make it shine bravely against the deep blue eastern sky.  On the western side of the road, near the store, were the parsonage and the storekeeper’s modern house, which had a French roof and some attempt at decoration, which the long-established Barlow people called gingerbread-work, and regarded with mingled pride and disdain.  These buildings made the tiny village called Barlow Plains.  They stood in the middle of a long narrow strip of level ground.  They were islanded by green fields and pastures.  There were hills beyond; the mountains themselves seemed very near.  Scattered about on the hill slopes were farmhouses, which stood so far apart, with their clusters of out-buildings, that each looked lonely, and the pine woods above seemed to besiege them all.  It was lighter on the uplands than it was in the valley, where the three men sat on their bench, with their backs to the store and the western sky.

“Well, here we be ‘most into June, an’ I ’ain’t got a bush-bean above ground,” lamented Henry Merrill.

“Your land’s always late, ain’t it?  But you always catch up with the rest on us,” Asa Brown consoled him.  “I’ve often observed that your land, though early planted, was late to sprout.  I view it there’s a good week’s difference betwixt me an’ Stover an’ your folks, but come first o’ July we all even up.”

“’Tis just so,” said John Stover, taking his pipe out of his mouth, as if he had a good deal more to say, and then replacing it, as if he had changed his mind.

“Made it extry hard having that long wet spell.  Can’t none on us take no day off this season,” said Asa Brown; but nobody thought it worth his while to respond to such evident truth.

“Next Saturday’ll be the thirtieth o’ May—­that’s Decoration Day, ain’t it?—­come round again.  Lord! how the years slip by after you git to be forty-five an’ along there!” said Asa again.  “I s’pose some o’ our folks’ll go over to Alton to see the procession, same’s usual.  I’ve got to git one o’ them small flags to stick on our Joel’s grave, an’ Mis’ Dexter always counts on havin’ some for Harrison’s lot.  I calculate to get ’em somehow.  I must make time to ride over, but I don’t know where the time’s comin’ from out o’ next week.  I wish the women folks would tend to them things.  There’s the spot where Eb Munson an’ John Tighe lays in the poor-farm lot, an’ I did mean certain to buy flags for ’em last year an’ year before, but I went an’ forgot it.  I’d like to have folks that rode by notice ’em for once, if they was town paupers.  Eb Munson was as darin’ a man as ever stepped out to tuck o’ drum.”

“So he was,” said John Stover, taking his pipe with decision and knocking out the ashes.  “Drink was his ruin; but I wan’t one that could be harsh with Eb, no matter what he done.  He worked hard long’s he could, too; but he wan’t like a sound man, an’ I think he took somethin’ first not so much ’cause he loved it, but to kind of keep his strength up so’s