoon, over in 
 the creek which ran through the woods. Just as 
 at last he was making up his mind that it must 
 be about time to go after the cows, he saw 
 Myron sitting on a log beside the forest path, 
 whittling mechanically, and staring at the fo 
 liage before him, in an obvious brown study. 
 Marcellus went up to him, and had to speak 
 twice before Myron turned his head and looked 
 up. 
 
 "Oh! it s you, eh, Bubb?" he remarked 
 123 
 
The War Widow 
 
 dreamily, and began gazing once more into the 
 thicket. 
 
 "What s the matter?" asked the puzzled 
 boy. 
 
 " I guess Alvy s dead," replied Myron. To 
 the lad s comments and questions he made 
 small answer. " No," he said at last, " I don t 
 feel much like goin home jest now. Lea me 
 alone here ; I ll prob ly turn up later on." And 
 Marcellus went alone to the pasture, and thence, 
 at the tail of his bovine procession, home. 
 
 When he arrived he regretted not having re 
 mained with Myron in the woods. It was like 
 coming into something which was prison, hos 
 pital, and tomb in one. The household was 
 paralyzed with horror and fright. Martha had 
 gone to bed, or rather had been put there by 
 Em, and all through the night, when he woke 
 up, he heard her broken and hysterical voice in 
 moans and screams. The men had hitched up 
 the grays, and Arphaxed Turnbull was getting 
 into the buggy to drive to Octavius for news 
 when the boy came up. He looked twenty 
 years older than he had at noon all at once 
 turned into a chalk-faced, trembling, infirm old 
 man and could hardly see to put his foot on 
 the carriage-step. His son Warren had offered 
 to go with him, and had been rebuffed almost 
 
 124 
 
The War Widow 
 
 with fierceness. Warren and the others silently 
 bowed their heads before this mood ; instinct 
 told them that nothing but Arphaxed s show of 
 temper held him from collapse from falling at 
 their feet and grovelling on the grass with cries 
 and sobs of anguish, perhaps even dying in a 
 fit. After he had driven off they forbore to 
 talk to one another, but went about noiselessly 
 with drooping chins and knotted brows. 
 
 "It jest took the tuck out of everything," 
 said Marcellns, relating these tragic events to 
 me. There was not much else to tell. Martha 
 had had what they call brain fever, and had 
 emerged from this some weeks afterward a 
 pallid and dim-eyed ghost of her former self, 
 sitting for hours together in her rocking-chair in 
 the unused parlor, her hands idly in her lap, 
 her poor thoughts glued ceaselessly to that vague, 
 far-off Virginia which folks told about as hot and 
 sunny, but which her mind s eye saw under the 
 gloom of an endless and dreadful night. Ar- 
 phaxed had gone South, still defiantly alone, to 
 bring back the body of his boy. An acquaint 
 ance wrote to them of his being down sick in 
 Washington, prostrated by the heat and strange 
 water ; but even from his sick-bed he had sent 
 on orders to an undertaking firm out at the 
 front, along with a hundred dollars, their price 
 
 125 
 
The War Widow 
 
 in advance for embalming. Then, recovering, 
 he had himself pushed down to headquarters, or 
 as near them as civilians might approach, only 
 to learn that he had passed the precious freight 
 on the way. He posted back again, besieging 
 the railroad officials at every point with in 
 quiries, scolding, arguing, beseeching in turn, 
 until at last he overtook his quest at Juno Mills 
 Junction, only a score of miles from home. 
 
 Then only he wrote, telling people his plans. 
 He came first to Octavius, where a funeral ser 
 vice was held in the forenoon, with military 
 honors, the Wadsworths as the principal mourn 
 ers, and a memorable turnout of distinguished 
 citizens. The town-hall was draped with mourn 
 ing, and so was Alva s pew in the Episcopal 
 Church, which he had deserted his ancestral 
 Methodism to join after his marriage. Old Ar- 
 phaxed listened to the novel burial service of his 
 son s communion, and watched the clergyman 
 in his curious white and black vestments, with 
 sombre pride. He himself needed and desired 
 only a plain and homely religion, but it was fit 
 ting that his boy should have organ music and 
 flowers and a ritual. 
 
 Dana Pillsbury had arrived in town early in 
 the morning with the grays, and a neighbor s 
 boy had brought in the buggy. Immediately 
 126 
 
Tbe War Widow 
 
 after dinner Arphaxed had gathered up Alva s 
 widow and little daughter, and started the fu 
 neral cortege upon its final homeward stage. 
 
 And so I saw them arrive on that July after 
 noon. 
 
 127 
 
III. 
 
 FOR so good and patient a man, Si Hum- 
 maston bore himself rather vehemently during 
 the milking. It was hotter in the barn than it 
 was outside in the sun, and the stifling air 
 swarmed with flies, which seemed to follow Si 
 perversely from stall to stall and settle on his 
 cow. One beast put her hoof square in his pail, 
 and another refused altogether to " give down," 
 while the rest kept up a tireless slapping and 
 swishing of their tails very hard to bear, even if 
 one had the help of profanity. Marcellus and I 
 listened carefully to hear him at last provoked to 
 an oath, but the worst thing he uttered, even 
 when the cow stepped in the milk, was " Dum 
 your buttons!" which Marcellus said might 
 conceivably be investigated by a church com 
 mittee, but was hardly out-and-out swearing. 
 
 I remember Si s groans and objurgations, 
 his querulous " Hyst there, will ye ! " his hyp 
 ocritical " So-boss ! So-boss ! " his despond 
 ent " They never will give down for me! " 
 because presently there was crossed upon this 
 
The War Widow 
 
 woof of peevish impatience the web of a curi 
 ous conversation. 
 
 Si had been so slow in his headway against 
 flapping tails and restive hoofs that, before he 
 had got up to the end of the row, Aunt Em 
 had finished her side. She brought over her 
 stool and pail, and seated herself at the next 
 cow to Hum mas ton s. For a little, one heard 
 only the resonant din of the stout streams 
 against the tin ; then, as the bottom was cov 
 ered, there came the ploughing plash of milk 
 on milk, and Si could hear himself talk. 
 
 " S pose you know S reny s come, long 
 with your father," he remarked, ingratiatingly. 
 
 " I saw em drive in, " replied Em. 
 
 " Whoa! Hyst there! Hole still, can t 
 ye ? I didn t know if you quite made out who 
 she was, you was scootin long so fast. They 
 ain t Whoa there! they ain t nothin the 
 matter twixt you and her, is they ? " 
 
 " I don t know as there is," said Em, curtly. 
 " The world s big enough for both of us we 
 ain t no call to bunk into each other." 
 
 " No, of course Now you stop it /but it 
 looked kind o curious to me, your pikin off 
 like that, without waitin to say How-d -do ? 
 Of course, I never had no relation by marriage 
 that was stuck-up at all, or looked down on me 
 129 
 
The War Widow 
 
 Stiddy there now . but I guess I can reelize 
 pretty much how you feel about it. I m a 
 good deal of a hand at that. It s what they 
 call imagination. It s a gift, you know, like 
 good looks, or preachin , or the knack o 
 makin money. But you can t help what 
 you re born with, can you? I d been a heap 
 better off if my gift d be n in some other di 
 rection ; but, as I tell em, it ain t my fault. 
 And my imagination /// , there ! git over, 
 will yc ? it s downright cur ous sometimes, 
 how it works. Now I could tell, you see, that 
 you n S reny didn t pull together. I s pose 
 she never writ a line to you, when your hus 
 band was killed? " 
 
 11 Why should she ? " demanded Em. " We 
 never did correspond. What d be the sense of 
 beginning then? She minds her affairs, n I 
 mind mine. Who wanted her to write? " 
 
 "Oh, of course not," said Si, lightly. 
 "Prob ly you ll get along better together, 
 though, now that you ll see more of one another. 
 I s pose S reny s figurin on stayin here right 
 along now, her n her little girl. Well, it ll be 
 nice for the old folks to have somebody they re 
 fond of. They jest worshipped the ground 
 Alvy walked on and I s pose they won t be 
 anything in this wide world too good for that 
 130 
 
The War Widow 
 
 little girl of his. Le s see, she must be comin 
 on three now, ain t she ? " 
 
 "I don t know anything about her!" 
 snapped Aunt Em, with emphasis. 
 
 " Of course, it s natural the old folks should 
 feel so she bein Alvy s child. I hain t no 
 ticed anything special, but does it Well, I 
 swan ! Hyst there ! does it seem to you that 
 they re as good to Marcellus, quite, as they used 
 to be? I don t hear em sayin nothin about 
 his goin to school next winter." 
 
 Aunt Em said nothing, too, but milked dog 
 gedly on. Si told her about the thickness and 
 profusion of Serena s mourning, guardedly hint 
 ed at the injustice done him by not allowing 
 him to go to the red barn with the others, 
 speculated on the likelihood of the Wadsworths 
 contributing to their daughter s support, and 
 generally exhibited his interest in the family 
 through a monologue which finished only with 
 the milking ; but Aunt Em made no response 
 whatever. 
 
 When the last pails had been emptied into 
 the big cans at the door Marcellus and I had 
 let the cows out one by one into the yard, as 
 their individual share in the milking ended Si 
 and Em saw old Arphaxed wending his way 
 across from the house to the red barn. He ap- 
 
The War Widow 
 
 peared more bent than ever, but he walked with 
 a slowness which seemed born of reluctance 
 even more than of infirmity. 
 
 Well, now," mused Si, aloud, "Brother 
 Turnbull an me s be n friends for a good long 
 spell. I don t believe he d be mad if I cut 
 over now to the red barn too, seein the milk- 
 in s all out of the way. Of course I don t 
 want to do what ain t right what d you think 
 now, Em, honest ? Think it ud rile him? " 
 
 "I don t know anything about it!" my 
 aunt replied, with increased vigor of emphasis. 
 " But for the land sake go somewhere ! Don t 
 hang around botherin me. I got enough else 
 to think of besides your everlasting cackle." 
 
 Thus rebuffed, Si meandered sadly into the 
 cow-yard, shaking his head as he came. Seeing 
 us seated on an upturned plough, over by the 
 fence, from which point we had a perfect view 
 of the red barn, he sauntered toward us, and, 
 halting at our side, looked to see if there was 
 room enough for him to sit also. But Mar- 
 cellus, in quite a casual way, remarked, " Oh ! 
 wheeled the milk over to the house, already, 
 Si?" and at this the doleful man lounged off 
 again in new despondency, got out the wheel 
 barrow, and, with ostentatious groans of travail 
 hoisted a can upon it and started off. 
 132 
 
The War Widow 
 
 " He s takin advantage of Arphaxed s being 
 so worked up to play ole soldier on him," 
 said Marcellus. " All of us have to stir him 
 up the whole time to keep him from takin root 
 somewhere. I told him this afternoon t if 
 there had to be any settin around under the 
 bushes an cryin , the fam ly ud do it." 
 
 We talked in hushed tones as we sat there 
 watching the shut doors of the red barn, in 
 boyish conjecture about what was going on be 
 hind them. I recall much of this talk with curi 
 ous distinctness, but candidly it jars now upon 
 my maturer nerves. The individual man looks 
 back upon his boyhood with much the same 
 amused amazement that the race feels in con 
 templating the memorials of its own cave-dwell 
 ing or bronze period. What strange savages 
 we were ! In those days Marcellus and I used 
 to find our very highest delight in getting off 
 on Thursdays, and going over to Dave Bush- 
 nell s slaughter-house, to witness with stony 
 hearts, and from as close a coign of vantage as 
 might be, the slaying of some score of barnyard 
 animals the very thought of which now revolts 
 our grown-up minds. In the same way we sat 
 there on the plough, and criticised old Arphax 
 ed s meanness in excluding us from the red 
 barn, where the men-folks were coming in final 
 
 133 
 
The War Widow 
 
 contact with the " pride of the family." Some 
 of the cows wandering toward us began to 
 "moo" with impatience for the pasture, but 
 Marcellus said there was no hurry. 
 
 All at once we discovered that Aunt Em was 
 standing a few yards away from us, on the other 
 side of the fence. We could see her from where 
 we sat by only turning a little a motionless, 
 stout, upright figure, with a pail in her hand, 
 and a sternly impassive look on her face. She, 
 too, had her gaze fixed upon the red barn, and, 
 though the declining sun was full in her eyes, 
 seemed incapable of blinking, but just stared 
 coldly, straight ahead. 
 
