Eight o’clock, rang the Seth Thomas. It offered its cozy announcement, a loose spring clicked, and the little hammer lay back to await another hour. Bale looked up from the book. A scrap of bacon lay in cool, white grease on his plate—yes, he had eaten breakfast, he had been reading. Soldiers came for water, soldiers talked and annoyed him, and all the time that black aching in forbidden corners of his brain—

Chinese crackers. The boys—they’ve bought crackers at Pock’s store. The Fourth is only a few days away, and how Elijah and I used to trade torpedoes.

Again the distant spatter of explosions like a far-away string of little red tubes, popping round-echoed under the hot sky. Dan stood up suddenly, and the chair teetered and went over with a crash … He was out in the yard, in the candid frying of sunlight. Bang: one lone cracker off beyond Oak Ridge. Patter, snap, bam-bam, the others retorted. Muskets and carbines; now he knew. Close beside the seminary a bugle began to peal, startled from some sluggish dream. It was a round yellow throat, braying with spirited hoarseness. Ta-ta-tata-tatata, ta-ta-tata-tatata. Near the first trees a man roared: “No, No! Lieutenant Pennybacker said for you to stay till you was relieved!” Then all the futile squibs, the gilt-wrapped Chinese foolishness, seemed to mass in a single powder charge, hollow and effortless and sullen. The hot grass felt the ground surge underneath and then lie still again.

Off to the southwest rose a growing medley, yells and horse sounds, where a drift of mounted men scurried among the trees. He could see them plainly as they poured across the yellow glades of sunshine which tilted toward the crest. They were swinging from their horses: rapidly the landscape resolved itself into struggling knots of animals, little cores and festers of brown horses, flipping manes and tails, and each four horses held by a lead soldier in painted blue. A lone volcano blasted its earthy cap, out on the Pike; again the yard wriggled underfoot.