Windy McPherson's Son

n itching of the skin. He could not forget that he had once been a sergeant in a regiment of infantry and had commanded a company

sing corn and by feeding that corn to red steers-ugh!-the thought made him shudder. He looked with envy at the blue coat and the brass buttons of the railroad agent; he tried vainly to get into the Caxton Cornet Band; he got drunk to forget his humiliation and in the end he fell to loud

tation called the A. P. A. movement brought the old soldier to a position of prominence in the community. He founded a local branch of the organisation; he marched at the head of a procession through the streets; he stood o

and although for the moment they vied with him in stealthy creepings through the streets to secret meetings and in myst

sister Kate regarded their father's warlike pretensions with scorn. "The butter is low, fa

ceed. There was now and then a rebellious muttering that should have warned Windy. It had once burst into an open quarrel in which the victor of a hundred battles withdrew defeated from the field. Windy, half-drunk, had taken an old a

y for the harness on the backs of his horses or for the ploughs in his barn. The receipt he has from me is forge

Kate held her breath and Jane McPherson, at work over the ironing board in the corner, half turned and looked s

ked from the pale silent mother by the ironing board to the son now standing and staring at him, and, throwing the book upo

upon life. Walking half drunk in the darkness along the sidewalks of Caxton on the evening of the quarrel the man became inspired. He threw back his shoulders and walked with martial tread; he drew an imaginary sword from its scabbard and waved it aloft; stopping, he

ur cheeks the living breath of it. For four years the men of American cities, villages and farms walked across the smoking embers of a burning land, advancing and receding as the flame of that universal, passionate, death-spitting thing swept down upon them or receded toward the smoking sky-line. Is it so strange that they could not come home and begin again peacefully painting houses or mending broken shoes? A something in them cried out. It sent them to

n their hungry search for auditors and in their endless war talk. He will go filled with eager curiosity into little G. A. R. halls in the vill

t evening, through fast day and feast day, at weddings and at funerals got again and again endlessly, everlastingly this flow of war words. Let him reflect that peaceful men in corn-growing counties

his hand he held the little yellow account book and in this he buried himself, strivin

d that the logical answer to the situation was money in the bank and with all the ardour of his boy's heart he strove to realise that answer. He wanted to be a money-maker and the totals at the foot of the pages in the soiled yellow bankbook were the milestones that marked the progress he had already mad

t. A block further down the street, leaning against the door of Hunter's jewelry store, Windy talke

of the pages to shake off the dull anger that had begun to burn in his brain. Glancing up again, he saw that Joe Wildman, son of th

mother. As a contrast to this scene he began to call up in his mind a picture of life in his own home, getting a kind of perverted pleasure out of his dissatisfaction with it. He saw the boasting, incompetent father telling his endless tales of the Civil War and complaining of his wounds; the tall, stoop-shouldered, silent mother with th

at or telling of his aristocratic family or lying about his birthplace," he thought resentfully, and unable any longer to endure the sight of what seemed to him his

eet before the New Leland House. John Telfer, the town's one man of leisure, had for weeks been going from place to place discussing the details with prominent men. Now a mass meeting was to be held in the hall over Geiger's drug store and to a man the citizens of Caxt

Windy McPherson leaned against a bui

tedly, "let the men of Caxton show the t

ith them," shouted a wit, and a roa

man talking in front of the jewelry store. At the hall other boys stood in the stairway or ran up and down the sidewalk talking excitedly, but Sam was a figure in the town's life and

the world. Do not all of the poor newsboys in the books become great men and is not this boy who goes among us so industriously day after day likely to become such a figure? Is it not a duty we of the town owe t

s silent men of position in the town envied his easy, bantering style of public address, while pretending to trea

is talent. When the hall was filled with men he called the meeting to order, appointed committees and launched into a harangue. He told of plans made to advertise the big day in other towns and to get low railroad rates arranged for excursion parties. The programme, he said, included a musical carnival with brass band

quieted down. One or two men got up and started to go out, grumbling that it w

ck of the hall to close and bolt the door. Men began getting up in various parts of the hall and calling out sums, Telfer repeating the name and the amount in a loud voice to young Tom Jedrow, clerk in the bank, who wrote them d

he platform. He walked unsteadily straightening his shoulders and thrusting out his chin. When he got to the front of the hall he took a rol

"Seventeen dollars from our hero, the mighty McPherson," he shouted while the bank clerk wrote the name and the a

ome his mother was doing a family washing for Lesley, the shoe merchant, who had given five dollars to the Fourth-of-Jul

ome of the speakers the crowd listened respectfully, at others they hooted. An old man with a grey beard told a long rambling story of

Freedom Smith and a murmur of appla

r mounted on a white horse who will ride through the town at dawn blowing the reveille.

r fancy and had instantly taken a place in th

or silence he told the crowd that he was a bugler, that he had been a regimental bugler

r waved his hand. "The white hor

e caught himself wondering if there ever had been such a war and thought that it must be a lie like everything else in the life of Windy McPherson. For years he had wondered why some sensible solid person like Valmore or Wildman did not rise, and in a matter-of-fact way tell the world that no such thing as the Civil War had ever been fought, that it was merely a figment in the minds of pompous old men demanding unearned glory of their fellows. Now hurrying along the st

have to be stopped," he declared, standing with blazing eyes before her washtub. "It is too publ

e boy's outburst, then, turning, went ba

he matter, but as he walked away from the washtub and out at the kitchen door, he hoped there would be plain talk of the mat

silence but looked closely at his son. He felt that he faced a crisis. In the emergency he was magnificent. With a flourish, he told of the mass meeting, and declared

that he did not believe his fat

ing in the face of a storm of bullets and blowing his comrades to action. Putting one hand on his forehead he rocked back and forth as though about to fall, declaring that he was striving to keep back the tears wrenched from him by the injustice of his son's insinuation and, shouting so that his voice

And the boy, convinced by the story of the midnight attack in the woods of Virginia, began against his judgment to build once more an old dream of his father's reformation. Boylike, the scepticism was thrown to the winds and he entered with zeal into the plans for the great day. As he went through the quiet residence streets delivering the late evening papers, he threw back his head and revelled in the thought of a tall blue-clad figure o

Street. In the street, on all sides of them, they saw people coming out of houses rubbing the

oorways of the stores. Heads appeared at windows, flags waved from roofs or hung from rope

r of the days of waiting. It had been all important. He could not blame his father for raving and shouting about the house, he himself had felt like raving, and had put another dollar of his savings into telegrams before the treasure was finally in h

ons into its mane and tail. Windy McPherson, sitting very straight in the saddle and looking wonderfully striking in the new blue uniform and the broad-brimmed campaign hat, had the air

ions the father had brought upon his family, and understood why his mother remained silent when he, in his blindness, had wanted to protest against h

waiting people. In front of the town hall the tall military figure, rising in the saddl

gain Windy put the bugle to his lips and again the same dismal squawk was

only another of Windy McPherson's pret

at on the curbstones and laughed until they were tired. Then, loo

eard the thing a thousand times and had it clearly in his mind; with all his heart he wanted it to roll forth, and could picture the street ringing with it and the applause of the people; the thing, he felt, w

send them off into something near convulsions. Grasping the bridle of the horse, John Telf

ther, white and speechless with humiliation, dared not look at each other. In the flo

across his face. Dropping the bridle he hurried away through the crowd. The procession moved on, and watching their chance the mother and the two children crept home along side streets,

to draw water for the day's washing. For her also the holiday was at an end. A flood of tears ran down the boy's cheeks, and he shook his fist in th