 Suddenly an unaccustomed voice fell upon 
 our ears. Turning, we saw that a black -robed 
 woman, with a black wrap of some sort about 
 her head, had come up to where Aunt Em 
 stood, and was at her shoulder. Marcellus 
 nudged me, and whispered, "It s S reny. 
 Look out for squalls ! And then we listened 
 in silence. 
 
 "Won t you speak to me at all, Emme- 
 line ? " we heard this new voice say. 
 
 Aunt Em s face, sharply outlined in profile 
 against the sky, never moved. Her lips were 
 pressed into a single line, and she kept her eyes 
 on the barn. 
 
 134 
 
The War Widow 
 
 "If there s anything I ve done, tell me," 
 pursued the other. In such an hour as this 
 when both our hearts are bleeding so, and 
 and every breath we draw is like a curse upon us 
 
 it doesn t seem a fit time for us for us to " 
 
 The voice faltered and broke, leaving the 
 speech unfinished. 
 
 Aunt Em kept silence so long that we fancied 
 this appeal, too, had failed. Then abruptly, 
 and without moving her head, she dropped a 
 few ungracious words as it were over her shoul 
 der, " If I had anything special to say, most 
 likely I d say it," she remarked. 
 
 We could hear the sigh that Serena drew. 
 She lifted her shawled head, and for a moment 
 seemed as if about to turn. Then she changed 
 her mind, apparently, for she took a step nearer 
 to the other. 
 
 " See here, Emmeline," she said, in a more 
 confident tone. " Nobody in the world knows 
 better than I do how thoroughly good a woman 
 you are, how you have done your duty, and 
 more than your duty, by your parents and your 
 brothers, and your little step-son. You have 
 never spared yourself for them, day or night. I 
 have said often to to him who has gone that 
 I didn t believe there was anywhere on earth a 
 worthier or more devoted woman than you, his 
 
 135 
 
The War Widow 
 
 sister. And now that -he is gone and we are 
 both more sisters than ever in affliction why 
 in Heaven s name should you behave like this 
 to me ? 
 
 Aunt Em spoke more readily this time. I 
 don t know as I ve done anything to you," she 
 said in defence. " I ve just let you alone, that s 
 all. An that s doin as I d like to be done 
 by." Still she did not turn her head, or lift 
 her steady gaze from those closed doors. 
 
 " Don t let us split words! " entreated the 
 other, venturing a thin, white hand upon Aunt 
 Em s shoulder. " That isn t the way we two 
 ought to stand to each other. Why, you were 
 friendly enough when I was here before. Can t 
 it be the same again ? What has happened to 
 change it ? Only to-day, on our way up here, 
 I was speaking to your father about yon, and 
 my deep sympathy for you, and " 
 
 Aunt Em wheeled like a flash. " Yes, V 
 what did Siesay ? Come, don t make up any 
 thing ! Out with it ! What did he say ? " She 
 shook off the hand on her shoulder as she spoke. 
 
 Gesture and voice and frowning vigor of 
 mien were all so imperative and rough that they 
 seemed to bewilder Serena. She, too, had 
 turned now, so that I could see her wan and 
 delicate face, framed in the laced festoons of 
 136 
 
The War 
 
 black, like the fabulous countenance of " The 
 Lady Inez" in my mother s "Album of 
 Beauty." She bent her brows in hurried 
 thought, and began stammering, "Well, he 
 said Let s see he said " 
 
 "Oh, yes!" broke in Aunt Em, with 
 raucous irony, " I know well enough what he 
 said ! He said I was a good worker that 
 they d never had to have a hired girl since I 
 was big enough to wag a churn dash, an they 
 wouldn t known what to do without me. I know 
 all that; I ve heard it on an off for twenty 
 years. What I d like to hear is, did he tell you 
 that he went down South to bring back your 
 husband, an that he never so much as give a 
 thought to fetchin my husband, who was just 
 as good a soldier and died just as bravely as 
 yours did ? I d like to know did he tell 
 you that ? 
 
 What could Serena do but shake her head, 
 and bow it in silence before this bitter gale of 
 words ? 
 
 "An tell me this, too," Aunt Em went on, 
 lifting her harsh voice mercilessly, " when you 
 was settin there in church this forenoon, with 
 the soldiers out, an the bells tollin an all 
 that did he say This is some for Alvy, an 
 some for Abel, who went to the war together, 
 
 137 
 
The War Widow 
 
 an was killed together, or within a month o* 
 one another ? Did he say that, or look for 
 one solitary minute as if he thought it ? I ll 
 bet he didn t ! " 
 
 Serena s head sank lower still, and she put up, 
 in a blinded sort of a way, a little white hand 
 kerchief to her eyes. " But why blame me ?" 
 she asked. 
 
 Aunt Em heard her own voice so seldom 
 that the sound of it now seemed to intoxicate 
 her. "No!" she shouted. "It s like the 
 Bible. One was taken an the other left. It 
 was always Alvy this, an Alvy that, nothin* for 
 any one but Alvy. That was all right ; nobody 
 complained : prob ly he deserved it all ; at any 
 rate, we didn t begrudge him any of it, while 
 he was livin . But there ought to be a limit 
 somewhere. When a man s dead, he s pretty 
 much about on an equality with other dead 
 men, one would think. But it ain t so. One 
 man gets hunted after when he s shot, an 
 there s a hundred dollars for embalmin him an 
 a journey after him, an bringin him home, 
 an two big funerals, an crape for his widow 
 that d stand by itself. The other man he can 
 lay where he fell ! Them that s lookin for the 
 first one are right close by it ain t more n a 
 few miles from the Wilderness to Cold Harbor, 
 
 138 
 
The War Widow 
 
 so Hi Tuckerman tells me, an he was all over 
 the ground two years ago but nobody looks 
 for this other man ! Oh, no ! Nobody so much 
 as remembers to think of him ! They ain t no 
 hundred dollars, no, not so much as fifty cents, 
 for embalmin him! No he could be shovelled 
 in anywhere, or maybe burned up when the 
 woods got on fire that night, the night of 
 the sixth. They ain t no funeral for him 
 no bells tolled unless it may be a cowbell up 
 in the pasture that he hammered out himself. 
 An his widow can go around, week days an 
 Sundays, in her old calico dresses. Nobody 
 ever mentions the word mournin crape to 
 her, or asks her if she d like to put on black. I 
 spose they thought if they gave me the money 
 for some mournin I d buy candy with it in 
 stead ! 
 
 With this climax of flaming sarcasm Aunt Em 
 stopped, her eyes aglow, her thick breast heav 
 ing in a flurry of breathlessness. She had never 
 talked so much or so fast before in her life. She 
 swung the empty tin-pail now defiantly at her 
 side to hide the fact that her arms were shaking 
 with excitement. Every instant it looked as if 
 she was going to begin again. 
 
 Serena had taken the handkerchief down from 
 her eyes and held her arms stiff and straight by 
 
 139 
 
The War Widow 
 
 her side. Her chin seemed to have grown 
 longer or to be thrust forward more. When she 
 spoke, it was in a colder voice almost mincing 
 in the way it cut off the words. 
 
 "All this is not my doing," she said. " I 
 am to blame for nothing of it. As I tried to 
 tell you, I sympathize deeply with your grief. 
 But grief ought to make people at least fair, 
 even if it cannot make them gentle and soften 
 their hearts. I shall trouble you with no more 
 offers of friendship. 1 I think I will go back 
 to the house now to my little girl." 
 
 Even as she spoke, there came from the direc 
 tion of the red barn a shrill, creaking noise 
 which we all knew. At the sound Marcellus 
 and I stood up, and Serena forgot her intention 
 to go away. The barn doors, yelping as they 
 moved on their dry rollers, had been pushed 
 wide open. 
 
 140 
 
IV. 
 
 THE first one to emerge from the barn was 
 Hi Tucker man. He started to make for the 
 house, but, when he caught sight of our group, 
 came running toward us at the top of his speed, 
 uttering incoherent shouts as he advanced, and 
 waving his arms excitedly. It was apparent that 
 something out of the ordinary had happened. 
 
 We were but little the wiser as to this some 
 thing, when Hi had come to a halt before us, 
 and was pouring out a volley of explanations, 
 accompanied by earnest grimaces and strenuous 
 gestures. Even Marcellus could make next to 
 nothing of what he was trying to convey; but 
 Aunt Em, strangely enough, seemed to under 
 stand him. Still slightly trembling, and with 
 a little occasional catch in her breath, she bent 
 an intent scrutiny upon Hi, and nodded com- 
 prehendingly from time to time, with encour 
 aging exclamations, " He did, eh ! " "Is that 
 so?" and " I expected as much." Listening 
 and watching, I formed the uncharitable con 
 viction that she did not really understand Hi at 
 141 
 
The War Widow 
 
 all, but was only pretending to do so in order 
 further to harrow Serena s feelings. 
 
 Doubtless I was wrong, for presently she 
 turned, with an effort, to her sister-in-law, and 
 remarked, "P rhaps you don t quite follow 
 what he s say in ? " 
 
 " Not a word ! " said Serena, eagerly. 
 " Tell me, please, Emmeline ! " 
 
 Aunt Em seemed to hesitate. " He was shot 
 through the mouth at Gaines s Mills, you know 
 that s right near Cold Harbor and the 
 Wilderness," she said, obviously making talk. 
 
 " That isn t what he s saying," broke in 
 Serena. " What is it, Emmeline? " 
 
 " Well," rejoined the other, after an instant s 
 pause, "if you want to know he says that it 
 ain t Alvy at all that they ve got there in the 
 barn." 
 
 Serena turned swiftly, so that we could not 
 see her face. 
 
 " He says it s some strange man," continued 
 Em, " a yaller-headed man, all packed an 
 stuffed with charcoal, so t his own mother 
 wouldn t know him. Who it is nobody kno\vs, 
 but it ain t Alvy." 
 
 " They re a pack of robbers V swindlers ! " 
 cried old Arphaxed, shaking his long gray 
 beard with wrath. 
 
 142 
 
The War Widow 
 
 He had come up without our noticing his 
 approach, so rapt had been our absorption in 
 the strange discovery reported by Hi Tucker- 
 man. Behind him straggled the boys and the 
 hired men, whom Si Hummaston had scurried 
 across from the house to join. No one said 
 anything now, but tacitly deferred to the old 
 man s principal right to speak. It was a relief 
 to hear that terrible silence of his broken at 
 all. 
 
 " They ought to all be hung ! " he cried, in 
 a voice to which the excess of passion over 
 physical strength gave a melancholy quaver. 
 "I paid em what they asked they took a 
 hundred dollars o my money an they ain t 
 sent me him at all ! There I went, at my age, 
 all through the Wilderness, almost clear to Cold 
 Harbor, an that, too, gittin up from a sick 
 bed in Washington, and then huntin for the box 
 at New York an Albany, an all the way back, 
 an holdin a funeral over it only this very day 
 an here it ain t him at all ! I ll have the law 
 on em though, if it costs the last cent I ve got 
 in the world ! 
 
 Poor old man ! These weeks of crushing 
 grief and strain had fairly broken him down. 
 We listened to his fierce outpourings with sym 
 pathetic silence, almost thankful that he had left 
 
 H3 
 
The War Widow 
 
 strength and vitality enough still to get angry 
 and shout. He had been always a hard and 
 gusty man ; \ve felt by instinct, I suppose, that 
 his best chance of weathering this terrible month 
 of calamity was to batter his way furiously 
 through it, in a rage with everything and every 
 body. 
 
 " If there s any justice in the land," put in 
 Si Hummaston, " you d ought to get your hun 
 dred dollars back. I shouldn t wonder if you 
 could, too, if you sued em afore a Jestice that 
 was a friend of yours." 
 
 Why, the man s a fool!" burst forth 
 Arphaxed, turning toward him with a snort. 
 "I don t want the hundred dollars I wouldn t 
 a begrudged a thousand if only they d dealt 
 honestly by me. I paid em their own figure, 
 without beatin em down a penny. If it dbe n 
 double, I d a paid it. What /wanted was my 
 boy! It ain t so much their cheatin me I 
 mind, either, if it d be n about anything else. 
 But to think of Alvy my boy after all the 
 trouble I took, an the journey, an my sickness 
 there among strangers to think that after it all 
 he s buried down there, no one knows where, 
 p raps in some trench with private soldiers, 
 shovelled in anyhow oh-h ! they ought to be 
 hung ! " 
 
The War Widow 
 
 The two women had stood motionless, with 
 their gaze on the grass ; Aunt Em lifted her 
 head at this. 
 
