Post in the last year in flag-draped coffins, to be laid to rest to the firing of volleys and the sweet notes of bugles playing the soldier's lullaby. There were only nineteen left, and they were dropping like leaves in October. Old Father Time was as ruthless as the battle-guns, mowing them down, mowing them down.

He wondered where the dead comrades were and what they were doing. Marching, he reckoned, and cursing their officers for forcing them on; bivouacking and talking over the folks at home and what they would do when the war was over; advancing in fierce charges against the enemy or holding their own positions stubbornly against him.

Amos had his own belief. He believed that all the soldiers of all the wars in which the United States had ever fought occupied a great plain in the Hereafter. There camped the Continentals in their ragged buff and blue, with the stern and beloved Washington at General Headquarters; the soldiers of 1812, General Andrew Jackson, the red-headed and fiery, commanding; under General Winfield Scott, the fighters of the Mexican War, quartered with Sam Houston and his Texans, the gallant defenders of the Alamo; Amos's own with their yelling, chivalrous enemies under General Robert E. Lee, the great tactician and gentleman. And what a galaxy of heroes-Grant, Lee, Meade, Bragg, Rosecrans, Kearny, Phil Sheridan, Stonewall Jackson, Forrest, Pickett-all of the leaders of the Union and Confederacy, possibly talking it all over. In a newer section, the soldiers of the Boxer Uprising, the Spanish-American War and the Cuban Occupation, with Roosevelt, the statesman, given place here because he was also a great soldier; the youngsters of the Great War, their wounds and a longing for the earth they had just quitted fresh upon them.

They would be visiting and disparaging each other's war, as soldiers ever will. That would be a place worth going to and living in forever and ever. Amos's was no conventional heaven whose inhabitants wore white robes and played on unaccustomed harps and trumpets.

He sighed. He was infinitely weary. So many of his friends and neighbors had gone. He missed John Allen, the closest

friend he had ever had and the man who had saved his life. John's farm, which he had so faithfully worked, lay there, now part of Amos's own, but Amos took no joy in it. He did not think he could go on living were it not that a Great Something was bearing down upon him. When it came he would be weary no more, but would be filled with a great glory. Now there was nothing but loneliness. He was oppressed like a child touched by the grief of the world.

He slipped into the past. He was coming home, an invalid, and he felt his mother's arms about him as she wept, his father's hand upon his shoulder as he lay in bed. His old wound throbbed and he put his hand above his heart to stay it. Good thing that reb's bayonet had not been a little lower. Work, the heavy, heart-breaking work on the farm; the courtship of Mary, his wife, and their sweet homecoming. Wonderful cook, Mary, but apt to be forgetful at times. He wondered if she had churned that butter and gathered the eggs. Taking them into town that afternoon. And he'd asked John Allen to come see him about the sorrel horse John wanted to buy. Ought to be here any minute now. "Mary!" he called. His granddaughter came softly upon the porch.

"That butter ready?"

"Mary!"

Her glance was swift and understanding. "Yes, Amos. Just about finished." "Better come into town with me this afternoon and pick out that bonnet. I'll hitch the bays. Wish John Allen'd come. Like to know if he wants that sorrel. John does dawdle sometimes."

"He's here," said the girl as her husband came up.

"John, you goin' to buy that critter? If you ain't, I'll bring him to the dealer. He's takin' up stable room and eatin' me out o' house and home."

A look passed between husband and wife.

"His hock is strained pretty bad," said John, rubbing his chin, "and I think he's a wind-sucker."

"Take 'im or leave 'im."

John cogitated, looked up at the sky, and hemmed and hawed, while the old man furtively watched him.

"I'll take him," he said reluctantly at last, "though I'll bet you're whoppin' me again, Amos. You ain't got no conscience." He was talking as he had heard his grandfather talk. "I'll take him

away."

Amos was chuckling softly to himself when the girl stepped over and touched him on the shoulder.

"Supper's ready, Gramp," she said. He slipped back to the present as easily as he had slipped away.

"Eh?" he apologized. "I must ha' been a-dreamin'."

At supper Mary was enthusiastic about the coming trip.

"I'll have to have new clothes," she said. "And I haven't much time to get them in."

