ing in a swarm of children. What indeed are sordid
thorns when the "large white plumes are dancing"--what indeed?

That was a busy night in Sycamore Ridge--the night before the men
left for war in the summer of '61. And the busiest man in all the town
was Philemon R. Ward. Every man in the town was going, and most of the
men were going who lived in the county--an area as large as a New
England state, and yet when they were all gathered in Main Street,
there were less than fivescore of them. They had agreed to elect Ward
captain, Martin Culpepper first lieutenant, Jake Dolan second
lieutenant. It was one of the diversions of the occasion to call out
"Hello, Cap," when Ward hustled by a loitering crowd. But his pride
was in his work, and before sundown he had it done. The Yankee in him
gave him industry and method and foresight. At sunset the last of the
twenty teams and wagons he had ordered came rattling down the hill
west of town, driven by Gabriel Carnine of Minneola, with Mrs.
Lycurgus Mason sitting like a war goddess on the back seat holding
Lycurgus, a spoil of battle, while he held their daughter on his lap,
withal a martial family party. Mrs. Barclay and Miss Lucy went to the
aid store-room and worked the long night through, getting breakfast
for the men. Mary Murphy and Nellie Logan came from the Thayer House
to the aid room when the hotel dishes were washed, and helped with the
work. And while they were there the Culpeppers walked in, returning
from a neighbourly visit to Miss Hendricks; John Barclay in an apron,
stirring a boiling pot of dried apples, turned his back on the eyes
that charmed him, but when the women sent him for a bucket of water,
he shook the handle at Ellen Culpepper and beckoned her with a finger,
and they slipped out into the moonlight together. She had hold of the
handle of the bucket with him, and they pulled and hauled and laughed
as boy and girl will laugh so long as the world turns round. The
street was deserted, and only the bar of light that fell across the
sidewalk from Schnitzler's saloon indicated the presence of human
beings in the little low buildings that pent in the highway. The boy
and the girl stood at the pump, and the boy stuck a foot in the horse
trough. He made a wet silhouette of it on the stone beneath him, and
reached for the handle of the pump. Then he said, "I got somepin I
won't tell."

"Three little niggers in a peanut shell," replied the girl.

"All right, Mis