 " If a place is good enough for private sol 
 diers to be buried in," she said, vehemently, 
 " it s good enough for the best man in the 
 army. On Resurrection Day, do you think 
 them with shoulder-straps 11 be called fust an 
 given all the front places ? I reckon the men 
 that carried a musket are every whit as good, 
 there in the trench, as them that wore swords. 
 They gave their lives as much as the others did, 
 an the best man that ever stepped couldn t do 
 no more." 
 
 Old Arphaxed bent upon her a long look, 
 which had in it much surprise and some ele 
 ments of menace. Reflection seemed, how 
 ever, to make him think better of an attack on 
 Aunt Em. He went on, instead, with ram 
 bling exclamations to his auditors at large. 
 
 " Makin me the butt of the whole county ! " 
 he cried. "There was that funeral to-day 
 with a parade an a choir of music an so on : 
 an now it 11 come out in the papers that it 
 wasn t Alvy at all I brought back with me, but 
 only some perfect stranger by what you can 
 make out from his clothes, not even an officer 
 at all. I tell you the War s a jedgment on this 
 
 H5 
 
The War Widow 
 
 country for its wickedness, for its cheat in an 
 robbin of honest men ! They wa n t no sense 
 in that battle at Cold Harbor anyway every 
 body admits that ! It was murder an mas 
 sacre in cold blood fifty thousand men 
 mowed down, an nothin gained by it ! An 
 then not even to git my boy s dead body back ! 
 I say hangin s too good for em ! " 
 
 1 Yes, father," said Myron, soothingly; 
 " but do you stick to what you said about the 
 the box? Wouldn t it look better " 
 
 " No /" shouted Arphaxed, with emphasis. 
 " Let Dana do what I told him take it down 
 this very night to the poor master, an let him 
 bury it where he likes. It s no affair of mine. 
 I wash my hands of it. There won t be no 
 funeral held here ! 
 
 It was then that Serena spoke. Strangely 
 enough, old Arphaxed had not seemed to no 
 tice her presence in our group, and his jaw 
 visibly dropped as he beheld her now standing 
 before him. He made a gesture signifying his 
 disturbance at finding her among his hearers, 
 and would have spoken, but she held up her 
 hand. 
 
 " Yes, I heard it all," she said, in answer to 
 his deprecatory movement. " I am glad I did. 
 It has given me time to get over the shock of 
 
 146 
 
Tbe War Widow 
 
 learning our mistake and it gives me the 
 chance now to say something which I I 
 feel keenly. The poor man you have brought 
 home was, you say, a private soldier. Well, 
 isn t this a good time to remember that there 
 was a private soldier who went out from this 
 farm belonging right to this family and who, 
 as a private, laid down his life as nobly as 
 General Sedgwick or General Wadsworth, or 
 even our dear Alva, or any one else ? I never 
 met Emmeline s husband, but Alva liked him, 
 and spoke to me often of him. Men who fall 
 in the ranks don t get identified, or brought 
 home, but they deserve funerals as much as the 
 others just as much. Now, this is my idea : 
 let us feel that the mistake which has brought 
 this poor stranger to us is God s way of giving 
 us a chance to remember and do honor to Abel 
 Jones. Let him be buried in the family lot up 
 yonder, where we had thought to lay Alva, 
 and let us do it reverently, in the name of 
 Emmeline s husband, and of all others who 
 have fought and died for our country, and 
 with sympathy in our hearts for the women 
 who, somewhere in the North, are mourning, 
 just as we mourn here, for the stranger there in 
 the red barn." 
 
 Arphaxed had watched her intently. He 
 
The War Widow 
 
 nodded now, and blinked at the moisture 
 gathering in his old eyes. " 1 could e en 
 a most a thought it was Alvy talkin ," was 
 what he said. Then he turned abruptly, but 
 we all knew, without further words, that what 
 Serena had suggested was to be done. 
 
 The men-folk, wondering doubtless much 
 among themselves, moved slowly off toward the 
 house or the cow-barns, leaving the two women 
 alone. A minute of silence passed before we 
 saw Serena creep gently up to Aunt Em s side, 
 and lay the thin white hand again upon her 
 shoulder. This time it was not shaken off, 
 but stretched itself forward, little by little, 
 until its palm rested against Aunt Em s further 
 cheek. We heard the tin-pail fall resonantly 
 against the stones under the rail-fence, and 
 there was a confused movement as if the two 
 women were somehow melting into one. 
 
 " Come on, Sid ! " said Marcellus Jones to 
 me; " let s start them cows along. If there s 
 anything I hate to see it s women cryin on 
 each other s necks." 
 
 148 
 
The Eve of the Fourth 
 
THE EVE OF THE FOURTH 
 
 IT was well on toward evening before this 
 Third of July all at once made itself glori 
 ously different from other days in my mind. 
 
 There was a very long afternoon, I remem 
 ber, hot and overcast, with continual threats 
 of rain, which never came to anything. The 
 other boys were too excited about the morrow 
 to care for present play. They sat instead 
 along the edge of the broad platform-stoop in 
 front of Delos Ingersoll s grocery-store, their 
 brown feet swinging at varying heights above 
 the sidewalk, and bragged about the manner in 
 which they contemplated celebrating the anni 
 versary of their Independence. Most of the 
 elder lads were very independent indeed ; they 
 were already secure in the parental permission 
 to stay up all night, so that the Fourth might 
 be ushered in with its full quota of ceremonial. 
 The smaller urchins pretended that they also 
 had this permission, or were sure of getting it. 
 Little Denny Cregan attracted admiring atten 
 tion by vowing that he should remain out, even 
 
The Eve of the Fourth 
 
 if his father chased him with a policeman all 
 around the ward, and he had to go and live in 
 a cave in the gulf until he was grown up. 
 
 My inferiority to these companions of mine 
 depressed me. They were allowed to go with 
 out shoes and stockings ; they wore loose and 
 comfortable old clothes, and were under no 
 responsibility to keep them dry or clean or 
 whole ; they had their pockets literally bulging 
 now with all sorts of portentous engines of noise 
 and racket huge brown " double -enders," 
 bound with waxed cord ; long, slim, vicious- 
 looking nigger-chasers ;" big " Union tor 
 pedoes," covered with clay, which made a re 
 port like a horse-pistol, and were invaluable for 
 frightening farmers horses ; and so on through 
 an extended catalogue of recondite and sinister 
 explosives upon which I looked with awe, as 
 their owners from time to time exhibited them 
 with the proud simplicity of those accustomed 
 to greatness. Several of these boys also pos 
 sessed toy cannons, which would be brought 
 forth at twilight. They spoke firmly of ram 
 ming them to the muzzle with grass, to produce 
 a greater noise even if it burst them and killed 
 everybody. 
 
 By comparison, my lot was one of abasement. 
 I was a solitary child, and a victim to conven- 
 
 152 
 
The Eve of the Fourth 
 
 tions. A blue necktie was daily pinned under 
 my Byron collar, and there were gilt buttons on 
 my zouave jacket. When we were away in the 
 pasture playground near the gulf, and I ven 
 tured to take off my foot-gear, every dry old 
 thistle-point in the whole territory seemed to 
 arrange itself to be stepped upon by my whit 
 ened and tender soles. I could not swim ; so, 
 while my lithe bold comrades dived out of 
 sight under the deep water, and darted about 
 chasing one another far beyond their depth, I 
 paddled ignobly around the "baby-hole" 
 close to the bank, in the warm and muddy 
 shallows. 
 
 Especially apparent was my state of humilia 
 tion on this July afternoon. I had no " double- 
 enders," nor might hope for any. The mere 
 thought of a private cannon seemed monstrous 
 and unnatural to me. By some unknown pro 
 cess of reasoning my mother had years before , 
 reached the theory that a good boy ought to 
 have two ten-cent packs of small fire-crackers 
 on the Fourth of July. Four or five succeed 
 ing anniversaries had hardened this theory into 
 an orthodox tenet of faith, with all its observ 
 ances rigidly fixed. The fire-crackers were 
 bought for me overnight, and placed on the 
 hall table. Beside them lay a long rod of 
 
The Eve of tbe Fourth 
 
 punk. When I hastened down and out in the 
 morning, with these ceremonial implements in 
 my hands, the hired girl would give me, in an 
 old kettle, some embers from the wood-fire in 
 the summer kitchen. Thus furnished, I went 
 into the front yard, and in solemn solitude fired 
 off these crackers one by one. Those which, 
 by reason of having lost their tails, were only 
 fit for fizzes," I saved till after breakfast. 
 With the exhaustion of these, I fell reluctantly 
 back upon the public for entertainment. I 
 could see the soldiers, hear the band and the 
 oration, and in the evening, if it didn t rain, 
 enjoy the fireworks ; but my own contribution 
 to the patriotic noise was always over before 
 the breakfast dishes had been washed. 
 
 My mother scorned the little paper torpedoes 
 as flippant and wasteful things. You merely 
 threw one of them, and it went off, she said, 
 and there you were. I don t know that I ever 
 grasped this objection in its entirety, but it im 
 pressed my whole childhood with its unanswer- 
 ableness. Years and years afterward, when my 
 own children asked for torpedoes, I found my 
 self unconsciously advising against them on 
 quite the maternal lines. Nor was it easy to 
 budge the good lady from her position on the 
 great two-packs issue. I seem to recall having 
 
 154 
 
The Eve of the Fourth 
 
 successfully undermined it once or twice, but 
 two was the rule. When I called her atten 
 tion to the fact that our neighbor, Tom Hem 
 ingway, thought nothing of exploding a whole 
 pack at a time inside their wash-boiler, she was 
 not dazzled, but only replied: " Wilful waste 
 makes woful want." 
 
 Of course the idea of the Hemingways ever 
 knowing what want meant was absurd. They 
 lived a dozen doors or so from us, in a big 
 white house with stately white columns rising 
 from veranda to gable across the whole front, 
 and a large garden, flowers and shrubs in front, 
 fruit-trees and vegetables behind. Squire Hem 
 ingway was the most important man in our part 
 of the town. I know now that he was never 
 anything more than United States Commissioner 
 of Deeds, but in those days, when he walked 
 down the street with his gold-headed cane, his 
 blanket-shawl folded over his arm, and his 
 severe, dignified, close-shaven face held well 
 up in the air, I seemed to behold a companion 
 of Presidents. 
 
 This great man had two sons. The elder 
 of them, De Witt Hemingway, was a man 
 grown, and was at the front. I had seen 
 him march away, over a year before, with a 
 bright drawn sword, at the side of his com- 
 
 155 
 
The Eve of the Fourth 
 
 pany. The other son, Tom, was my senior by 
 only a twelvemonth. He was by nature proud, 
 but often consented to consort with me when 
 the selection of other available associates was 
 at low ebb. 
 
 It was to this Tom that I listened with most 
 envious eagerness, in front of the grocery-store, 
 on the afternoon of which I speak. He did 
 not sit on the stoop with the others no one 
 expected quite that degree of condescension 
 but leaned nonchalantly against a post, whit 
 tling out a new ramrod for his cannon. He 
 said that this year he was not going to have 
 any ordinary fire-crackers at all ; they, he added 
 with a meaning glance at me, were only fit for 
 girls. He might do a little in " double-end- 
 ers," but his real point would be in " ringers " 
 an incredible giant variety of cracker, Turkey- 
 red like the other, but in size almost a rolling- 
 pin. Some of these he would fire off singly, 
 between volleys from his cannon. But a good 
 many he intended to explode, in bunches say 
 of six, inside the tin wash-boiler, brought out 
 into the middle of the road for that purpose. 
 It would doubtless blow the old thing sky-high, 
 but that didn t matter. They could get a new 
 one. 
 
