On the river road below the tannery, away back in New York State, there stood for many years a small house, always surrounded in summer by sunflowers and hollyhocks and peonies that enwrapped it as in a beautiful garment. It seemed that flowers grew nowhere else as they did for the Widow Hornbeck.

There was no other such show of lilacs in Juno Mills as that which early May brought for her front yard. The climbing roses which covered the whole front and side of the poor little house were only of the simple, old sorts,—the Baltimore Belle, the yellow Scotch and the ordinary pink brier,—but they bore thick clusters of delightful blossoms. And in the fall, when the frosts had nipped and blackened other people\'s flowers, the asters and nasturtiums and gladiolus in this wee patch appeared unhurt by the weather.

When there was to be a wedding in the village, or some celebration at the church or the school-house, the children always went to the Widow Hornbeck to beg for flowers. Often they found her sitting out in her yard among the plants she loved—a mild-faced, patient little woman, with thin, bent shoulders and hair whitened before its time; and she would be poring through her spectacles over the same big Book spread open on her knees.

The spectacle of Mrs. Hornbeck and her family Bible, framed like a picture in vines and flowering shrubs, grew pleasantly familiar to everybody in the district. Strangers driving past used to stop their buggies and admire the place; and they, too, seeing the white-haired owner sitting there, would feel that her presence added to the charm of the scene.

The widow died suddenly one day in the autumn of 1863. She was found quite lifeless, seated as of old in the garden, with the old patient, wistful half-smile on her face, and the old Book spread open in her lap.

The village was sad for a day or two, and gently touched for a fortnight. Then the widow had been forgotten, and the family Bible had vanished. The cottage was taken for the mortgage upon it, and its meagre contents went the way of humble, ownerless things. Mrs. Hornbeck had been very poor, and nothing was left for her son.

In that family Bible had been written the names of some score of Hornbecks. Against all these names but two a date of death had also been inscribed. One of these two names, the last in the list, was that of the boy, now made an orphan, the Benjamin of the widow\'s flock. He was described on the yellowed page, in his mother\'s scrawling hand, as "Washington Lafayette Hornbeck, born April 30, 1850." In real life he had always been known as "Lafe."

He grew up a brown-skinned, hardy sort of ordinary boy, whose face might suggest some acuteness and more resolution, but whom nobody thought of calling good-looking.

He turned out to be the best wrestler among the village lads of his age, and he was also the strongest swimmer of all the lot who used to go down, of a summer evening, to dive off the spring-board into the deep pool below the mill-dam. This raised him a good deal in the esteem of the boys, but somehow their elders were not so much impressed by "Lafe\'s" qualities.

He had to work, and he did work, but always at some new job—now berry-picking, now stripping willows for the basket factory, now packing "heave-powders" for the local horse-doctor. He had been employed in the mills and in the tannery, and he had once travelled for a month as the assistant of a tin-peddler, not to mention various experiments in general farm-work.

People hardly blamed Lafe for this lack of steadiness in employment. They said it was in his blood. All the Hornbecks since any one could remember had been musicians—playing the fiddle or whatever else you liked at country dances, and some of them even journeying to distant parts as members of circus or minstrel bands.

It was felt that a boy from such a roving stock could scarcely be expected to tie himself down to regular work.

Doubtless Lafe felt this, too, for as soon as he began thinking what he should do, after the shock of his mother\'s death, he found himself wishing to be a drummer-boy. The notion struck all the neighbors as quite appropriate. Lafe was a capital drummer. Kind old Doctor Peabody went with him to Tecumseh, saw the head recruiting officer at the big barracks there, and arranged matters for him.

Lafe was sent forward to New York, and thence to headquarters at the front. Men liked him, and his lifelong familiarity with instruments made him a handy boy to have about. Before long he was taken out of the little company drum-corps, and promoted to the big brigade band.

This very morning, when he went up from the hospital camp to the ridge where he hoped to see the fighting beyond, he had been thinking whether this promotion had been what he wanted.

All his dreams had been of action—of brave drummer-boys who went into battle with the fifes, and stood through it all by the side of the file-leader, valiantly pounding their sheep-skins as the shot and shell screamed past, and men pitched headlong, and officers were hurled from their horses, and the fight was lost or won.

Alas! a brigade band never got so much as a whiff of actual warfare, but tamely stayed about in camp, playing selections outside the general\'s headquarters while he ate his dinner, or contributing its quota to the ceremonial of a Sunday dress-parade.

Perhaps nothing more was to be looked for during the long winter in peaceful quarters at Brandy Station; but now that spring had come, and the grand advance was begun, and battles were in the air all about them—even now the bandsmen merely gave the warriors a tune or two to start them off, and then ingloriously loafed around the camp till they returned, or did not return, as the case might be. One might almost as well have stayed at home in Juno Mills!

The great rock on which Lafe and the German flute-player Foldeen had taken their station gave way beneath them, as was stated in the last chapter, and smashed its way down the steep hillside, crushing the brush and rooting up vines as it went, snapping saplings like pipestems, and bowling over even trees of a larger growth. It brought up almost at the bottom of the hill, in the heart of a clump of sturdy cedars.

A long gash of earth laid bare and of foliage ripped and strewn aside stretched up the incline to mark the track of the fallen boulder. Half-way up this pathway of devastation a boy presently appeared.

Lafe had crawled up out of the débris of saplings, boughs, and tangled creepers into which he had been hurled, and clambered over now to the open space. Then he stood looking up and down in a puzzled way, rubbing his head. His clothes were torn a good deal, he had lost his cap, and he was conscious of numerous bruises under these damaged clothes of his.

There was blood on the palm of his hand, which had come from his head. So far as feeling could guide him, this, however, was nothing but a scalp scratch. He cared more about the tremendous bark one of his shins had got, close up under his knee. When he took his first aimless steps, this had already stiffened, and was hurting him.

Suddenly he remembered that he had not been alone on the rock. Foldeen Schell had been with him, and had grabbed his arm just as everything gave way under them. His wits were still woolgathering under the combined scare and tumble, and he began mechanically poking about among the underbrush at his feet, as if the missing flute-player might be hidden there. Or was he hunting for his cap? For a dazed minute or two he hardly knew.

Then the sense of bewilderment lifted itself, and was gone. Lafe straightened himself, and looked comprehensively about him.

"Foldeen!" he shouted shrilly, and then bent all his powers of hearing for a reply. There came no answering call.

The air was full of other sounds—the rattling echoes of musketry-firing and the boom of bigger guns, some far off, others seemingly near, all mingling here among the thicket recesses in a subdued, continuous clamor. Perhaps shouting was of no use.

Lafe climbed up the hill a dozen yards or so, to a point where he could go no farther, and scrutinized his surroundings carefully. The impenetrable wall of foliage shut out the valley from him even more completely than when he was on the ridge. He called again and again, and explored the bushes on either side, to no purpose.

Limping slowly down the track cleared by the pass............