"Time enough," Amos assured her. "Long as you got the money."

"Why do you want to go this year?" John asked him.

"Well, it's been a dream o' mine for years," Amos explained. "But one thing and another kept me home. Mostly it was the hayin'. To-day, though, Somethin' come over me. Somethin' kept callin' and callin' to me. 'Go back to Gettysburg. You got to. You got to.' Maybe it's just a fancy. But it walks right along with what I allus wanted to do. And I'm goin' and you youngsters are goin' with me."

The day had been hot and the red sunset touched the world with magic. Light drenched the pulsing earth, which, like Mary, bride and granddaughter, was approaching its fruition. Tree and flower were in full leaf, at the top of their blooming, from which now there could come only harvest and a falling to the sere. The grass was green on the lawn, golden in the field. Colors fought only to achieve harmony. All over the countryside was riotous fragrance above beating life. The two men sat smoking on the porch.

"They're all goin' like the grass out there, both Yanks and Rebs," mused the old man. "The Bible says somethin' about it, somethin' like "Thy days be numbered.' Down south of the MasonDixon line are old veterans like us up here, just livin' on memories. The fires of the Civil War welded this nation." VOL. LXXXII.-2

Their pipe smoke lifted hazily on the still air and the lowing of cattle came to them. Robins were still foraging for their suppers on the green lawn and singing their evensong among the trees.

"The 2d of July, '63, was a day about like this." Amos broke the silence. "In the fields outside Gettysburg the wheat and the oats and the corn was ripenin'. There never was a peacefuller spot before July the 1st, when Gen'ril Buford, with his four thousand cavalry, and the First and Eleventh Corps held the Rebs till Gen'ril Meade could get his army up 'round Cemetery Ridge. The guns harvested more than green wheat. There was about seven thousand dead on the field. Thus, as the Bible says, it was on the first day when me and your grandpap came up in the 44th New York. We was in Vincent's Brigade of Sykes's Corps and we'd been keepin' 'tween Lee and Washington for a week. Tired? Say, I saw your grandpap go to sleep marchin'.'

Amos knocked the ashes from his pipe and laid it beside his chair. Mary slipped out and patted him, but the old man did not heed her. He was living over again his preparations for the battle. John Allen gazed, with eyes hot with their own images of a gray-clad host, speaking a guttural tongue, against which he had fought in the Argonne. A woman's touch must go unheeded here, with the ghost of War hovering about these two veterans: the one in the full strength of his manhood, the other so very old.

"Well," resumed the old soldier, "all that fine long day the two armies just kept a-watchin' each other. Didn't seem like they wanted to start any fightin'. And Lord A'mighty, it was hot. The sun just biled down. Our brigade was lyin' in reserve behind the centre. Gen'ril Daniel E. Sickles, commandin' the left wing, faced the Rebs' right, under Gen'ril Longstreet. Meade ordered Sickles to spread south'ard and connect with Hancock near the bases of the Round Tops, but when he went to take up his position, he found the ground marshy, and he moved his men into high ground on the ridge and into a peach orchard. That left his line overlappin' Hancock's, with a big hole 'tween the forces. And in this hole was Little Round Top.

"Longstreet's cannon opened the battle at four in the afternoon. Then there was hell a-poppin' with bustin' shells and men and horses screamin' with their wounds. The cannonadin' started light and got heavier and heavier. Our guns answered and the sky and earth was full o' death when Longstreet started comin' 'gainst Sickles in line o' battle a mile and a half long.

"Gen'ril Warren, chief engineerin' officer, found Little Round Top unprotected, and he knew what would happen if the Rebs took it. They'd plant artillery there and just naturally crumple the whole left wing. They'd ha' won the battle.

"Even as 'twas, Gen'ril Hood's corps was on its way there with only Warren and a signal corps man to stop 'em. They went to wavin' signal flags to make the Rebs think the hill was occupied. But who ever heard of the Rebs stoppin' because a place was defended? They kept comin' right along.

"We got our marchin' orders 'bout four-thirty, and we moved to support Sickles, who was in danger."