 Even as he spoke, the big bell in the tower 
 156 
 
The Eve of the Fourth 
 
 of the town-hall burst forth in a loud clangor 
 of swift-repeated strokes. It was half a mile 
 away, but the moist air brought the urgent, 
 clamorous sounds to our ears as if the belfry 
 had stood close above us. We sprang off the 
 stoop and stood poised, waiting to hear the 
 number of the ward struck, and ready to scam 
 per off on the instant if the fire was anywhere 
 in our part of the town. But the excited peal 
 went on and on, without a pause. It became 
 obvious that this meant something besides a fire. 
 Perhaps some of us wondered vaguely what that 
 something might be, but as a body our interest 
 had lapsed. Billy Norris, who was the son of 
 poor parents, but could whip even Tom Hem 
 ingway, said he had been told that the German 
 boys on the other side of the gulf were coming 
 over to "rush " us on the following day, and 
 that we ought all to collect nails to fire at them 
 from our cannon. This we pledged ourselves 
 to do the bell keeping up its throbbing tumult 
 ceaselessly. 
 
 Suddenly we saw the familiar figure of John 
 son running up the street toward us. What his 
 first name was I never knew. To every one, 
 little or big, he was just Johnson. He and his 
 family had moved into our town after the War 
 began ; I fancy they moved away again before 
 
 157 
 
The Eve of the Fourth 
 
 it ended. I do not even know what he did for 
 a living. But he seemed always drunk, always 
 turbulently good-natured, and always shouting 
 out the news at the top of his lungs. I cannot 
 pretend to guess how he found out everything 
 as he did, or why, having found it out, he 
 straightway rushed homeward, scattering the in 
 telligence as he ran. Most probably Johnson 
 was moulded by Nature for a town-crier, but 
 was born by accident some generations after the 
 race of bellmen had disappeared. Our neigh 
 borhood did not like him ; our mothers did 
 not know Mrs. Johnson, and we boys behaved 
 with snobbish roughness to his children. He 
 seemed not to mind this at all, but came up 
 unwearyingly to shout out the tidings of the 
 day for our benefit. 
 
 " Vicksburg s fell ! Vicksburg s fell ! " was 
 what we heard him yelling as he approached. 
 
 Delos Ingersoll and his hired boy ran out of 
 the grocery. Doors opened along the street 
 and heads were thrust inquiringly out. 
 
 " Vicksburg s fell ! " he kept hoarsely pro 
 claiming, his arms waving in the air, as he 
 staggered along at a dog- trot past us, and went 
 into the saloon next to the grocery. 
 
 I cannot say how definite an idea these tid 
 ings conveyed to our boyish minds. I have a 
 158 
 
 I 
 
The Eve of the Fourth 
 
 notion that at the time I assumed that Vicks- 
 burg had something to do with Gettysburg, 
 where I knew, from the talk of my elders, that an 
 awful fight had been proceeding since the mid 
 dle of the week. Doubtless this confusion was 
 aided by the fact that an hour or so later, on 
 that same wonderful day, the wire brought us 
 word that this terrible battle on Pennsylvanian 
 soil had at last taken the form of a Union vic 
 tory. It is difficult now to see how we could 
 have known both these things on the Third of 
 July that is to say, before the people actually 
 concerned seemed to have been sure of them. 
 Perhaps it was only inspired guesswork, but I 
 know that my town went wild over the news, 
 and that the clouds overhead cleared away as 
 if by magic. 
 
 The sun did well to spread that summer sky 
 at eventide with all the pageantry of color the 
 spectrum knows. It would have been prepos 
 terous that such a day should slink off in dull, 
 Quaker drabs. Men were shouting in the 
 streets now. The old cannon left over from 
 the Mexican war had been dragged out on to 
 the rickety covered river-bridge, and was 
 frightening the fishes, and shaking the dry, 
 worm-eaten rafters, as fast as the swab and ram 
 mer could work. Our town bandsmen were 
 
 159 
 
The Eve of the Fourth 
 
 playing as they had never played before, down 
 in the square in front of the post-office. The 
 management of the Universe could not hurl 
 enough wild fireworks into the exultant sunset 
 to fit our mood. 
 
 The very air was filled with the scent of tri 
 umph the spirit of conquest. It seemed only 
 natural that I should march off to my mother 
 and quite collectedly tell her that I desired to 
 stay out all night with the other boys. I had 
 never dreamed of daring to prefer such a re 
 quest in other years. Now I was scarcely con 
 scious of surprise when she gave her permission, 
 adding with a smile that I would be glad 
 enough to come in and go to bed before half 
 the night was over. 
 
 I steeled my heart after supper with the 
 proud resolve that if the night turned out to 
 be as protracted as one of those Lapland winter 
 nights we read about in the geography, I still 
 would not surrender. 
 
 The boys outside were not so excited over 
 the tidings of my unlooked-for victory as I had 
 expected them to be. They received the news, 
 in fact, with a rather mortifying stoicism. Tom 
 Hemingway, however, took enough interest in 
 the affair to suggest that, instead of spending 
 my twenty cents in paltry fire-crackers, I might 
 160 
 
The Eve of the Fourth 
 
 go down town and buy another can of powder 
 for his cannon. By doing so, he pointed out, I 
 would be a part-proprietor, as it were, of the 
 night s performance, and would be entitled to 
 occasionally touch the cannon off. This gen 
 erosity affected me, and I hastened down the 
 long hill-street to show myself worthy of it, re 
 peating the instruction of "Kentucky Bear- 
 Han ter-coarse-grain " over and over again to 
 myself as I went. 
 
 Half-way on my journey I overtook a per 
 son whom, even in the gathering twilight, I 
 recognized as Miss Stratford, the school 
 teacher. She also was walking down the hill, 
 and rapidly. It did not need the sight of a 
 letter in her hand to tell me that she was going 
 to the post-office. In those cruel war-days 
 everybody went to the post-office. I myself 
 went regularly to get our mail, and to exchange 
 shin-plasters for one-cent stamps with which to 
 buy yeast and other commodities that called 
 for minute fractional currency. 
 
 Although I was very fond of Miss Stratford 
 I still recall her gentle eyes, and pretty, 
 rounded, dark face, in its frame of long, black 
 curls, with tender liking I now coldly resolved 
 to hurry past, pretending not to know her. It 
 was a mean thing to do ; Miss Stratford had 
 161 
 
The Eve of tbe Fourtb 
 
 always been good to me, shining in that respect 
 in brilliant contrast to my other teachers, whom 
 I hated bitterly. Still, the "Kentucky Bear- 
 Hunter-coarse-grain " was too important a mat 
 ter to wait upon any mere female friendships, 
 and I quickened my pace into a trot, hoping to 
 scurry by unrecognized. 
 
 " Oh, Andrew ! is that you ? " I heard her call 
 out as I ran past. For the instant I thought of 
 rushing on, quite as if I had not heard. Then 
 I stopped, and walked beside her. 
 
 " I am going to stay up all night : mother 
 says I may; and I am going to fire off Tom 
 Hemingway s big cannon every fourth time, 
 straight through till breakfast time," I an 
 nounced to her loftily. 
 
 * Dear me ! I ought to be proud to be seen 
 walking with such an important citizen," she 
 answered, with kindly playfulness. She added 
 more gravely, after a moment s pause : " Then 
 Tom is out, playing with the other boys, is he ? " 
 
 " Why, of course ! " I responded. " He al 
 ways lets us stand around when he fires off his 
 cannon. He s got some ringers this year 
 too." 
 
 I heard Miss Stratford murmur an impulsive 
 " Thank God ! " under her breath. 
 
 Full as the day had been of surprises, I could 
 162 
 
The Eve of the Fourth 
 
 not help wondering that the fact of Tom s ring 
 ers should stir up such profound emotions in 
 the teacher s breast. Since the subject so in 
 terested her, I went on with a long catalogue 
 of Tom s other pyrotechnic possessions, and 
 from that to an account of his almost super 
 natural collection of postage-stamps. In a few 
 minutes more I am sure I should have revealed 
 to her the great secret of my life, which was 
 my determination, in case I came to assume the 
 victorious role and rank of Napoleon, to imme 
 diately make Tom a Marshal of the Empire. 
 
 But we had reached the post-office square. 
 I had never before seen it so full of people. 
 
 Even to my boyish eyes the tragic line of 
 division which cleft this crowd in twain was 
 apparent. On one side, over by the Seminary, 
 the youngsters had lighted a bonfire, and 
 were running about it some of the bolder ones 
 jumping through it in frolicsome recklessness. 
 Close by stood the band, now valiantly thump 
 ing out " John Brown s Body " upon the noisy 
 night air. It was quite dark by this time, but 
 the musicians knew the tune by heart. So did 
 the throng about them, and sang it with lusty 
 fervor. The doors of the saloon toward the cor 
 ner of the square were flung wide open. Two 
 black streams of men kept in motion under the 
 
 163 
 
The Eve of the Fourth 
 
 radiance of the big reflector-lamp over these 
 doors one going in, one coming out. They 
 slapped one another on the back as they passed , 
 with exultant screams and shouts. Every once 
 in awhile, when movement was for the instant 
 blocked, some voice lifted above the others 
 would begin " Hip-hip-hip-hip and then 
 would come a roar that fairly drowned the 
 music. 
 
 On the post-office side of the square there 
 was no bonfire. No one raised a cheer. A 
 densely packed mass of men and women stood 
 in front of the big square stone building, with 
 its closed doors, and curtained windows upon 
 which, from time to time, the shadow of 
 some passing clerk, bareheaded and hurried, 
 would be momentarily thrown. They waited 
 in silence for the night mail to be sorted. If 
 they spoke to one another, it was in whispers 
 as if they had been standing- with uncovered 
 heads at a funeral service in a graveyard. The 
 dim light reflected over from the bonfire, 
 or down from the shaded windows of the post- 
 office, showed solemn, hard -lined, anxious faces. 
 Their lips scarcely moved when they muttered 
 little low-toned remarks to their neighbors. 
 They spoke from the side of the mouth, and 
 only on one subject. 
 
 164 
 
The Eve of the Fourth 
 
 " He went all through Fredericksburg with 
 out a scratch 
 
 " He looks so much like me General Pal 
 mer told my brother he d have known his hide 
 in a tan-yard 
 
 " He s been gone let s see it was a year 
 some time last April " 
 
 "He was counting on a furlough the first 
 of this month. I suppose nobody got one as 
 things turned out " 
 
 "He said, No ; it ain t my style. I ll 
 fight as much as you like, but I won t be 
 nigger-waiter for no man, captain or no cap 
 tain " 
 
 Thus I heard the scattered murmurs among 
 the grown-up heads above me, as we pushed 
 into the outskirts of the throng, and stood 
 there, waiting with the rest. There was no 
 sentence without a "he" in it. A stranger 
 might have fancied that they were all talking of 
 one man. I knew better. They were the 
 fathers and mothers, the sisters, brothers, wives 
 of the men whose regiments had been in that 
 horrible three days fight at Gettysburg. Each 
 was thinking and speaking of his own, and took 
 it for granted the others would understand. 
 For that matter, they all did understand. The 
 town knew the name and family of every 
 165 
 
The Eve of the Fourth 
 
 one of the twelve-score sons she had in this 
 battle. 
 
 It is not very clear to me now why people 
 all went to the post-office to wait for the even 
 ing papers that came in from the nearest big 
 city. Nowadays they would be brought in 
 bulk and sold on the street before the mail- 
 bags had reached the post-office. Apparently, 
 that had not yet been thought of in our slow 
 old town. 
 
 The band across the square had started up 
 afresh with " Annie Lisle " the sweet old re 
 frain of " Wave willows, murmur waters," 
 comes back to me now after a quarter-century 
 of forgetful ness when all at once there was a 
 sharp forward movement of the crowd. The 
 doors had been thrown open, and the hallway 
 was on the instant filled with a swarming mul 
 titude. The band had stopped as suddenly as 
 it began, and no more cheering was heard. 
 We could see whole troops of dark forms scud 
 ding toward us from the other side of the 
 square. 
 
 " Run in for me that s a good boy ask 
 for Dr. Stratford s mail," the teacher whis 
 pered, bending over me. 
 
 It seemed an age before I finally got back to 
 her, with the paper in its postmarked wrapper 
 1 66 
 
The Eve of the Fourth 
 
 buttoned up inside my jacket. I had never 
 been in so fierce and determined a crowd be 
 fore, and I emerged from it at last, confused in 
 wits and panting for breath. I was still look 
 ing about through the gloom in a foolish way 
 for Miss Stratford, when I felt her hand laid 
 sharply on my shoulder. 
 
