Ramsey Milholland | Page 3

glinting fine lines in one spot, about the size of a saucer, upon the old
man's head of thick white hair. Half closing his eyes, drowsily, Ramsey
played that this sunshine spot was a white bird's-next and, and he had a
momentary half dream of a glittering little bird that dwelt there and
wore a blue soldier cap on its head. The earnest old voice of the veteran
was only a sound in the boy's ears.
"Yes, it's simple and plain enough now, though then we didn't often
think of it in exactly this way, but just went on fighting and never
doubted. We knew the struggle and suffering of our fathers and
grandfathers to make a great country here for Freedom, and we knew
that all this wasn't just the whim of a foolish god, willing to waste such
great things--we knew that such a country couldn't have been building
up just to be wasted. But, more than that, we knew that armies fighting
for the Freedom of Man had to win, in the long run, over armies that
fought for what they considered their rights.
"We didn't set out to free the slaves, so far as we knew. Yet our being

against slavery was what made the war, and we had the consciousness
that we were on the side of God's plan, because His plan is clearly the
Freedom of Man. Long ago we began to see the hints of His plan--a
little like the way you can see what's coming in August from what
happens in April, but man has to win his freedom from himself--men in
the light have to fight against men in the dark of their own shadow.
That light is the answer; we had the light that made us never doubt.
Ours was the true light, and so we--"
"Boom--" The veterans had begun to fire their cannon on the crest of
the low hill, out at the cemetery; and from a little way down the street
came the rat-a-tat of a toy drum and sounds of a fife played execrably.
A file of children in cocked hats made of newspapers came marching
importantly up the sidewalk under the maple shade trees; and in
advance, upon a velocipede, rode a tin-sworded personage, shrieking
incessant commands but not concerning himself with whether or not
any military obedience was thereby obtained. Here was a revivifying
effect upon young Ramsey; his sluggard eyelids opened electrically; he
leaped to his feet and, abandoning his grandfather without preface or
apology, sped across the lawn and out of the gate, charging headlong
upon the commander of the company.
"You get off that 'locipede, Wesley Bender!" he bellowed. "You gimme
that sword! What rights you got to go bein' captain o' my army, I'd like
to know! Who got up this army, in the first place, I'd like to know! I did,
myself yesterd'y afternoon, and you get back in line or I won't let you
b'long to it at all!"
The pretender succumbed; he instantly dismounted, being out-shouted
and overawed. On foot he took his place in the ranks, while Ramsey
became sternly vociferous. "In-tention, company! Farwud march!
Col-lumn right! Right-showdler harms! Halt! Far-wud march. Carry
harms--"
The Army went trudging away under the continuous but unheed fire of
orders, and presently disappeared round a corner, leaving the veteran
chuckling feebly under his walnut tree and alone with the empty street.
All trace of what he had said seemed to have been wiped from the

grandson's mind; but memory has curious ways. Ramsey had
understood not a fifth nor a tenth of his grandfather's talk, and already
he had "forgotten" all of it--yet not only were there many, many times
in the boy's later life when, without ascertainable cause, he would
remember the sunlight falling upon the old man's white head, to make
that semblance of a glittering bird's-nest there, but with the picture
came recollections of words and sentences spoken by the grandfather,
though the listener, half-drowsily, had heard but the sound of an old,
earnest voice--and even the veteran's meaning finally took on a greater
definiteness till it became, in the grandson's thoughts, something clear
and bright and beautiful that he knew without being just sure where or
how he had learned it.
Chapter II
Ramsey Milholland sat miserably in school, his conscious being
consisting principally of a dull hate. Torpor was a little dispersed
during a fifteen-minute interval of "Music," when he and all the other
pupils in the large room of the "Five B. Grade" sang repeated fractions
of what they enunciated as "The Star Span-guh-hulled Banner"; but
afterward he relapsed into the low spirits and animosity natural to
anybody during enforced confinement under instruction. No alleviation
was accomplished by an invader's temporary usurpation of the teacher's