Amos leaned forward, staring into the red sunset and that hectic July day. John Allen's pipe had gone out and he sat immovable, holding it in his hand. Mary grasped her grandfather's wrist.

"Don't excite yourself, Gramp," she pleaded.

"In hand-to-hand fightin' a man wants to kill everything in front o' him. I 'member my bay'nit sinking into flesh, but I swan I never did see the man I stabbed. Your grandpap was right 'longside o' me and he went down. I straddled him, hacking and stabbin' till he got on his feet.

"Those consarned Rebs were drivin' us back up the hill. I heard cheerin' and afterwards I found out the 140th New York, under Colonel O'Rorke, had reinforced us. O'Rorke was killed as he got to the summit. But I was too busy right then to notice much. My bay'nit broke and I clubbed my rifle. Felt a head give under the butt, like an egg-shell.

Don't

"Then a big Reb swam at me. know where he come from. Only, first thing I know, there he was, his eyes and mouth wide open and him yellin' fit to raise the dead. He stabbed straight into me and I felt a shock. I tried to hit back with my gun. But it slipped out o' my hand and the ground started spinnin'. He was comin' at me again.

"I'm a goner!' I yelled as I was fallin'.

"Then, John, your grandpap stepped past me. I saw him lunge, and the big Reb disappeared. That's all I remember.

"It's all I remember till I woke up in hospital with a hot, shootin' pain over the heart. They told me we'd held Little Round Top and that your grandpap was all right."

His voice trailed off and Mary put her arms about him. Twilight had come and deepened. John Allen tapped his pipe against the porch rail, saying no word. Thunder rumbled and heat lightning slashed the fragrant darkness.

Amos, his mind fixed on Gettysburg as is a Mohammedan pilgrim's on Mecca, went into town to make some purchases for the trip. He would travel light, an old campaigner on the march.

"Who is that old fellow?" asked a salesman of Dan Haskins, proprietor of the Gem Tobacco Store, when Amos departed with some of his favorite plug.

"That," Dan replied, "is Amos Appleby. Old soldier. Civil War veteran. Almost killed at Gettysburg. We're

mighty proud of Amos and the other old vets. There's nothin' too good for our old soldiers."

"That's right," agreed the salesman. "Nothing too good for the old soldiers. They're getting fewer and fewer."

On the morning of the 1st of July, Amos and Mary and John left for the battle-field, and the veterans came down in full force to see them off, looking wistfully after them.

Amos waved good-by with his cane and stood watching the town in which he had been born and in which he had lived his life fading and growing smaller in the distance. It had been home to him these many years. Yet he had a sense he was leaving a strange place as he entered the train.

Mary, excited by the journey, was chiding her grinning husband for taking it so calmly.

"You'd think we were just going into town," she said, "instead of on our honeymoon.'

"Well," he drawled, "we are going into a town, and no honeymoon could make me think more of you."

At which she hugged his arm. Amos sat unseeing as the train slid smoothly down along the Hudson. He was excited, but he gave no sign of it. Only twice during the long journey did he break his silence. The first time he said: "When I came back from Gettysburg along this very road, the joltin' hurt me a little."

And the second remark followed a long study of young John Allen.

"John," he asserted, "you're as like your grandpap as two peas in a pod. Sometimes I get you mixed up in my mind, though I know he's dead a right smart while now."

feeling that he thought the boy was old John.

The wheels clicking against the rails had been beating insistently under his consciousness. Now they forced themselves upon his attention. They were drumming out a rhythm, and he tensed as he pieced out the words of the tuneless song they were singing:

"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;

He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible His truth is marching on."

swift sword;

They had arrived at Gettysburg.

Amos Appleby rose early the next morning with the feeling that the day before him was that Day of Days interred in the past now for sixty years. As he swung his old legs to the floor, he found himself half listening for reveille. He dressed meticulously as for inspection, and he marched to the dining-room, scarcely bearing on his cane.

There he found Mary pale but happy. The long journey had tired her. But she would accompany him and John. The sun would make her well again. They went out to the field in a bus, and Amos, resenting the historically correct but unemotional explanations of the guides, took his granddaughter and her husband apart and conducted the tour himself.