 " Well where is it? did nothing come? " 
 she asked, her voice trembling with eagerness, 
 and the eyes which I had thought so soft and 
 dove-like flashing down upon me as if she were 
 Miss Pritchard, and I had been caught chewing 
 gum in school. 
 
 I drew the paper out from under my round 
 about, and gave it to her. She grasped it, and 
 thrust a finger under the cover to tear it off. 
 Then she hesitated for a moment, and looked 
 about her. " Come where there is some 
 light," she said, and started up the street. 
 Although she seemed to have spoken more to 
 herself than to me, I followed her in silence, 
 close to her side. 
 
 For a long way the sidewalk in front of 
 every lighted store-window was thronged with a 
 group of people clustered tight about some one 
 who had a paper, and was reading from it 
 aloud. Beside broken snatches of this mono 
 logue, we caught, now groans of sorrow and 
 
 167 
 
The Eve of the Fourth 
 
 horror, now exclamations of proud approval, 
 and even the beginnings of cheers, broken in 
 upon by a general " Sh-h ! " as we hurried 
 past outside the curb. 
 
 It was under a lamp in the little park nearly 
 half-way up the hill that Miss Stratford stopped, 
 and spread the paper open. I see her still, 
 white-faced, under the flickering gaslight, her 
 black curls making a strange dark bar between 
 the pale-straw hat and the white of her shoulder 
 shawl and muslin dress, her hands trembling as 
 they held up the extended sheet. She scanned 
 the columns swiftly, skimmingly for a time, as 
 I could see by the way she moved her round 
 chin up and down. Then she came to a part 
 which called for closer reading. The paper 
 shook perceptibly now, as she bent her eyes 
 upon it. Then all at once it fell from her 
 hands, and without a sound she walked away. 
 
 I picked the paper up, and followed her 
 along the gravelled path. It was like pursuing 
 a ghost, so weirdly white did her summer at 
 tire now look to my frightened eyes, with such 
 a swift and deathly silence did she move. 
 The path upon which we were described a 
 circle touching the four sides of the square. 
 She did not quit it when the intersection with 
 our street was reached, but followed straight 
 1 68 
 
The Eve of the Fourth 
 
 round again toward the point where we had 
 entered the park. This, too, in turn she 
 passed, gliding noiselessly forward under the 
 black arches of the overhanging elms. The 
 suggestion that she did not know she was going 
 round and round in a ring startled my brain. 
 I would have run up to her now if I had 
 dared. 
 
 Suddenly she turned, and saw that I was be 
 hind her. She sank slowly into one of the 
 garden-seats, by the path, and held out for a 
 moment a hesitating hand toward me. I went 
 up at this and looked into her face. Shadowed 
 as it was, the change I saw there chilled my 
 blood. It was like the face of some one I had 
 never seen before, with fixed, wide-open, star 
 ing eyes which seemed to look beyond me 
 through the darkness, upon some terrible sight 
 no other could see. 
 
 "Go run and tell Tom to go home! 
 His brother his brother has been killed," she 
 said to me, choking over the words as if they 
 hurt her throat, and still with the same strange 
 dry-eyed, far-away gaze covering yet not seeing 
 me. 
 
 I held out the paper for her to take, but she 
 made no sign, and I gingerly laid it on the seat 
 beside her. I hung about for a minute or two 
 169 
 
The Eve of the Fourth 
 
 longer, imagining that she might have some 
 thing else to say but no word came. Then, 
 with a feebly inopportune " Well, good-by," 
 I started off alone up the hill. 
 
 It was a distinct relief to find that my com 
 panions were congregated at the lower end of 
 the common, instead of their accustomed haunt 
 farther up near my home, for the walk had been 
 a lonely one, and I was deeply depressed by 
 what had happened. Tom, it seems, had been 
 called away some quarter of an hour before. 
 All the boys knew of the calamity which had 
 befallen the Hemingways. We talked about it, 
 from time to time, as we loaded and fired the 
 cannon which Tom had obligingly turned over 
 to my friends. It had been out of deference 
 to the feelings of the stricken household that 
 they had betaken themselves and their racket 
 off to the remote corner of the common. The 
 solemnity of the occasion silenced criticism 
 upon my conduct in forgetting to buy the pow 
 der. "There would be enough as long as it 
 lasted," Billy Norris said, with philosophic de 
 cision. 
 
 We speculated upon the likelihood of De Witt 
 Hemingway s being given a military funeral. 
 These mournful pageants had by this time be 
 come such familiar things to us that the pros- 
 170 
 
The Eve of the Fourth 
 
 pect of one more had no element of excitement 
 in it, save as it involved a gloomy sort of dis 
 tinction for Tom. He would ride in the first 
 mourning-carriage with his parents, and this 
 would associate us, as we walked along ahead 
 of the band, with the most intimate aspects of 
 the demonstration. We regretted now that the 
 soldier company which we had so long projected 
 remained still unorganized. Had it been other 
 wise we would probably have been awarded the 
 right of the line in the procession. Some one 
 suggested that it was not too late and we 
 promptly bound ourselves to meet after break 
 fast next clay to organize and begin drilling. 
 If we worked at this night and day, and our 
 parents instantaneously provided us with uni 
 forms and guns, we should be in time. It was 
 also arranged that we should be called the 
 De Witt C. Hemingway Fire Zouaves, and that 
 Billy Norris should be side captain. The chief 
 command would, of course, be reserved for 
 Tom. We would specially salute him as he 
 rode past in the closed carriage, and then fall in 
 behind, forming his honorary escort. 
 
 None of us had known the dead officer 
 
 closely, owing to his advanced age. He was 
 
 seven or eight years older than even Tom. But 
 
 the more elderly among our group had seen him 
 
 171 
 
The Eve of tbe Fourth 
 
 play base -ball in the academy nine, and our 
 neighborhood was still alive with legends of 
 his early audacity and skill in collecting barrels 
 and dry -goods boxes at night for election bon 
 fires. It was remembered that once he carried 
 away a whole front-stoop from the house of a 
 little German tailor on one of the back streets. 
 As we stood around the heated cannon, in the 
 great black solitude of the common, our fancies 
 pictured this redoubtable young man once more 
 among us not in his blue uniform, with crim 
 son sash and sword laid by his side, and the 
 gauntlets drawn over his lifeless hands, but as a 
 taller and glorified Tom, in a roundabout jacket 
 and copper-toed boots, giving the law on this 
 his play ground. The very cannon at our feet 
 had once been his. The night air became peo 
 pled with ghosts of his contemporaries hand 
 some boys who had grown up before us, and 
 had gone away to lay down their lives in far-off 
 Virginia or Tennessee. 
 
 These heroic shades brought drowsiness in 
 their train. We lapsed into long silences, 
 punctuated by yawns, when it was not our turn 
 to ram and touch off the cannon. Finally some 
 of us stretched ourselves out on the grass, in the 
 warm darkness, to wait comfortably for this 
 turn to come. 
 
 172 
 
The Eve of the Fourth 
 
 What did come instead was daybreak find 
 ing Billy Norris and myself alone constant to 
 our all-night vow. We sat up and shivered as 
 we rubbed our eyes. The morning air had 
 a chilling freshness that went to my bones 
 and these, moreover, were filled with those 
 novel aches and stiffnesses which beds were 
 invented to prevent. We stood up, stretching 
 out our arms, and gaping at the pearl-and-rose 
 beginnings of the sunrise in the eastern sky. 
 The other boys had all gone home, and taken 
 the cannon with them. Only scraps of torn 
 paper and tiny patches of burnt grass marked 
 the site of our celebration. 
 
 My first weak impulse was to march home 
 without delay, and get into bed as quickly as 
 might be. But Billy Norris looked so finely 
 resolute and resourceful that I hesitated to sug 
 gest this, and said nothing, leaving the initia 
 tive to him. One could see, by the most casual 
 glance, that he was superior to mere considera 
 tions of unseasonableness in hours. I remem 
 bered now that he was one of that remarkable 
 body of boys, the paper-carriers, who rose when 
 all others were asleep in their warm nests, and 
 trudged about long before breakfast distributing 
 the Clarion among the well-to-do households. 
 This fact had given him his position in our 
 
 173 
 
The Ere of the Fourth 
 
 neighborhood as quite the next in leadership 
 to Tom Hemingway. 
 
 He presently outlined his plans to me, after 
 having tried the centre of light on the horizon, 
 where soon the sun would be, by an old brass 
 compass he had in his pocket a process which 
 enabled him, he said, to tell pretty well what 
 time it was. The paper wouldn t be out for 
 nearly two hours yet and if it were not for the 
 fact of a great battle, there would have been no 
 paper at all on this glorious anniversary but 
 he thought we would go down-town and see 
 what was going on around about the newspaper 
 office. Forthwith we started. He cheered my 
 faint spirits by assuring me that I would soon 
 cease to be sleepy, and would, in fact, feel bet 
 ter than usual. I dragged my feet along at his 
 side, waiting for this revival to come, and 
 meantime furtively yawning against my sleeve. 
 
 Billy seemed to have dreamed a good deal, 
 during our nap on the common, about the De 
 Witt C. Hemingway Fire Zouaves. At least he 
 had now in his head a marvellously elaborated 
 system of organization, which he unfolded as we 
 went along. I felt that I had never before real 
 ized his greatness, his born genius for command. 
 His scheme halted nowhere. He allotted offices 
 with discriminating firmness; he treated the 
 
 174 
 
The Eve of the Fourth 
 
 question of uniforms and guns as a trivial detail 
 which would settle itself; he spoke with calm 
 confidence of our offering our services to the 
 Republic in the autumn ; his clear vision was 
 even the materials for a fife-and-drum corps 
 among the German boys in the back streets. It 
 was true that I appeared personally to play a 
 meagre part in these great projects ; the most 
 that was said about me was that I might make a 
 fair third-corporal. But Fate had thrown in my 
 way such a wonderful chance of becoming inti 
 mate with Billy that I made sure I should swiftly 
 advance in rank the more so as I discerned in 
 the background of his thoughts, as it were, a 
 grim determination to make short work of Tom 
 Hemingway s aristocratic pretensions, once the 
 funeral was over. 
 
 We were forced to make a detour of the park 
 on our way down, because Billy observed some 
 half-dozen Irish boys at play with a cannon in 
 side, whom he knew to be hostile. If there had 
 been only four, he said, he would have gone in 
 and routed them. He could whip any two of 
 them, he added, with one hand tied behind his 
 back. I listened with admiration. Billy was 
 not tall, but he possessed great thickness of chest 
 and length of arm. His skin was so dark that 
 we canvassed the theory from time to time of his 
 
The Eve of tbe Fourth 
 
 having Indian blood. He did not discourage 
 this, and he admitted himself that he was double- 
 jointed. 
 
 The streets of the business part of the town, 
 into which we now made our way, were quite 
 deserted. We went around into the yard behind 
 the printing-office, where the carrier-boys were 
 wont to wait for the press to get to work ; and 
 Billy displayed some impatience at discovering 
 that here too there was no one. It was now 
 broad daylight, but through the windows of the 
 composing-room we could see some of the print 
 ers still setting type by kerosene lamps. 
 
 We seated ourselves at the end of the yard on 
 a big, flat, smooth-faced stone, and Billy pro 
 duced from his pocket a number of" em " quads, 
 so he called them, and with which the carriers 
 had learned from the printers boys to play a 
 very beautiful game. You shook the pieces of 
 metal in your hands and threw them on the 
 stone ; your score depended upon the number of 
 nicked sides that were turned uppermost. We 
 played this game in the interest of good-fellow 
 ship for a little. Then Billy told me that the 
 carriers always played it for pennies, and that it 
 was unmanly for us to do otherwise. He had no 
 pennies at that precise moment, but would pay 
 at the end of the week what he had lost ; in the 
 176 
 
The Eve of the Fourth 
 
 meantime there was my twenty cents to go on 
 with. After this Billy threw so many nicks 
 uppermost that my courage gave way, and I 
 made an attempt to stop the game ; but a single 
 remark from him as to the military destiny 
 which he was reserving for me, if I only displayed 
 true soldierly nerve and grit, sufficed to quiet me 
 once more, and the play went on. I had now 
 only five cents left. 
 
