ver,"
he announced, stifling the twinkle of his eyes, and speaking with
ceremonial gravity. "He is a neighbour of mine--who tells me he has
dropped in for the night."

The seated gentleman with the gray moustache and beard came to his feet,
extending his hand, and under the overwhelming innovation of such
courtesy, Boone was even more palpably and painfully abashed. But as
vaguely comprehended etiquette, he recognized its importance and
accordingly came forward with the stiffness of an automaton.

"Howdy," he said with a stupendous solemnity. "I've done heerd tell of
ye right often, an' hit pleasures me ter strike hands with ye. Folks
says ye used ter be one of ther greatest horse-thievin' raiders that
ever drawed breath."

When the roar of General Prince's laughter subsided--a laughter for
which Boone could see no reason, the boy drew a chair to the corner of
the hearth and sat as one may sit in the wings of a theatre, his breath
coming with the palpitation of simmering excitement. Soon the elders
seemed to have forgotten him in the heated absorption of their debate.
They were threshing over the campaigns of the war between the States and
measuring the calibre of commanders as a backwoods man might estimate
the girth and footage of timber.

Boone nursed contented knees between locked fingers while the debate
waxed warm.

Not only were battles refought there in retrospect, with such
illuminating vividness as seemed to dissolve the narrow walls into a
panoramic breadth of smoking, thunderous fields, but motive and intent
were developed back of the engagements.

Boone in the chimney corner sat mouse-quiet. He seemed to be rapturously
floating through untried spaces on a magic carpet.

McCalloway replenished the fire from time to time, and though midnight
came and passed, neither thought of sleep. It was as if men who had
dwelt long in civilian inertia, were wassailing deep again in the heady
wine of a martial past, and were not yet ready to set aside their
goblets of memory.

The forgotten boy, electrically wakeful, huddled back, almost stifling
his breath lest he should be remembered and sent to bed.

The speakers fell eventually into a silence which held long and was
complete save for the light hiss and crackle of the logs, until Basil
Prince's voice broke it with a low-pitched and musing interrogation. "I
sometimes wonder whether the chemistry of a great war today would bring
forth mightier or lesser reacti