ONE:Everything about the usually cheerful farm-house was shrouded in palpable gloom. The papers of the day before, with their ghastly lists of the dead and wounded, had contained Si's and Shorty's names, besides those of other boys of the neighborhood, in terrific, unmistakable plainness. There were few homes into which mourning had not come. The window curtains were drawn down, the front doors closed, no one appeared on the front porch, and it seemed that even the dogs and the fowls were op pressed with the general sadness, and forebore their usual cheerful utterances. Attired in sober black, with eyes red from weeping, and with camphor bottle near, Mr. Klegg sat in Si's room, and between her fits of uncontrollable weeping turned over, one after another, the reminders of her son. There were his bed, his clothes, which she had herself fashioned in loving toil for him; the well-thumbed school-books which had cost him so many anxious hours, his gun and fishing rod. All these were now sacred to her. Elsewhere in the house his teary-eyed sisters went softly and silently about their daily work.
THREE:"Shorty," said Si, in tones of fervent admiration, "I wuz afeared that crack you got on your head softened your brains. But now I see it made you brighter'n ever. You'll be wearin' a General's stars before this war is over."He looked up, and there was little Pete's face before him.
"Some gal's stopped the train to git on," he reported to Si. "She's apparently been payin' a visit to a house up there a little ways, and they've brung her down in a buggy with her trunk. She's dressed up fit to kill, and she's purtier than a peach-blossom. Jehosephat, Si, I believe she's the very same gal that you was castin' sheep's eyes at when you was home. Yes, it is."AFTER the flush of excitement of returning to his old regiment and meeting his comradesafter the process of readjusting himself to the changed relations made by death, wounds, discharges, resignations and promotionsafter the days had brought a settling back into the old routine of camp-life, there developed in Shorty's heart growing homesickness for Maria Klegg."Now the Captain oughtn't to say that about the company," protested Si. "I for one go to church every chance I get.""Now, I mustn't take no more o' that," he said to himself. "That one drink was good and all right enough, because I really thought I was goin' to take a drink of water when I put the canteen to my lips. I could swear that to Maria on a stack o' Bibles high as her dear head. God bless her!"