 Suddenly a shadow interposed itself between 
 the sunlight and the stone. I looked up, to be 
 hold a small boy with bare arms and a blackened 
 apron standing over me, watching our game. 
 There was a great deal of ink on his face and 
 hands, and a hardened, not to say rakish ex 
 pression in his eye. 
 
 "Why don t you < jeff with somebody of 
 your own size ? " he demanded of Billy, after 
 having looked me over critically. 
 
 He was not nearly so big as Billy, and I ex 
 pected to see the latter instantly rise and crush 
 him, but Billy only laughed and said we were 
 playing for fun ; he was going to give me all my 
 money back. I was rejoiced to hear this, but 
 still felt surprised at the propitiatory manner 
 Billy adopted toward this diminutive inky boy. 
 It was not the demeanor befitting aside-captain 
 and what made it worse was that the strange 
 177 
 
The Eve of the Fourtb 
 
 boy loftily declined to be cajoled by it. He 
 sniffed when Billy told him about the military 
 company we were forming ; he coldly shook his 
 head, with a curt " Nixie ! " when invited to 
 join it; and he laughed aloud at hearing the 
 name our organization was to bear. 
 
 " He ain t dead at all that De Witt Hem 
 ingway," he said, with jeering contempt. 
 
 " Hain t he though!" exclaimed Billy. 
 " The news come last night. Tom had to go 
 home his mother sent for him on account of 
 it! " 
 
 "I ll bet you a quarter he ain t dead," re 
 sponded the practical inky boy. " Money up, 
 though ! " 
 
 "I ve only got fifteen cents. I ll bet you 
 that, though," rejoined Billy, producing my 
 torn and dishevelled shinplasters. 
 
 "All right! Wait here!" said the boy, 
 running off to the building and disappearing 
 through the door. There was barely time for me 
 to learn from my companion that this printer s 
 apprentice was called " the devil," and could 
 not only whistle between his teeth and crack 
 his fingers, but chew tobacco, when he reap 
 peared, with a long narrow strip of paper in his 
 hand. This he held out for us to see, indicat 
 ing with an ebon forefinger the special para- 
 178 
 
The Eve of the Fourth 
 
 graph we were to read. Billy looked at it 
 sharply, for several moments, in silence. Then 
 he said to me: "What does it say there? 
 I must a got some powder in my eyes last 
 ni^ht." 
 
 I read this paragraph aloud, not without an 
 unworthy feeling that the inky boy would now 
 respect me deeply : 
 
 II CORRECTION. Lieutenant De Witt C. 
 Hemingway, of Company A, th New York, 
 reported in earlier despatches among the killed, 
 is uninjured. The officer killed is Lieutenant 
 Carl Heinninge, Company F, same regiment." 
 
 Billy s face visibly lengthened as I read this 
 out, and he felt us both looking at him. He 
 made a pretence of examining the slip of paper 
 again, but in a half-hearted way. Then he 
 ruefully handed over the fifteen cents and, 
 rising from the stone, shook himself. 
 
 "Them Dutchmen never was no good!" 
 was what he said. 
 
 The inky boy had put the money in the 
 pocket under his apron, and grinned now with 
 as much enjoyment as dignity would permit 
 him to show. He did not seem to mind any 
 longer the original source of his winnings, and 
 179 
 
The Eve of tbe Fourth 
 
 it was apparent that I could not with decency 
 recall it to him. Some odd impulse prompted 
 me, however, to ask him if I might have the 
 paper he had in his hand. He was magnani 
 mous enough to present me with the proof-sheet 
 on the spot. Then with another grin he turned 
 and left us. 
 
 Billy stood sullenly kicking with his bare 
 toes into a sand-heap by the stone. He would 
 not answer me when I spoke to him. It flashed 
 across my perceptive faculties that he was not 
 such a great man, after all, as I had imagined. 
 In another instant or two it had become quite 
 clear to me that I had no admiration for him 
 whatever. Without a word, I turned on my 
 heel and walked determinedly out of the yard 
 and into the street, homeward bent. 
 
 All at once I quickened my pace ; something 
 had occurred to me. The purpose thus con 
 ceived grew so swiftly that soon I found myself 
 running. Up the hill I sped, and straight 
 through the park. If the Irish boys shouted 
 after me I knew it not, but dashed on heedless 
 of all else save the one idea. I only halted, 
 breathless and panting, when I stood on Dr. 
 Stratford s doorstep, and heard the night-bell 
 inside jangling shrilly in response to my excited 
 pull. 
 
 1 80 
 
The Eve of the Fourth 
 
 As I waited, I pictured to myself the old 
 doctor as he would presently come down, half- 
 dressed and pulling on his coat as he advanced. 
 He would ask, eagerly, " Who is sick? Where 
 am I to go ? " and I would calmly reply that he 
 unduly alarmed himself, and that I had a mes 
 sage for his daughter. He would, of course, 
 ask me what it was, and I, politely but firmly, 
 would decline to explain to any one but the 
 lady in person. Just what might ensue was not 
 clear but I beheld myself throughout com 
 manding the situation, at once benevolent, 
 polished, and inexorable. 
 
 The door opened with unlooked-for prompt 
 ness, while my self-complacent vision still hung 
 in mid-air. Instead of the bald and spectacled 
 old doctor, there confronted me a white -faced, 
 solemn-eyed lady in a black dress, whom I did 
 not seem to know. I stared at her, tongue- 
 tied, till she said, in a low, grave voice, 
 " Well, Andrew, what is it? " 
 
 Then of course I saw that it was Miss Strat 
 ford, my teacher, the person whom I had come 
 to see. Some vague sense of what the sleepless 
 night had meant in this house came to me as I 
 gazed confusedly at her mourning, and heard 
 the echo of her sad tones in my ears. 
 
 " Is some one ill? " she asked again. 
 181 
 
The Ere of tbe Fourth 
 
 11 No ; some one some one is very well ! " 
 I managed to reply, lifting my eyes again to 
 her wan face. The spectacle of its drawn lines 
 and pallor all at once assailed my wearied and 
 overtaxed nerves with crushing weight. I felt 
 myself beginning to whimper, and rushing tears 
 scalded my eyes. Something inside my breast 
 seemed to be dragging me down through the 
 stoop. 
 
 I have now only the recollection of Miss 
 Stratford s kneeling by my side, with a sup 
 porting arm around me, and of her thus unroll 
 ing and reading the proof-paper I had in my 
 hand. We were in the hall now, instead of on 
 the stoop, and there was a long silence. Then 
 she put her head on my shoulder and wept. I 
 could hear and feel her sobs as if they were my 
 own. 
 
 " I I didn t think you d cry that you d 
 be so sorry," I heard myself saying, at last, in 
 despondent self-defence. 
 
 Miss Stratford lifted her head and, still 
 kneeling as she was, put a finger under my chin 
 to make me look her in her face. Lo ! the 
 eyes were laughing through their tears ; the 
 whole countenance was radiant once more with 
 the light of happy youth and with that other 
 glory which youth knows only once. 
 182 
 
The Eve of the Fourth 
 
 "Why, Andrew, boy," she said, trembling, 
 smiling, sobbing, beaming all at once, " didn t 
 you know that people cry for very joy some 
 times ? 
 
 And as I shook my head she bent down and 
 kissed me. 
 
 183 
 
My Aunt Susan 
 
MY AUNT SUSAN 
 
 I HELD the lamp, while Aunt Susan cut up 
 the pig. 
 
 The whole day had been devoted, I remem 
 ber, to preparations for this great event. Early 
 in the morning I had been to the butcher s to 
 set in train the annual negotiations for a loan 
 of cleaver and meat-saw ; and hours afterward 
 had borne these implements proudly homeward 
 through the village street. In the interval I 
 had turned the grindstone, over at the Four 
 Corners, while the grocer s hired man oblig 
 ingly sharpened our carving-knife. Then there 
 had been the even more back-aching task of 
 clearing away the hard snow from the accus 
 tomed site of our wood-pile in the yard, and 
 scraping together a frosted heap of chips and 
 bark for the smudge in the smoke-barrel. 
 
 From time to time I sweetened this toil, and 
 helped the laggard hours to a swifter pace, by 
 paying visits to the wood -shed to have still 
 another look at the pig. He was frozen very 
 stiff, and there were small icicles in the crevices 
 187 
 
My Aunt Susan 
 
 whence his eyes had altogether disappeared. 
 My emotions as I viewed his big, cold, pink 
 carcass, with its extended legs, its bland and 
 pasty countenance, and that awful emptiness 
 underneath, were much mixed. Although I 
 was his elder by seven or eight years, we had 
 been close friends during all his life or all ex 
 cept a very few weeks of his earliest sucking 
 pighood, spent on his native farm. I had fed 
 him daily ; I had watched him grow week by 
 week ; more than once I had poked him with 
 a stick as he ran around in his sty, to make 
 him squeal for the edification of neighbors 
 boys who had come into our yard, and would 
 now be sharply ordered out again by Aunt 
 Susan. 
 
 As these kindly memories surged over me I 
 could not but feel like a traitor to my old com 
 panion, as he lay thus hairless and pallid before 
 my eyes. But then I would remember how 
 good he was going to be to eat and straight 
 way return with a light heart to the work of 
 kicking up more chips from the ice. 
 
 From the living-room in the rear of our little 
 house came the monotonous incessant clatter of 
 Aunt Susan s carpet loom. Through the win 
 dow I could see the outlines of her figure and 
 the back of her head as she sat on her high 
 1 88 
 
My Aunt Susan 
 
 bench. It was to me the most familiar of all 
 spectacles, this tireless woman bending reso 
 lutely over her work. She was there when I 
 first cautiously ventured my nose out from un 
 der the warm blanket of a winter s morning. 
 Very, very often I fell asleep at night in my 
 bed in the recess, lulled off by the murmur of 
 the diligent loom. 
 
 Presently I went in to warm myself, and 
 stood with my red fingers over the stove top. 
 She cast but one vague glance at me, through 
 the open frame of the loom between us, and 
 went on with her work. It was not our habit 
 to talk much in that house. She was too busy 
 a woman, for one thing, to have much time for 
 conversation. The impression that she pre 
 ferred not to talk was always present in my 
 boyish mind. I call up the picture of her still 
 as I saw her then under the top bar of the cum 
 brous old machine, sitting with lips tight to 
 gether, and resolute, masterful eyes bent upon 
 the twining intricacy of warp and woof before 
 her. At her side were piled a dozen or more 
 big balls of carpet rags, which the village wives 
 and daughters cut up, sewed together and 
 wound in the long winter evenings, while 
 the men-folks sat with their stockinged feet 
 on the stove hearth, and read out the lat- 
 189 
 
My Aunt Susan 
 
 est news from the front" in their Weekly 
 Tribune. 
 
 I knew all these rag balls by the names of 
 their owners. Not only did I often go to their 
 houses for them, upon the strength of the gen 
 eral village rumor that they were ready, and al 
 ways carry back the finished lengths of carpet ; 
 but I had long since unconsciously grown to 
 watch all the varying garments and shifts of 
 fashion in the raiment of our neighbors, with 
 an eye single to the likelihood of their eventu 
 ally turning up at Aunt Susan s loom. When 
 Hiram Mabie s checkered butternut coat was 
 cut down for his son Roswell, I noted the fact 
 merely as a stage of its progress toward carpet 
 rags. If Mrs. Wilkins concluded to turn her 
 flowered delaine dress a third year, or Sarah 
 Northrup had her bright saffron shawl dyed 
 black, I was sensible of a wrong having been 
 done our little household. I felt like crossing 
 the street whenever I saw approaching the 
 portly figure of Cyrus Husted s mother, the 
 woman who dragged everybody into her house 
 to show them the ingrain carpet she had bought 
 at Tecumseh, and assured them that it was 
 much cheaper in the long run than the products 
 of my Aunt s industry. I tingled with indigna 
 tion as she passed me on the sidewalk, puffing 
 190 
 
My Aunt Susan 
 
 for breath and stepping mincingly because her 
 shoes were too tight for her. 
 
