iar men and
neighbors alone,--they were a part of that army which had saved its
country. They had taken their lives in their hands and gone out to
fight for their country, plain John Stover and Jesse Dean and the
rest. No matter if every other day in the year they counted for little
or much, whether they were lame-footed and lagging, whether their
farms were of poor soil or rich.

The little troop went in slender line along the road; the crowded
country wagons and all the people who went afoot followed Martin
Tighe's wagon as if it were a great gathering at a country funeral.
The route was short, and the long, straggling line marched slowly; it
could go no faster than the lame men could walk.

In one of the houses by the roadside an old woman sat by a window, in
an old-fashioned black gown, and clean white cap with a prim border
which bound her thin, sharp features closely. She had been for a long
time looking out eagerly over the snowberry and cinnamon-rose bushes;
her face was pressed close to the pane, and presently she caught sight
of the great flag as it came down the road.

"Let me see 'em! I've got to see 'em go by!" she pleaded, trying to
rise from her chair alone when she heard the fife, and the women
helped her to the door, and held her so that she could stand and wait.
She had been an old woman when the war began; she had sent sons and
grandsons to the field; they were all gone now. As the men came by,
she straightened her bent figure with all the vigor of youth. The fife
and drum stopped suddenly; the colors lowered. She did not heed that,
but her old eyes flashed and then filled with tears to see the flag
going to salute the soldiers' graves. "Thank ye, boys; thank ye!" she
cried, in her quavering voice, and they all cheered her. The cheer
went back along the straggling line for old Grandmother Dexter,
standing there in her front door between the lilacs. It was one of the
great moments of the day.

The few old people at the poor-house, too, were waiting to see the
show. The keeper's young son, knowing that it was a day of festivity,
and not understanding exactly why, had put his toy flag out of the
gable window, and there it showed against the gray clapboards like a
gay flower. It was the only bit of decoration along the veterans' way,
and they stopped and saluted it before they broke ranks and went out
to the field corner beyond the poor-farm barn to the bit of ground
that held the paupers' unmarked g