the bluffs, and no shade, because of the way the coast runs here, and it was rather hard on the children. Then there was that foolish steamer, running up and down outside and shooting with a cannon, and after the Company Engineer was hit in the head, it gave you a sort of funny feeling, to sit there and hear the bullets whickering over you, and think you might be killed any minute. It was bad to think about your china, too-bullet might come along and hit it-she had some very fine Royal Doulton, which she got in England, and wouldn't have anything happen to it for anything in the world. . . . One of the young men went up at noon and got some crackers and sardines, and soda-pop-she never liked sardines. . . . Then, late in the afternoon, a native with a rifle came and said the fight was finished, and they all went home.

Yes, the house had been hit, several times. The china was all right, fortunately. But-and here she rather bristled and you saw that she was really angrylook there Right in front of the door, on the porch, a tumbling slug had struck

the beautiful hardwood floor and ripped up a sliver. There was a deep, long, yellow scar, ugly against the polished surface.

It was bad enough, she said-and for all her control her chin quivered a little-to have to live in a place at the end of the world, this way. You worked so hard to have everything nice and homelikereally, you wouldn't believe the amount of trouble she'd taken with her floors, with incompetent servants and all, and having to do the work herself to show them-and now, just as it was getting fit to be seen, this crazy bullet comes along and ruins everything! She laughed bitterly at the Manager's murmur to the effect that another piece could be set in. It would never look the same, she said. Her floor was just ruined-totally ruined.

Admiral and Staff came away, driving out by the hospital, where a Jamaican woman sat on the steps with her apron over her head, and rocked back and forth, and wailed. . . . War, said the StaffMajor of Marines, reflectively, was certainly hard on folks

A

MOS APPLEBY, leaning forward on his cane, sat listening drowsily as the regular bimonthly meeting of the Israel Dodge Post of the Grand Army of the Republic marched along its routine.

The heavy scented air of the late June afternoon slid lethargically through the windows on the fourteen old veterans who were as religious in attendance as if the meeting were a rite-which, indeed, it

was.

Amos's drowsing mind was a field of indistinct pictures: of blossoming appletrees and fresh-turned earth; of horses bending their shoulders against the traces of a plough; of growing things; of a Something that impended, a Something that would not materialize.

". . . Circular here about a trip to Gettysburg. You boys come up after meeting and look it over."

He sat up straight, his interest focussed on the adjutant.

"What's that 'bout Gettysburg?" he inquired.

"Tour of the battle-field. They show you around."

"Guess they can't tell Amos much about it." George Ketteridge chuckled. "Wounded there, wasn't you, Amos?"

But Amos did not hear. Gettysburg! The Something had materialized. He sat staring into the past, to July 2, 1863, the

greatest day of his life. He must go back and live it over again. That's what he'd been trying to think of all these weeks. Suddenly a tremendous excitement possessed him.

No one could notice his excitement. His respectful townsmen, watching him while he waited for the automobile which was to take him home, saw only the familiar erect figure of Amos Appleby, wealthy farmer, clad now in the black soft hat and the blue suit, the coat of which was heavy with brass buttons and the pendent star of the Grand Army, hanging from its eagle on his breast. The ghost of a youthful soldierly robustness hung about this man with the gray mustache and the tiny imperial.

But John Allen, his old comrade's grandson, veteran of the Great War and the new husband of his granddaughter, sensed it almost immediately when he drew up his car at the curb.

Would have if your old granddad didn't happen to knock out the Johnny Reb who was after me. He was strong as an offox, John. And you're the dead picture of him.

"Don't see no reason why the three of us, Mary and you and me, couldn't make the trip. You two youngsters ain't really had a honeymoon, what with the work around the farm, though I know you ain't specially hankerin' for it. No young couple cares where they are while marriage is new. Well, we'll ponder it a leetle."

They swung through the gateway of the farm and bumped over the poplarbordered roadway to the rambling white farmhouse, with its climbing ivy vines and its air of hospitality. He descended shakily, bowing under the invisible weight of the heavy years, and as shakily climbed the steps of the wide porch and sank into his own wide wicker chair with its padded seat cushion.

"Mary!" he summoned. "Oh, Mary, what you doin'? Smell some good cookin' goin' on. Bet we'll have a nice supper."

A pleasant, blue-eyed girl with hair of ash came from the house in answer to his summons, wiping floury hands on her gingham apron. Gently she took his cane from his hands and laid it within his reach.

"We're going to have fritters for supper," she said. Her voice was full and throaty. "Was it a nice meeting? And are you tired?"

"Tired!" he growled. "Me tired? Guess you think I'm gettin' old. Goin' on a trip soon."

She glanced at him with keen appraisal. Amos Appleby always said his granddaughter looked him over much as did his wife, the first Mary, long since dead and lying in the small cemetery beside the little white church. Sometimes, as it is with old men, the present grew a little dim. And in such times he thought his granddaughter was his wife, and the tall, silent John Allen, her husband, his stanch comrade who went with him to war and farmed the adjoining farm until his death. "Trip?" she asked. "Who is going on "Who is going on a trip?"

He chuckled. "You and me and John.

Goin' to be your honeymoon. Down to Gettysburg."

"But we can't leave the farm now." "What's there to do the hired man and girl can't 'tend to?"

"Why" she began, and then remembered that the thick crop of hay, ripened by an extraordinarily hot summer, was even now being cut. The routine work could be performed by the help, just as he said. She went back into the house, already in the grip of plans for the trip.

Amos Appleby sat on his porch, looking over the farm stretching before him. It was alive with growing things. He could see the hayfield, most of the hay still standing, golden and reedlike, slashed through in lines where the mowers had already been at work; and the slaughtered grass lay neat, like rows of soldier dead.

The cattle munched contentedly in the pasture close beyond and the rest of his vision stretched past green clover fields and opulent areas of ripening wheat and oats. The vegetable garden was behind the house, but some of it peeped out at him, the half-brown corn-stalks reminding him, as they always did, of soldiers all in a row. The tomato-vines, the pumpkins, destined to go golden and succulent after the frosts, the parsley beds, the peas and beans and the rest of the vegetables; and beyond the peeping garden, the orchards, like an army corps on parade, green and heavy with concealed and ripening fruit.

The air was heavy-laden with the sweet aroma of growing things, with sights and smells to delight the heart of any farmer. And Amos was a good farmer. But in the glow of that late afternoon he cared little for the things that had hitherto filled his conscientious life. He was listening to an insistent call.

His heart was filled with the prophecy of a coming delight and his mind with plans for a long-deferred journey. In a week he would be in Gettysburg, the scene of the greatest moment in his life.

The boys, he reflected, were marching on-the boys who had gone away from all the posts of the country through the years, and the boys who lay wearily down at Gettysburg and Shiloh and Antietam and Vicksburg and all the battle-fields. Fourteen comrades had left Israel Dodge