Page:The Country Boy.djvu/137

Rh came finally, out of breath, and we were half an hour late, so we went to the church on double quick march, backed up to the church solemnly and started for the graveyard down below town. No. 21 in the old book happened to be our favorite quickstep, so when the leader yelled No. 21, the town members turned to the dirge and the countries turned to the quickstep. We had been playing about half a mile when I noticed there was something wrong; we didn’t just seem to swing right. It was hard for some of the old soldiers to keep step. At the graveyard there was a big crowd waiting and me playing the snare drum, which was muffled in black. I could look around, and I saw by the expression of Jake McClaine’s face that there was something wrong. We were game, though, and played right up until we surrounded the grave, and stopped. There were two bass players, one from town and one from the hills, and they made a peculiar contrast. Nobody mentioned it, but the joke was out and an old soldier with a wooden leg said to Jake, “No wonder I couldn’t keep step, when I used to in the army