er gave more. Not many of the gazing people thought
of this; but they did think of death by bayonet and ball as the holiday
ranks marched by.

Down through the main street went the little troop, and the crowd made a
solid wall on the sidewalk, and a moving guard before and behind. From
the high windows above, the handkerchiefs of the work-girls fluttered,
while underneath from the law offices, and below from the door-ways, men
looked out soberly, realizing that this meant War indeed--real and near
War.

By another way, down the hill toward the railway-station, rattled the
wheels of an artillery company; also a little holiday troop, with
holiday guns shining brightly. The men sat in their places with folded
arms; the crowd, seeing them, knew them all. They were only Miller, and
Sieberling, and Wagner, and others as familiar; six months ago--a month
ago--they would have laughed inexhaustibly at the idea of calling Tom
Miller a hero, or elevating Fritz Wagner to any other pedestal than the
top of a beer barrel. But now, as they saw them, they gave a mighty
cheer, which rang through the air splendidly, and raised a hue of pride
upon the faces of the artillerymen, and perhaps the first feeling in
some of their hearts higher than the determination not to "back out,"
which had been until then their actuating motive. The two shining little
guns rattled down the hill; the infantry company marched down behind
them. The line of cars, with locomotive attached, was in waiting, and,
breaking ranks, helter-skelter, in any way and every way, hindered by
hand-shaking, by all sorts of incongruous parting gifts thrust upon them
at the last moment by people they never saw before, blessed by excited,
tearful women, made heart-sick themselves by the sight of the grief of
their mothers and wives, the soldiers took their places in the cars, and
the train moved out from the station, followed by a long cheer, taken up
and repeated again and again, until nothing but a dark speck on the
straight track remained for the shouters to look at, when they stopped
suddenly, hoarse and tired, and went silently homeward, pondering upon
this new thing which had come into their lives. The petty cares of the
day were forgotten. "War is hideous; but it banishes littleness from
daily life."

Anne, brought up as she had been in a remote little community, isolated
and half foreign, was in a measure ignorant of the causes and questions
of the great struggle whic