estion they asked
him over and over:

"But are you sure the call will come?"

"As sure as that we stand here; and it will come before the week is out.
We must be ready!"

Often, when he left them, they would turn from the work in hand, leaving
it as it was, to lie unfinished in the fields, and make their way slowly
and thoughtfully to their homes, while Tom climbed into his creaking
little wagon once more, only to fall into the same dull, hunched-over
attitude. He had many things to think out before he faced Rouen and
Crailey Gray again, and more to fight through to the end with himself.
Three days he took for it, three days driving through the soft May
weather behind the kind, old jog-trotting horse; three days on the road,
from farm-house to farm-house and from field to field, from cabin of
the woods to cabin in the clearing. Tossing unhappily at night, he
lay sleepless till dawn, though not because of the hard beds; and when
daylight came, journeyed steadily on again, over the vagabond little
hills that had gypsied it so far into the prairie-land in their
wanderings from their range on the Ohio, and, passing the hills, went
on through the flat forest-land, always hunched over dismally in the
creaking wagon.

But on the evening of the third day he drove into town, with the stoop
out of his shoulders and the lustre back in his eyes. He was haggard,
gray, dusty, but he had solved his puzzle, and one thing was clear in
his mind as the thing that he would do. He patted the old horse a hearty
farewell as he left him with the liveryman from whom he had hired him,
and strode up Main Street with the air of a man who is going somewhere.
It was late, but there were more lights than usual in the windows and
more people on the streets. Boys ran shouting, while, here and there,
knots of men argued loudly, and in front of the little corner drug-store
a noisily talkative, widely gesticulative crowd of fifty or more had
gathered. An old man, a cobbler, who had left a leg at Tippecanoe and
replaced it with a wooden one, chastely decorated with designs of his
own carving, came stumping excitedly down the middle of the street,
where he walked for fear of the cracks in the wooden pavement, which
were dangerous to his art-leg when he came from the Rouen House bar, as
on the present occasion. He hailed Tom by name.

"You're the lad, Tom Vanrevel," he shouted. "You're the man to lead
the boys out for the glory of the State! You git th