filled a soldier's nameless grave.

There were some boys of about my own age, William's sons, and as they at
once led me away down into the grove, I can say little of what went on
in the house after that. It must have been still in the warm September
weather for we climbed the slender leafy trees and swayed and swung on
their tip-tops like bobolinks. Perhaps I did not go so very high after
all but I had the feeling of being very close to the sky.

The blast of a bugle called us to dinner and we all went scrambling up
the bank and into the "front room" like a swarm of hungry shotes
responding to the call of the feeder. Aunt Deb, however shooed us out
into the kitchen. "You can't stay here," she said. "Mother'll feed you
in the kitchen."

Grandmother was waiting for us and our places were ready, so what did it
matter? We had chicken and mashed potato and nice hot biscuit and
honey--just as good as the grown people had and could eat all we wanted
without our mothers to bother us. I am quite certain about the honey for
I found a bee in one of the cells of my piece of comb, and when I pushed
my plate away in dismay grandmother laughed and said, "That is only a
little baby bee. You see this is wild honey. William got it out of a
tree and didn't have time to pick all the bees out of it."

At this point my memories of this day fuse and flow into another visit
to the McClintock homestead which must have taken place the next year,
for it is my final record of my grandmother. I do not recall a single
word that she said, but she again waited on us in the kitchen, beaming
upon us with love and understanding. I see her also smiling in the midst
of the joyous tumult which her children and grandchildren always
produced when they met. She seemed content to listen and to serve.

She was the mother of seven sons, each a splendid type of sturdy
manhood, and six daughters almost equally gifted in physical beauty.
Four of the sons stood over six feet in height and were of unusual
strength. All of them--men and women alike--were musicians by
inheritance, and I never think of them without hearing the sound of
singing or the voice of the violin. Each of them could play some
instrument and some of them could play any instrument. David, as you
shall learn, was the finest fiddler of them all. Grandad himself was
able to play the violin but he no longer did so. "'Tis the Devil's
instrument," he said, but I noticed that he always kept time to it