he could work, an’ then, all of a sudden, rum clinched with him an’ threw him.  Eb was talkin’ ‘long o’ me one day when he was about half full, an’ says he, right out, ’I wouldn’t have fell to this state,’ says he, ‘if I’d had me a home an’ a little fam’ly; but it don’t make no difference to nobody, and it’s the best comfort I seem to have, an’ I ain’t goin’ to do without it.  I’m ailin’ all the time,’ says he, ‘an’ if I keep middlin’ full, I make out to hold my own an’ to keep along o’ my work.’  I pitied Eb.  I says to him, ‘You ain’t goin’ to bring no disgrace on us old army boys, be you, Eb?’ an’ he says no, he wan’t.  I think if he’d lived to get one o’ them big fat pensions, he’d had it easier.  Eight dollars a month paid his board, while he’d pick up what cheap work he could, an’ then he got so that decent folks didn’t seem to want the bother of him, an’ so he come on the town.”

“There was somethin’ else to it,” said Henry Merrill soberly.  “Drink come natural to him, ‘twas born in him, I expect, an’ there wan’t nobody that could turn the divil out same’s they did in Scriptur’.  His father an’ his gran’father was drinkin’ men; but they was kind-hearted an’ good neighbors, an’ never set out to wrong nobody.  ’Twas the custom to drink in their day; folks was colder an’ lived poorer in early times, an’ that’s how most of ’em kept a-goin’.  But what stove Eb all up was his disapp’intment with Marthy Peck—­her forsakin’ of him an’ marryin’ old John Down whilst Eb was off to war.  I’ve always laid it up ag’inst her.”

“So’ve I,” said Asa Brown.  “She didn’t use the poor fellow right.  I guess she was full as well off, but it’s one thing to show judgment, an’ another thing to have heart.”

There was a long pause; the subject was too familiar to need further comment.

“There ain’t no public sperit here in Barlow,” announced Asa Brown, with decision.  “I don’t s’pose we could ever get up anything for Decoration Day.  I’ve felt kind of ’shamed, but it always comes in a busy time; ’twan’t no time to have it, anyway, right in late plantin’.”

“’Tain’t no use to look for public sperit ’less you’ve got some yourself,” observed John Stover soberly; but something had pleased him in the discouraged suggestion.  “Perhaps we could mark the day this year.  It comes on a Saturday; that ain’t nigh so bad as bein’ in the middle of the week.”

Nobody made any answer, and presently he went on,—­

“There was a time along back when folks was too nigh the war-time to give much thought to the bigness of it.  The best fellows was them that had stayed to home an’ worked their trades an’ laid up money; but I don’t know’s it’s so now.”

“Yes, the fellows that stayed at home got all the fat places, an’ when we come back we felt dreadful behind the times,” grumbled Asa Brown.  “I remember how ’twas.”