id="pgepubid00011">THAT'S ALL I'll SAY OF JIM.

HERE HE LIES, WHAT'S LEFT OF HIM.=

And I thought that stated the facts, though the second line didn't rhyme really even. Speaking generally, Tioba appeared to have dropped on things about the right time, and that being so, why not let it pass, granting Merimy had a right to his feelings?

Now, neither Sheriff Hall nor the extra woman showed up in the valley any more, so it seemed likely they had heard of Tioba falling, and agreed Jim wouldn't be any good, if they could find him. It was two weeks more before I saw the sheriff, him driving through, going over to Helder's. I saw him get out of his buggy to see the monument, and I went up after, and led him over to show Jim's epitaph, which I took to be a good epitaph, except the second line.

Now, what do you think he did? Why, he busted out a-haw-hawing ridiculous, and it made me mad.

"Shut up!" says I. "What's ailing you?"

"Haw-haw!" says he. "Jim ain't there! He's gone down the road."

"I believe you're a blamed liar," says I; and the sheriff sobered up, being mad himself, and he told me this.

"Jim Hawks," says he, "came into East-port that night, meaning business. He routed me out near twelve o'clock, and the lady staying at my house she came into it, too, and there we had it in the kitchen at twelve o'clock, the lady uncommon hot, and Jim steaming wet in his clothes and rather cool. He says: 'I'm backing Jeaney now, and she tells me to come in and settle it to let us alone, and she says we'll hand over all we've got and leave. That appears to be her idea, and being hers, I'll put it as my own.' Now, the lady, if you'd believe it, she took on fearful, and wouldn't hear to reason unless he'd go with her, though what her idea was of a happy time with Jim Hawks, the way he was likely to act, I give it up. But she cried and talked foolish, till I see Jim was awful bored, but I didn't see there was much for me to do. Then Jim got up at last, and laughed very unpleasant, and he says: 'It's too much bother. I'll go with you, Annie, but I think you're a fool.' And they left next morning, going south by train."

That's what Sheriff Hall said to me then and there. Well, now, I'm an old man, and I don't know as I'm particular clever, but it looks to me as if God A'mighty and Tioba had made a mistake between 'em. Else how come they hit at Jim Hawks so close as that and missed him? And what was the use of burying Jeaney Merimy eight rods deep, who was a good girl all her life, and was for standing up for Jim, and him leaving her because the extra woman got him disgusted? Maybe she'd rather Tioba would light on her, that being the case—maybe she would have; but she never knew what the case was.

That epitaph is there yet, as you might say, waiting for him to come and get under it; but it don't seem to have the right point now, and it don't state the facts any more, except the second line, which is more facts than rhyme. And Tioba is the messiest-look-ing mountain in these parts. And now, I say, Jim Hawks was in this valley little more than a year, and he blazed his trail through the Merimy family, and the Storrs family, and the Peterson family, and there's Tioba Mountain, and that's his trail.

No, sir; I don't get on to it. I hear Tioba talking double some nights, sort of uneasy, and it seems to me she isn't on to it either, and has her doubts maybe she throwed herself away. And there's the cemetery six to ten rods underground, with a monument to forty-five people on top, and an epitaph to Jim Hawks that ain't so, except the second line, there being no corpse to fit it.

Canada Center thinks they'd fit Jim to it if he came round again; but they wouldn't: for he was a wicked one, but sudden to act, and he was reckless, and he kept his luck. For Tioba drawed off and hit at him, slap! and he dodged her.

A MAN FOR A' THAT

COMPANY A was cut up at Antietam, so that there was not enough of it left for useful purposes, and Deacon Andrew Terrell became a member of Company G, which nicknamed him "'is huliness." Company A came from Dutchess County. There was a little white church in the village of Brewster, and a little white house with a meagre porch where that good woman, Mrs. Terrell, had stood and shed several tears as the deacon walked away down the street, looking extraordinary in his regimentals. She dried her eyes, settled down to her sewing in that quiet south window, and hoped he would remember to keep his feet dry and not lose the cough drops. That part of Dutchess County was a bit of New England spilled over. New England has been spilling over these many years.

The deacon took the cough drops regularly; he kept his gray chin beard trimmed with a pair of domestic scissors, and drilling never persuaded him to move his large frame with other than the same self-conscious restraint; his sallow face had the same set lines. There is something in the Saxon's blood that will not let him alter with circumstances, and it is by virtue of it that he conquers in the end.

But no doorkeeper in the house of God—the deacon's service in the meeting-house at Brewster—who should come perforce to dwell in the tents of wickedness would pretend to like it. Besides, Company G had no tents. It came from the lower wards of the great city. Dinkey Cott, that thin-legged, stunted, imp-faced, hardened little Bowery sprout, put his left fist in the deacon's eye the first day of their acquaintance, and swore in the pleasantest manner possible.

The deacon cuffed him, because he had been a schoolmaster in his day, and did not understand how he would be despised for knocking Dinkey down in that amateur fashion, and the lieutenant gave them both guard duty for fighting in the ranks.

The deacon declared "that young man Cott hadn't no moral ideas," and did his guard duty in bitterness and strict conscience to the last minute of it. Dinkey put his thumb to his nose and offered to show the lieutenant how the thing should have been done, and that big man laughed, and both forgot about the guard duty.

Dinkey had no sense whatever of personal dignity, which was partly what the deacon meant by "moral ideas," nor reverence for anything above or beneath. He did not harbor any special anger, either, and only enough malice to point his finger at the elder man, whenever he saw him, and snicker loudly to the entertainment of Company G.

Dinkey's early recollections had to do with the cobblestones of Mulberry Bend and bootblacking on Pearl Street. Deacon Terrell's began with a lonely farm where there were too many potato hills to hoe, a little schoolhouse where arithmetic was taught with a ferrule, a white meeting-house where the wrath of God was preached with enthusiasm; both seemed far enough away from the weary tramp, tramp, the picket duty, and the camp at last one misty night in thick woods on the Stafford hills, looking over the Rappahannock to the town of Fredericksburg.

What happened there was not clear to Company G. There seemed to be a deal of noise and hurrying about, cannon smoke in the valley and cannon smoke on the terraces across the valley. Somebody was building pontoon bridges, therefore it seemed likely somebody wanted to get across. They were having hard luck with the bridges. That was probably the enemy on the ridge beyond.

There seemed to be no end to him, anyway; up and down the valley, mile beyond mile, the same line of wooded heights and drifting smoke.

And the regiment found itself crossing a shaky pontoon bridge on a Saturday morning in the mist and climbing the bank into a most battered and tired-looking little town, which was smoldering sulkily with burned buildings and thrilling with enormous noise. There they waited for something else to happen. The deacon felt a lump in his throat, stopping his breath.

"Git out o' me