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Again, “Let’s see. I’ll be a Major. No, a Colonel; Colonel Gale of the Tenth New York. Private Gale, I congratulate you. I reckon the best you ever got from a darky was ‘Cap’n’ or ‘boss. ’ You’re rising in the world, my boy. Poor woman! Poor, faithful woman—”

When they reached the town of Joralemon, Mr. Gale leaned out from the car and inquired of a corner loafer, “Where’s the Decoration Day parade? The G. A. R. ?”

“At the exercises in Greenwood Cemetery. ”

“Greenwood, son,” he blared, and the stableman made haste.

At the entrance to the cemetery Mr. Gale insinuated, “Now wait till I come back, son. I’m getting over that liquor, and I’m ugly, son, powerful ugly. ”

“All right,” growled the stableman. “Say, do I get paid—?”

“Here’s five dollars. When I come back with my friends, there’ll be another five. I’m going to steal a whole Decoration Day parade. ”

“How?”

“I’m going to surround them. ”

“My—Gawd!” whispered the
stableman.

The Southerner bristled at the sight of the Northern regimental flag among the trees of the cemetery. But he shrugged his shoulders and waddled into the crowd. The morning’s radiance brought out in hot primary colors the red and yellow of flowers in muddy glass vases upon the graves. Light flashed from the mirrory brown surfaces of polished granite headstones, with inscriptions cut in painfully white letters. The air was thick with the scent of dust and maple leaves and packed people. Round a clergyman in canonicals were the eight veterans now left in Joralemon; men to whose scrawny faces a dignity was given by their symbolic garb. From their eyes was purged all the meanness of daily grinding. The hand of a sparse-bearded Yankee, who wore an English flag pinned beside his G. A. R. button, was resting on the shoulder of a Teutonic-faced man with the emblem of the Sigel Corps.

Round the G. A. R. were ringed the Sons of Veterans, the Hose and Truck Company, the Women’s Relief Corps, and the Joralemon Band; beyond them a great press of townspeople. The road beside the cemetery was packed with cars and buggies, and the stamp of horses’ feet as they restlessly swished at flies gave a rustic rhythm to the pause in the clergyman’s voice.

Here in a quiet town, unconscious of the stir of the world beyond, was renewed the passion of their faith in the Union.

Mr. Gale shoved forward into the front row. Everyone glared at the pushing stranger. The voice of the gray, sunken-templed clergyman sharpened with indignation for a second. Mr. Gale tried to look unconcerned. But he felt hot about the spine. The dust got into his throat. The people about him were elbowing and sticky. He was not happy. But he vowed, “By thunder, I’ll pull this off if I have to kidnap the whole crowd. ”

As the clergyman finished his oration, Mr. Gale pushed among the G. A. R. He began loudly, cheerfully, “Gentlemen—”

The clergyman stared down from his box rostrum. “What do you mean, interrupting this ceremony?”

The crowd was squeezing in, like a street mob about a man found murdered. Their voices united in a swelling whisper. Their gaping mouths were ugly. Mr. Gale was rigid with the anger that wipes out all fear of a crowd, and leaves a man facing them as though they were one contemptible opponent.

“Look here,” he bawled, “I had proposed to join you in certain memorial plans. It may interest you to know that I am Colonel John Gale, and that I led the Tenth New York through most of the war!”

“Ah,” purred the clergyman, “you are Colonel—Gale, is it?”