an't none on us take
no day off this season," said Asa Brown; but nobody thought it worth
his while to respond to such evident truth.

"Next Saturday'll be the thirtieth o' May--that's Decoration Day,
ain't it?--come round again. Lord! how the years slip by after you git
to be forty-five an' along there!" said Asa again. "I s'pose some o'
our folks'll go over to Alton to see the procession, same's usual.
I've got to git one o' them small flags to stick on our Joel's grave,
an' Mis' Dexter always counts on havin' some for Harrison's lot. I
calculate to get 'em somehow. I must make time to ride over, but I
don't know where the time's comin' from out o' next week. I wish the
women folks would tend to them things. There's the spot where Eb
Munson an' John Tighe lays in the poor-farm lot, an' I did mean
certain to buy flags for 'em last year an' year before, but I went an'
forgot it. I'd like to have folks that rode by notice 'em for once, if
they was town paupers. Eb Munson was as darin' a man as ever stepped
out to tuck o' drum."

"So he was," said John Stover, taking his pipe with decision and
knocking out the ashes. "Drink was his ruin; but I wan't one that
could be harsh with Eb, no matter what he done. He worked hard long's
he could, too; but he wan't like a sound man, an' I think he took
somethin' first not so much 'cause he loved it, but to kind of keep
his strength up so's he could work, an' then, all of a sudden, rum
clinched with him an' threw him. Eb was talkin' 'long o' me one day
when he was about half full, an' says he, right out, 'I wouldn't have
fell to this state,' says he, 'if I'd had me a home an' a little
fam'ly; but it don't make no difference to nobody, and it's the best
comfort I seem to have, an' I ain't goin' to do without it. I'm ailin'
all the time,' says he, 'an' if I keep middlin' full, I make out to
hold my own an' to keep along o' my work.' I pitied Eb. I says to him,
'You ain't goin' to bring no disgrace on us old army boys, be you,
Eb?' an' he says no, he wan't. I think if he'd lived to get one o'
them big fat pensions, he'd had it easier. Eight dollars a month paid
his board, while he'd pick up what cheap work he could, an' then he
got so that decent folks didn't seem to want the bother of him, an' so
he come on the town."

"There was somethin' else to it," said Henry Merrill soberly. "Drink
come natural to him, 'twas born in him, I expect, an' there wan't
nobody that could turn the div