of lights at sunset. The trees were fine, too, with bigger leaves than
we have, and when winter come it was white with snow."

"Oh, I know about that," Hertha interrupted. "I was out in the first
snowstorm this winter, and on a sled, too. Did you go coasting, Tom?"

"No, ma'am!" His negative was emphatic. It precluded the possibility
that even, for a moment, he had indulged in such a pastime. And after
the spoken word he shook his head some seconds in further denial.

"It were this-a-way," he went on, "they thought as there weren't a
minute of the day that a feller could have to himself. I reckon they do
that way in the army, an' we wore army clothes--play clothes though, for
we didn't have no guns. You'd get up in the morning after a cat-nap, an'
go about your tasks till breakfast, and when you'd eaten that up an'
more too, there'd be drill and lessons and Lord knows what all, I can't
remember such a long while as this. But by and by there'd come a minute
when the bell didn't ring and a fellow would think he could stop to
study something. Perhaps he'd sit on a bench and try to figure out what
was in his mind when an officer'd come along and call out, 'What you
doing?'"

"And I know what you'd say," Hertha cried, interrupting him. "You'd say,
'I was thinking----'" imitating his drawl.

"Yes'm. And then he'd say, 'Get up, man, and go to work. This ain't no
place to think.'

"Well, it was like that all day. I went into chapel, a mighty fine
building, you could put most of the cabins at home in it without
crowding, and I sat down there alone on the back seat, jes' studying the
world here an' the world ter come. I hadn't been there a minute when the
Captain comes up and says sharp-like, 'What you doin' here?' 'Jes'
thinkin',' I says. 'Can't have that,' he says, 'this ain't no place to
think. Go to work!' I walks down under the trees at sunset an' watches
the pink turn into soft purple, studying ter find the first star, when
some one comes along and calls out, 'Get up, man! Don't sit still like
that. Go to work!' At night, when every one's in bed, I thought they'd
let up, so I looked out the window. The moon was sailing past the stars,
you know, and I was studying it out the way we used ter, and thinking,
thinking--But, Lord, 'What you up at this time of night for, boy? 'the
officer asks, tapping me on the arm. 'Jes' thinkin',' I answers. 'You
can't do that here,' says he, 'no time for thinking. Go to bed!' So then
I