 Nearly all the knowledge of our neighbors 
 sayings and doings which reached Aunt Susan 
 came to her from me. She kept herself to her 
 self with a vengeance, toiling early and late, 
 rarely going beyond the confines of her yard 
 save on Sunday mornings, when we went to 
 church, and treating with frosty curtness the 
 few people who ventured to come to our house 
 on business or from social curiosity. For one 
 thing, this Juno Mills in which we lived w r as 
 not really our home. We had only been there 
 for four or five years a space which indeed 
 spanned all my recollections of life but left 
 my Aunt more or less a stranger and new-comer. 
 She spared no pains to maintain that condition. 
 I can see now that there were good reasons for 
 this stern aloofness. At the time I thought it 
 was altogether due to the proud and unsociable 
 nature of my Aunt. 
 
 In my child s mind I regarded her as dis 
 tinctly an elderly person. People outside, I 
 know, spoke of her as an old maid, sometimes 
 winking furtively over my head as they did so. 
 But she was not really old at all was in truth 
 just barely in the thirties. Doubtless the fact 
 that she was tall and dark, with very black 
 
 191 
 
My Aunt Susan 
 
 hair, and that years of steady concentration of 
 sight, upon the strings and threads of the loom, 
 had scored a scowling vertical wrinkle between 
 her near-sighted eyes gave me my notion of 
 her advanced maturity. And in all her ways 
 and words, too, she was so far removed from 
 any idea of youthful softness ! I could not re 
 member her having ever kissed me. My imag 
 ination never evolved the conceit of her kiss 
 ing anybody. I had always had at her hands 
 uniformly good treatment, good food, good 
 clothes ; after I had learned my letters from 
 the old maroon plush label on the Babbitt s 
 soap box which held the wood behind the 
 stove, and expanded this knowledge by a study 
 of street signs, she had herself taught me how 
 to read, and later provided me with books for 
 the village school. She was my only known 
 relative the only person in the world who had 
 ever done anything for me. Yet it could not 
 be said that I loved her. Indeed she no more 
 raised the suggestion of tenderness in my mind 
 than did the loom at which she spent her wak 
 ing hours. 
 
 "The Perkinses asked me why you didn t 
 get the butcher to cut up the pig," I remarked 
 at last, rubbing my hands together over the 
 hot stove griddles. 
 
 192 
 
My Aunt Susan 
 
 " It s none of their business ! " said Aunt 
 Susan, with laconic promptness. 
 
 " And Devillo Pollard s got anew overcoat," 
 I added. " He hasn t worn the old army one 
 now for upward of a week." 
 
 "If this war goes on much longer," com 
 mented my Aunt, " every carpet in Dearborn 
 County 11 be as blue as a whetstone." 
 
 I think that must have been the entire con 
 versation of the afternoon. I especially recall 
 the remark about the overcoat. For two years 
 now the balls of rags had contained an increas 
 ing proportion of pale blue woollen strips, as 
 the men of the country round about came home 
 from the South, or bought cheap garments from 
 the second-hand dealers in Tecumseh. All 
 other colors had died out. There was only 
 this light blue, and the black of bombazine or 
 worsted mourning into which the news in each 
 week s papers forced one or another of the 
 neighboring families. To obviate this mo 
 notony, some of the women dyed their white 
 rags with butternut or even cochineal, but this 
 was a mere drop in the bucket, so to speak. 
 The loom spun out only long, depressing rolls 
 of black and blue. 
 
 My memory leaps lightly forward now to 
 the early evening, when I held the lamp in 
 
 193 
 
My Aunt Susan 
 
 the woodshed, and Aunt Susan cut up the 
 
 Pig- 
 How joyfully I watched her every operation ! 
 Every now and again my interest grew so 
 beyond proper bounds that I held the lamp 
 sidewise, and the flame smoked the chimney. I 
 was in mortal terror over this lamp, even when 
 it was standing on the table quite by itself. 
 We often read in the paper of explosions from 
 this new kerosene by which people were 
 instantly killed and houses wrapped in an un 
 quenchable fire. Aunt Susan had stood out 
 against the strange invention, long after most 
 of the other homes of Juno Mills were familiar 
 with the idea of the lamp. Even after she had 
 yielded, and I went to the grocery for more oil 
 and fresh chimneys and wicks, like other boys, 
 she refused to believe that this inflammable fluid 
 was really squeezed out of hard coal, as they 
 said. And for years we lived in momentary be 
 lief that our lamp was about to explode. 
 
 My fears of sudden death could not, however, 
 for a moment stand up against the delight 
 ed excitement with which I viewed the dis 
 memberment of the pig. It was very cold in 
 the shed, but neither of us noticed that. My 
 Aunt attacked the job with skilful resolution 
 and energy, as was her way, chopping small 
 194 
 
My Aunt Susan 
 
 bones, sawing vehemently through big ones, 
 hacking and slicing with the knife, like a 
 strong man in a hurry. 
 
 For a long time no word was spoken. I 
 gazed in silence as the head was detached, and 
 then resolved itself slowly into souse always 
 tacitly set aside as my special portion. In 
 prophecy I saw the big pan, filled with ears, 
 cheeks, snout, feet, and tail, all boiled and 
 allowed to grow cold in their own jelly that 
 pan to which I was free to repair any time of day 
 until everything was gone. I thought of my 
 self, too, with apron tied round my neck and 
 the chopping-bowl on my knees, reducing what 
 remained of the head into small bits, to be 
 seasoned by my Aunt, and then fill other pans 
 as head-cheese. The sage and summer savory 
 hung in paper flour-bags from the rafters over 
 head. I looked up at them with rapture. It 
 seemed as if my mouth already tasted them in 
 head-cheese and sausage and in the hot gravy 
 which basted the succulent spare-rib. Only the 
 abiding menace of the lamp kept me from dan 
 cing with delight. 
 
 Gradually, however, as my Aunt passed from 
 the tid-bits to the more substantial portions of 
 her task, getting out the shoulders, the hams 
 for smoking, the pieces for salting down in the 
 
 195 
 
My Aunt Susan 
 
 brine-barrel, my enthusiasm languished a trifle. 
 The lamp grew heavy as I changed it from 
 hand to hand, holding the free fingers at a re 
 spectful distance over the chimney - top for 
 warmth, and shuffling my feet about. It was 
 truly very cold. I strove to divert myself by 
 smiling at the big shadow my bustling Aunt 
 cast against the house side of the shed, and by 
 moving the lamp to affect its proportions, but 
 broke out into yawns instead. A mouse ran 
 swiftly across the scantling just under the 
 lean-to roof. At the same time I thought I 
 caught the muffled sound of distant rapping, as 
 if at our own rarely used front door. I was 
 too sleepy to decide whether I had really heard 
 a noise or not. 
 
 All at once I roused myself with a start. 
 The lamp had nearly slipped from my hands, 
 and the horror of what might have happened 
 frightened me into wakefulness. 
 
 11 The Perkins girls keep on calling me Wise 
 child. They yell it after me all the while," 
 I said, desperately clutching at a subject which 
 I hoped would interest my Aunt. I had spok 
 en to her about it a week or so before, and it 
 had stirred her quite out of her wonted stern 
 calm. If anything would induce her to talk 
 now, it would be this. 
 
 196 
 
My Aunt Susan 
 
 "They do, eh?" she said, with an alert 
 sharpness of voice, which dwindled away into 
 a sigh. Then, after a moment, she added, 
 "Well, never you mind. You just keep right 
 on, tending to your own affairs, and studying 
 your lessons, and in time it ll be you who can 
 laugh at them and all their low-down lot. 
 They only do it to make you feel bad. Just 
 don t you humor them." 
 
 "But I don t see," I went on, " why 
 what do they call me wise child for ? I 
 asked Hi Budd, up at the Corners, but he only 
 just chuckled and chuckled to himself, and 
 wouldn t say a word." 
 
 My Aunt suspended work for the moment, 
 and looked severely down upon me. " Well ! 
 Ira Clarence Blodgett ! v she said, with grim 
 emphasis, " I am ashamed of you ! I thought 
 you had more pride ! The idea of talking 
 about things like that with a coarse, rough, 
 hired man in a barn ! 
 
 To hear my full name thus pronounced, syl 
 lable by syllable, sent me fairly weltering, as it 
 were, under Aunt Susan s utmost condemnation. 
 It was the punishment reserved for my gravest 
 crimes. I hung my head, and felt the lamp 
 wagging nervelessly in my hands. I could not 
 deny even her speculative impeachment as to 
 197 
 
My Aunt Susan 
 
 the barn ; it was blankly apparent in my mind 
 that the fact of the barn made matters much 
 worse. 
 
 "I was helping him wash their two-seated 
 sleigh," I submitted, weakly. "He asked me 
 to." 
 
 "What does that matter?" she asked, per 
 emptorily. "What business have you got 
 going around talking with men about me ? " 
 
 "Why, it wasn t about you at all, Aunt 
 Susan," I put in more confidently. " I said the 
 Perkins girls kept calling me wise child, 
 and I asked Hi " 
 
 Aunt Susan sighed once more, and inter 
 rupted me to inspect the wick of the lamp. 
 Then she turned again to her work, but less 
 spiritedly now. She -took up the cleaver with 
 almost an air of sadness. 
 
 "You don t understand yet," she said. 
 " But don t make it any harder for me by talk 
 ing. Just go along and say nothing to nobody. 
 People will think more of you." 
 
 My mind strove in vain to grapple with this 
 suggested picture of myself, moving about in 
 perpetual dumbness, followed everywhere by 
 universal admiration. The lamp would not hold 
 itself straight. 
 
 All at once we both distinctly heard the 
 
 198 
 
My Aunt Susan 
 
 sound of footsteps close outside. The noise of 
 crunching on the dry, frozen snow came through 
 the thin clap-boards with sharp resonance. 
 Aunt Susan ceased cutting and listened. 
 
 " I heard somebody rapping at the front door 
 a spell ago," I ventured to whisper. My Aunt 
 looked at me, and probably realized that I was 
 too sleepy to be accountable for my actions. At 
 all events she said nothing, but moved toward 
 the low door of the shed, cleaver in hand. 
 
 "Who s there?" she called out in shrill, 
 belligerent tones ; and this demand she repeat 
 ed, after an interval of silence, when an irreso 
 lute knocking was heard on the door. 
 
 We heard a man coughing immediately out 
 side the door. I saw Aunt Susan start at the 
 sound almost as if she recognized it. A 
 moment later this man, whoever he was, mas 
 tered his cough sufficiently to call out, in a hesi 
 tating way : 
 
 " Is that you, Susan? " 
 
 Aunt Susan raised her chin on the instant, 
 her nostrils drawn in, her eyes flashing like 
 those of a pointer when he sees a gun lifted. I 
 had never seen her so excited. She wheeled 
 round once, and covered me with a swift, pen 
 etrating, comprehensive glance, under which 
 my knees smote together, and the lamp lurched 
 199 
 
My Aunt Susan 
 
 perilously. Then she turned again, glided 
 toward the door, halted, moved backward two 
 or three steps looked again at me, and this 
 time spoke. 
 
 " Well, I swan /" was what she said, and I 
 felt that she looked it. 
 
 " Susan ! Is that you ?" came the voice 
 again, hoarsely appealing. It was not the voice 
 of any neighbor. I made sure I had never 
 heard it before. I could have smiled to my 
 self at the presumption of any man calling my 
 Aunt by her first name, if I had not been too 
 deeply mystified. 
 
 " I ve been directed here to find Miss Susan 
 Pike," the man outside explained, between 
 fresh coughings. 
 
 " Well, then, mog your boots out of this as 
 quick as ever you can!" my Aunt replied, 
 with great promptitude. " You won t find her 
 here! " 
 
 " But I have found her ! " the stranger pro 
 tested, with an accent of wearied deprecation. 
 "Don t you know me, Susan? I am not 
 strong, this cold air is very bad for me." 
 
 " I say * get out ! " my Aunt replied, sharply. 
 
 Her tone was unrelenting enough, but I noted 
 
 that she had tipped her head a little to one 
 
 side, a clear sign to me that she was opening 
 
 200 
 
My Aunt Susan 
 
 her mind to argument. I felt certain that 
 presently I should see this man. 
 
 And, sure enough, after some further parley, 
 Susan went to the door, and, with a half-defi 
 ant gesture, knocked the hook up out of the 
 staple. 
 
 " Come along then, if you must ! " she said, 
 in scornful tones. Then she marched back till 
 she stood beside me, angry resolution written 
 all over her face and the cleaver in her hand. 
 