He pointed out where Buford and the First and Eleventh Corps had held the Confederate Army until, badly crippled, they retreated to Cemetery Ridge, under the command of Hancock. He showed them the route over which the valorous Pickett had led his immortal Virginians in their vain charge against the strongly entrenched Union Army.

This very day, he reflected, was another day like July 2, 1863, save for a bank of cumulous clouds to the east. But he noticed the fields of wheat and oats were no more. Instead, there was spread before them the perennial harvest of war, the graves of the soldier dead, laid out in regiments.

At lunchtime he became anxious about Mary. She was listless, and, though she laughed at the concern of her men-folks,

she lay down to rest in her darkened room. John was with his wife and Amos sat on the porch alone. The old soldier gazed up at the historic ridges and the battlefield, and there came upon him the whim to retrace the steps he had taken with his comrades on the day of the battle. He consulted his watch and learned he could rest three hours. So he dozed, thoroughly happy, for the very air was alive with memories. In time John came out to him. Mary was sleeping, and he thought it best not to take her with them on the trip that afternoon.

When Amos crept softly in to look at her, she stirred and smiled in her sleep. She was nothing but a child. Why, only yesterday he had held her in his lap. And now, under her heart, she was bearing a little human being who would carry on his blood; a boy, perhaps, to keep up the tradition of devotion to country. A sudden impulse moved him to kiss her damp forehead and brush his old hands through her hair.

Good-by, baby," he whispered and did not know he spoke. "Take care o' yourself."

She heard him through her slumber and smiled.

"By, Gramp," she murmured; "I'm so sleepy."

So he came softly away, and, putting the thought of her from him, he went out with John to the battle-field in a hired automobile. It was four o'clock.

"We were right here, Sykes's Corps," he explained to John, as their late automobile kicked up the dust of distance. "And the battle was beginnin' right to the minute. Longstreet's batteries opened, and over yonder he came in battle line, threatenin' the whole left wing. Lord A'mighty, it was a pretty sight to see them comin'. We lay here and watched. See over there?" He swept the air with his

cane.

"That's the Devil's Den, where the Reb sharpshooters picked off our generals." They gazed at the panorama before them, green, smiling, and only the white of the headstones holding the memory of a great battle.

"And now," continued Amos, "we got the order to move and we started. Come on, John." The young man was swinging along beside him, and a winelike flush

bubbled through Amos's veins, as if he had been drenched with the waters of eternal youth. "Here's the way we come." He pointed out and marched to the cadence of ghostly feet. 'See, yonder is Little Round Top." The cane pointed steadily at the rocky hill. ""Twas at this point Gen'ril Warren came runnin' down to us. We halted here while he talked to Gen'ril Weed." Amos stopped and watched men long dead excitedly conversing. The Past was blending with the Present.

"There's the orders." He tried and his voice was strong. "Right, march!"" He swung off and up the hill. John Allen, his granddaughter's husband, had become John Allen, his comrade. Guess we're goin' to catch hell. 'On the double!"" His cane swung to his hip and straightened. The cumulous clouds had become a black bank. Thunder rumbled.

"There's the guns, John. Think they're ours. Look at them Rebs come!"

They had breasted the hill, and John Allen stopped. But Amos Appleby went into a ghostly battle with his cane. Down the slope he trundled, jabbing with his stick. The boy tried to stop him, but he could not fight memories implanted before he was born. The thunder rumbled and lightning flashed. The storm was almost upon them.

see.

Amos fought down the hill. His bayonet sank into the body of a foe he could not Now John Allen had fallen and he straddled his body, fighting off the phantom enemy till John found his feet again. The world was covered with battle mist.

Out of the mist there strode a giant Confederate soldier. His mouth and eyes were open and he was yelling the Rebel yell. He stabbed at Amos and the old man felt a shock that was more than a memory. He tried to hit back, and his cane slipped from his hands. The ground began to spin.

"I'm a gonner!" he breathed, and young John Allen caught him in his arms.

Consarn you, John!" Amos mumbled. "Where you bin these last twenty years? That Reb got me sure this time."

On Round Top, not far away, a giant marine, silhouetted against the lowering sky, blew sad, clear, silvery notes from a shining bugle.