Page:Stanwood Pier--The ancient grudge.djvu/52

Rh day, who with flint-lock and powder-horn had joined the neighbors behind the stone wall of the pasture, had lain there with musket primed, awaiting the first flutter of scarlet down the long road against the green of the spring, waiting until the first flutter spread and split into the broken ranks of soldiery, and then—

"What are you thinking of?" asked Stewart, as Floyd stood looking up at one of the memorial signs.

"Just of how the British went by here—running, with their tongues hanging out of their mouths," answered Floyd. "That's the gloating sentence I remember in my boys' history. And I was wondering about this Jonathan Hawkins that lived here—and probably squatted behind that wall. I was sort of hoping that as the poor devils jogged by he and the others did n't fire."

"If he did," said Stewart, "with a name like that I'll bet he could shoot straight. That's one thing you notice about these names along here; somehow they call up men with a steady gray eye and no smile."

A little farther on they climbed over a fence and came out on a warm; sunny hillside. The Concord River flowed below, glimmering through the vivid green spray of the arching willows; here and there along it a swamp-maple showed pink, and across the stream on the crest of the opposing hillside an apple orchard in full bloom sunned itself, lying there like a tinted cloud against the sky. The boys sat down to rest; the spot was quiet; a canoe slipped by on the stream, and the flashing of the paddle, the voices of the man and the girl came faintly up to them through the foliage; then at the bend in the river the sound and the sight faded away.

"What will you do when you graduate?" Stewart asked after an interval of silence.

"I'm going abroad for a year; then I'm going into my grandfather's mills," Floyd answered.

"I was in a steel mill once," Stewart remarked. "It's my idea of hell—at least it gave me an idea of hell. But