 A tall, dark figure, opaque against a gleam 
 ing background of moonlight and snowlight, 
 was what I for a moment saw in the frame of 
 the open doorway. Then, as he entered, shut 
 and hooked the door behind him, and stood 
 looking in a dazed way over at our lamplit 
 group, I saw that he was a slender, delicately 
 featured man, with a long beard of yellowish 
 brown and gentle eyes. He was clad as a 
 soldier, heavy azure-hued caped overcoat and 
 all, and I already knew enough of uniforms 
 cruel familiarity of my war-time infancy to 
 tell by his cap that he was an officer. He 
 coughed again before a word was spoken He 
 looked the last man in the world to go about 
 routing up peaceful households of a winter s 
 night. 
 
 Well, now what is your business ? de- 
 
 2OI 
 
My Aunt Susan 
 
 manded Aunt Susan. She put her hand on my 
 shoulder as she spoke, something I had never 
 known her to do before. I felt confused under 
 this novel caress, and it seemed only natural that 
 the stranger, having studied my Aunt s face in 
 a wistful way for a moment, should turn his 
 gaze upon me. I was truly a remarkable ob 
 ject, with Aunt Susan s hand on my shoulder. 
 
 " I could make no one hear at the other door. 
 I saw the light through the window here, and 
 came around," the stranger explained. He 
 sent little straying glances at the remains of the 
 pig and at the weapon my Aunt held at her 
 side, but for the most part looked steadily at 
 me. 
 
 "That doesn t matter," said Aunt Susan, 
 coldly. " What do you want, now that you 
 are here ? Why did you come at all ? What 
 business had you to think that I ever wanted to 
 lay eyes on you again ? How could you have 
 the courage to show your face here in my 
 house?" 
 
 The man s shoulders shivered under their 
 cape, and a wan smile curled in his beard. 
 "You keep your house at a very low tempera 
 ture," he said with grave pleasantry. He did 
 not seem to mind Aunt Susan s hostile demeanor 
 at all. 
 
 202 
 
My Aunt Susan 
 
 " I was badly wounded last September," he 
 went on, quite as if that was what she had 
 asked him, " and lay at the point of death for 
 weeks. Then they sent me North, and I have 
 been in the hospital at Albany ever since. One 
 of the nurses there, struck by my name, asked me 
 if I had any relatives in her village that is, Juno 
 Mills. In that way I learned where you were 
 living. I suppose I ought not to have come 
 against doctor s orders the journey has been 
 too much I have suffered a good deal these 
 last two hours." 
 
 I felt my Aunt s hand shake a little on my 
 shoulder. Her voice, though, was as implaca 
 ble as ever. 
 
 " There is a much better reason than that 
 why you should not have come," she said, bit 
 terly. 
 
 The stranger was talking to her, but look 
 ing at me. He took a step toward me now, 
 with a softened sparkle in his eyes and an out 
 stretched hand. " This this then is the boy, 
 is it? " he asked. 
 
 With a gesture of amazing swiftness Aunt 
 Susan threw her arm about me, and drew me 
 close to her side, lamp and all. With her 
 other hand she lifted and almost brandished 
 the cleaver. 
 
 203 
 
My Aunt Susan 
 
 " No, you don t ! " she cried. " You don t 
 touch him ! He s mine ! I ve worked for 
 him day and night ever since I took him from 
 his dying mother s breast. I closed her eyes. 
 I forgave her. Blood isthicker n water after all. 
 She was my sister. Yes, I forgave poor Em- 
 meline, and I kissed her before she died. She 
 gave the boy to me, and he s mine ! Mine, do 
 you hear ? mine ? 
 
 " My dear Susan " our visitor began. 
 
 11 Don t dear Susan me ! I heard it once 
 once too often. Oh, never again ! You left 
 me to run away with her. I don t speak of 
 that. I forgave that when I forgave her. But 
 that was the least of it. You left her to herself 
 for months before she died. You ve left the 
 boy to himself ever since. You can t begin 
 now. I ve worked my fingers to the bone for 
 him you can t make me stop now." 
 
 " I went to California," he went on in a low 
 voice, speaking with difficulty. "We didn t 
 get on together as smoothly as we might per- 
 hai)s, but I had no earthly notion of deserting 
 her. I was ill myself, lying in yellow-fever 
 quarantine off Key West, at the very time she 
 died. When I finally got back you and the 
 child were both gone. I could not trace you. 
 I went to the war. I had made money in Cali- 
 204 
 
My Aunt Susan 
 
 fornia. It is trebled .now. I rose to be Col 
 onel I have a Brigadier s brevet in my pocket 
 now. Yet I give you my word I never have 
 desired anything so much, all the time, as to 
 find you again you and the boy." 
 
 My Aunt nodded her head comprehendingly. 
 I felt from the tremor of her hand that she was 
 forcing herself against her own desires to be 
 disagreeable. 
 
 "Yes, that war," was what she said. "I 
 know about that war ! The honest men that 
 go get killed. But you you come back !" 
 
 The man frowned wearily, and gave a little 
 groan of discouragement. " Then this is final, 
 is it? You don t wish to speak with me; you 
 really desire to keep the boy you are set against 
 my ever seeing him touching him. Why, 
 then, of course of course excuse my " 
 
 And then for the first time I saw a human 
 being tumble in a dead swoon. My little brain, 
 dazed and bewildered by the strange new things 
 I was hearing, lagged behind my eyes in follow 
 ing the sudden pallor on the man s face lagged 
 behind my ears in noting the tell-tale quaver 
 and gasp in his voice. Before I comprehended 
 what was toward lo ! there was no man stand 
 ing in front of me at all. 
 
 Like a flash Aunt Susan snatched the lamp 
 205 
 
My Aunt 
 
 from my grasp and flung herself upon her 
 knees beside the limp and huddled figure. 
 After a momentary inspection of the white, 
 bearded face, she set the lamp down on the 
 frozen earth floor and took his head upon her 
 lap. 
 
 "Take the lamp, rim to the buttery, and 
 bring the bottle of hartshorn ! " she command 
 ed me, hurriedly. " Or, no wait open the 
 door that s it walk ahead with the light !" 
 
 The strong woman stood upright as she spoke, 
 her shoulders braced against the burden she 
 bore in her arms. Unaided, with slow steps, 
 she carried the senseless form of the soldier into 
 the living room, and held it without rest of any 
 sort, the while I, under her direction, wildly 
 tore off quilts, blankets, sheets, and feather-tick 
 from my bed and heaped them up on the floor 
 beside the stove. Then, when I had spread 
 them to her liking, she bent and gently laid 
 him down. 
 
 "Now get the hartshorn," she said. I heard 
 her putting more wood on the fire, but when I 
 returned with the phial she sat once again with 
 the stranger s head upon her knee. She was 
 softly stroking the fine, waving brown hair upon 
 his brow, but her eyes were lifted, looking 
 dreamily at far-away things. I could have 
 206 
 
My Aunt Susan 
 
 sworn to the beginnings of a smile about her 
 parted lips. It was not like my Aunt Susan at 
 all. 
 
 " Come here, Ira," I heard her say at last, 
 after a long time had been spent in silence. I 
 walked over and stood at her shoulder, looking 
 down upon the pale face upturned against the 
 black of her worn dress. The blue veins just 
 discernible in temples and closed eyelids, the 
 delicately turned features, the way his brown 
 beard curled, the fact that his breathing was 
 gently regular once more these are what I saw. 
 But my Aunt seemed to demand that I should 
 see more. 
 
 Well?" she asked, in a tone mellowed 
 beyond all recognition. " Don t you don t 
 you see who it is? " 
 
 I suppose I really must have had an idea by 
 this time. But I remember that I shook my 
 head. 
 
 My Aunt positively did smile this time. 
 "The Perkins girls were wrong," she said; 
 " there isn t the least smitch of a l wise child 
 about you ! 
 
 There was another pause. Emboldened by 
 
 consciousness of a change in the emotional 
 
 atmosphere, I was moved to lay my hand upon 
 
 my Aunt s shoulder. The action did not seem 
 
 207 
 
My Aunt Susan 
 
 to displease her, and we remained thus for some 
 minutes, watching together this strange addition 
 to our family party. 
 
 Finally she told me to get on my cap, com 
 forter, and mittens, and run over to Dr. Pea- 
 body s and fetch him back with me. The pur 
 port of my mission oppressed me. 
 
 " Is he going to die then ? " I asked. 
 
 Aunt Susan laughed outright. " You little 
 goose," she said ; "do you think the doctors 
 kill people every time? " 
 
 And, laughing again, with a trembling soft 
 ness in her voice and tears upon her black eye 
 lashes, she lifted her face to mine and kissed 
 me ! 
 
 * * * # # 
 
 No fatality dogged good old Doctor Pea- 
 body s big footsteps through the snow that 
 night. I fell asleep while he was still at my 
 Aunt s house, but not before the stranger had 
 recovered consciousness, and was sitting up in 
 the large rocking-chair, and it was clearly under 
 stood that he was soon to be well again. 
 
 The kindly, garrulous doctor did more than 
 reassure our little household. He must have 
 spent most of the night going about reassuring 
 the other households of Juno Mills. At all 
 events, when I first went out next morning 
 208 
 
My Aunt Susan 
 
 while our neighbors were still eating their buck 
 wheat cakes and pork fat by lamplight every 
 body seemed to know that my father, the dis 
 tinguished Colonel Blodgett, had returned from 
 the war on sick leave, and was lying ill at the 
 house of his sister-in-law. I felt at once the 
 altered attitude of the village toward me. Im 
 portant citizens who had never spoken to me 
 before dignified and portly men in blue cut 
 away coats with brass buttons, and high stiff 
 hats of shaggy white silk stopped now to lay 
 their hands on the top of my head and ask me 
 how my father, the Colonel, was getting along. 
 The grocer s hired man gave me a Jackson ball 
 and two molasses cookies the very first time I 
 saw him. Even the Perkins girls, during the 
 course of the afternoon, strolled over to our 
 front gate, and, instead of hurling enigmatic 
 objurgations at me, invited me to come out and 
 play. The butcher of his own accord came and 
 finished cutting up the pig. 
 
 These changes came back to me as one part 
 of the great metamorphosis which the night s 
 events had wrought. Another part was the 
 definite disappearance of the stern-faced, tire 
 lessly toiling old maid I had known all my life 
 as Aunt Susan. In her place there was now a 
 much younger woman, with pleasant lines about 
 209 
 
My Aunt Susan 
 
 her pretty mouth, and eyes that twinkled when 
 they looked at me, and who paid no attention 
 to the loom whatever, but bustled cheerily 
 about the house instead, thinking only of good 
 things for us to eat. 
 
 I remember that I marked my sense of the 
 difference by abandoning the old name of Aunt 
 Susan, and calling her now just "Auntie." 
 And one day, in the mid-spring, after she and 
 her convalescent patient had returned from their 
 first drive together into the country round 
 about, she told me, as she took off her new bon 
 net in an absent-minded way, and looked medi 
 tatively at the old disused loom, and then bent 
 down to brush my forehead with her warm lips 
 she told me that henceforth I was to call her 
 Mother. 
 
 210 
 
NEW NOVELS AND SHORT STORIES. 
 
 In Uniform Binding. Each One Dollar. 
 
 A POUND OF CURE. 
 By W. H. BISHOP. 
 
 A striking novel of life at Monte Carlo. It embodies a 
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 SALEM KITTREDGE, AND OTHER STORIES. 
 By BLISS PERRY. 
 
 Salem Kittredge is a story about a theological student, a 
 pretty girl with active sympathies, and a young man addicted 
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 during a season at Bar Harbor, is told with much spirit and 
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 character drawing and a quick sense of human nature. 
 
 " Salem Kittredge is one of the best short stories we have read 
 recently. There are eight other stories in the volume, all good." 
 
 Boston Advertiser. 
 
 TALES OF THE MAINE COAST. 
 By NOAH BROOKS. 
 
 Including " Pansy Pegg," " The Apparition of Joe Murch," 
 "A Hereditary Barn," "The Phantom Sailor," "The Waif of 
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 I 53~ I 57 Fifth Avenue, 
 
 NEW YORK CITY. 
 
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 Renewed books are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 
 
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 OCT 18 1967 
 
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 M119741 
 
 95 
 
 esi. 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 S, SMITH & SONS,