rs
dividing, the travellers came into full view.

There was a wagon, with red wheels, a green box, and drawn by a
milk-white horse. On its seat were two women, who clung to each other as
they looked about. Above them a cross of rude boards stood straight up
into the sunlight of the morning. And beside the cross, driving, sat a
man--an aged man--white-haired, priestly, patriarchal.

CHAPTER XLI

TAPS

The parlour at Captain Oliver's was a homelike place: The black tarred
paper that covered its walls was fairly hidden from sight by selected
illustrations cut out of leading weeklies--these illustrations being
arranged with a nice eye to convenience, right side up, the small-sized
pictures low down, the larger ones higher. There was a fireplace which,
it being summertime, had a screening brown-paper skirt that fell to the
hearth. Above this, along the mantel, was another skirt, made of a
newspaper, short and pouty, and scissored at the lower edge into an
elaborate saw-tooth design. The mantel was further adorned by certain
assorted belongings in the way of a doll, a kite, an empty bank, a
racquet, books, and the like, all cast into their various positions by
the seven small Olivers. On either side of the fireplace were
bracket-lamps. Across the room was the inevitable army cot, spread with
wolf skins. There were chairs--two of them--wrought from sugar barrels.
There was a table, quite as ingeniously formed. And, completing the
whole, the long curtains over the windows--curtains magnificently
flowered, and made from a dress-pattern gift (the captain's) that Mrs.
Oliver, ever a woman of resource, had artfully diverted to another
purpose.

To-night, the parlour was more homelike than usual--and festive. For a
family party filled it. Here was the hostess, carrying a huge iced
cake, and taking account of the seven's behaviour; the seven themselves,
eager, though somewhat repressed, and doing full justice to their
portions; their father, thankful, as he passed the coffee, that so much
good had come out of some misfortune; Frank Jamieson, mother and sister
on either arm; Marylyn Lancaster, looking dimpled consciousness; close
upon her every move, a certain young lieutenant, who cast longing
glances toward the half-lighted gallery; the surgeon, ungratefully
relegated to a corner, but solacing himself in his cup; David Bond, his
wrinkled old face a benediction; and, lastly, Dallas and John.

Lounsbury was his former