hey were going to put up would make
the Mardi Gras in New Orleans look like an afternoon tea in Bury St.
Edmunds with a curate's aunt.

"Well, the San Augustine Rifles got back home on schedule time.
Everybody was at the depot giving forth Roosevelt-Democrat--they
used to be called Rebel--yells. There was two brass-bands, and the
mayor, and schoolgirls in white frightening the street-car horses by
throwing Cherokee roses in the streets, and--well, maybe you've seen
a celebration by a town that was inland and out of water.

"They wanted Brevet-Colonel Willie to get into a carriage and be drawn
by prominent citizens and some of the city aldermen to the armory, but
he stuck to his company and marched at the head of it up Sam Houston
Avenue. The buildings on both sides was covered with flags and
audiences, and everybody hollered 'Robbins!' or 'Hello, Willie!' as
we marched up in files of fours. I never saw a illustriouser-looking
human in my life than Willie was. He had at least seven or eight
medals and diplomas and decorations on the breast of his khaki coat;
he was sunburnt the color of a saddle, and he certainly done himself
proud.

"They told us at the depot that the courthouse was to be illuminated
at half-past seven, and there would be speeches and chili-con-carne at
the Palace Hotel. Miss Delphine Thompson was to read an original poem
by James Whitcomb Ryan, and Constable Hooker had promised us a salute
of nine guns from Chicago that he had arrested that day.

"After we had disbanded in the armory, Willie says to me:

"'Want to walk out a piece with me?'

"'Why, yes,' says I, 'if it ain't so far that we can't hear the tumult
and the shouting die away. I'm hungry myself,' says I, 'and I'm
pining for some home grub, but I'll go with you.'

"Willie steered me down some side streets till we came to a little
white cottage in a new lot with a twenty-by-thirty-foot lawn decorated
with brickbats and old barrel-staves.

"'Halt and give the countersign,' says I to Willie. 'Don't you know
this dugout? It's the bird's-nest that Joe Granberry built before he
married Myra Allison. What you going there for?'

"But Willie already had the gate open. He walked up the brick walk to
the steps, and I went with him. Myra was sitting in a rocking-chair
on the porch, sewing. Her hair was smoothed back kind of hasty and
tied in a knot. I never noticed till then that she had freckles. Joe
was at one side of the porch, in his shirt