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."

"Why, he's nothing like him, Gramp," protested Mary. "John's granddad was a much older man."

Amos laughed at her with her husband, but he realized how lonesome he was for John Allen, his life comrade. He wished they were together on this trip. John would get a lot of pleasure out of coming back, and his own would be increased by having John with him. He felt as if he were with him, and so strong was this

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 swift sword; His truth is marching on."

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 "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.

cane.

"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 they're ours.

the guns,

John. Think 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.

Amos fought down the hill. His bayonet sank into the body of a foe he could not

see.

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.

Amos stirred in John Allen's arms. What was that he was sounding-"The Recall"? The notes cut through to him over the cataclysmic roaring in his ears. No. By George, he was playing "Taps." Listen! The sad words rode on the eerie

tune:

"Soldier rest,

With the blest,

Where the star gleams afar. All the war
Now will cease;
Safe in peace,
Soldier rest."

What was the boy blowing "Taps" for, there on the battle-field?

Amos heard the thunder of marching feet. Young John Allen thought it was the rumble of the approaching storm. But the old man's glazing eyes picked up the hosts of soldiers striding out of the mist. Continentals and Andy Jackson's boys went past. The mist yielded a blur of blue and gray, and Amos saw his own, the soldiers of the Civil War.

With his ebbing strength he tried to rise and follow them, but his tired old

body held him to the earth. He tugged and wrenched, struggling mightily. Rain whispered from a black and angry sky, then fell on the two in torrents.

The old soldier lay panting on the soaked ground, and suddenly an eager knowledge of an approaching great peace poured in new strength. He slipped easily from the worn shell, huddled there against the wet earth, a militant shade armed with a shadowy gun, accoutred with phantom equipment. His feet trod lightly as they had ever done in his youth at the beginning of a long journey. This one, he knew, would be eternal. Counting, he caught up the susurrated cadence to which his ghostly comrades trudged, and slipped into his place in the spectral line.

Amos Appleby went marching on. Young John Allen, holding the discarded body in his arms, wondered how he would break the news of Amos's passing to the girl who slept back yonder with the old man's great-grandchild stirring under her heart.

O

H, mother, aren't they funny!"

Peering over the young woman's furred and silken shoulder I followed the child's pointing finger and saw them coming up the gang-plank. From where I stood, on the promenade-deck, I could look almost directly down upon them. They were little and old-both over sixty, the wife perhaps a trifle the younger. She had on an indescribable hat-a flat, rhomboid conglomeration of black and white satin bows plainly dating from the past century; and thrown round her shoulders, but not covering her thin neck, was a sort of overall green cape, or inverness. The husband wore an ancient blue serge suit and gray fedora, and carried a thin coat in one hand, while he tugged at a large wicker suitcase with the other.

"Mother, aren't they fun-ny!"

They were just under us, coming aboard, and in spite of the clamor incidental to the departure of the great Pacific liner, must have heard the child's clear treble. The wife brought her left hand to her flat breast in a painful gesture, looked up at the little girl leaning on the rail beside her pretty, overdressed mother and smiled. Then they disappeared from sight as the main deck swallowed them up.

"Mother," repeated the little girl again, "weren't they funny!"

The young mother gave a light laugh, somehow unpleasant for all its bell-like

sweetness.

"They're missionaries, Clara," she said contemptuously. "China missionaries."

Presently the last straggling passenger was aboard; the drum-like gongs beaten by white-coated Chinese stewards had frightened the last visitor ashore; the gang-plank was pushed back; and the President Adams drifted, at first imperceptibly and then with gathering speed,

away from the pier. The panorama of San Francisco gradually unfolded itself as the shuddering vibration of the screws began, and the tugs which had hitherto helped us fell astern shrieking shrill farewells. With sonorous voice our deeptoned whistle replied, saluting the continent, nation, and city. The Golden Gate lay straight ahead framing the setting sun; already one could feel the first warning lift of the ocean swell.

It was an old story to me (I represent a large New Jersey silk house and annually make the voyage), including a red-headed smart Aleck whom I found in what formerly had been the barroom.

"A dead bunch, George," he was remarking to the Chinese soft-drinks dispenser, while tilting a solacing flask of his own. "A dead bunch. Few live ones. Mostly damned, psalm-singing missionaries." Then turning to me: "Ever been over?"

I admitted I had. "Often?"

"This is my nineteenth crossing." He let me enjoy my lemon-squash in silence.

There is usually a fair sea rolling just outside the Gate. There was one that night, and it made a difference in the number on hand for dinner. But the next morning dawned fine and comparatively quiet, if a little cold; and a full complement came in to breakfast.

I entered the dining-room somewhat late in order to see it. The second officer, a trim, well-set-up, sailorly looking chap in his late thirties, presided at our table and made us acquainted. A dark-haired, blue-eyed young woman, a Miss Merrill, sat at his left. She was a newspaper writer, I discovered afterward, a special correspondent for one of the Chicago papers. I came next. The Van Broghs of New York, mother and daughter-the former a tiny, apple-cheeked dumpling of a woman, the latter fair, tall, and slender

followed in the order named. They were wealthy people, I believe, travelling