t had not sufficed to break.

The blacksmith's shop, the centre of the primitive civilization, had
soon an expectant group in its widely flaring doors, for the smith had
had enough of the war, and had come back to wistfully, hopelessly haunt
his anvil like some uneasy ghost visiting familiar scenes in which he
no more bears a part;--a minie-ball had shattered his stanch hammer-arm,
and his duties were now merely advisory to a clumsy apprentice. This was
a half-witted fellow, a giant in strength, but not to be trusted with
firearms. In these days of makeweights his utility had been discovered,
and now with the smith's hammer in his hand he joined the group, his
bulging eyes all a-stare and his loose lips hanging apart. The old
justice of the peace, whose office was a sinecure, since the war had
run the law out of the Cove, came with a punctilious step, though with
a sense of futility and abated dignity, and at every successive note
of the distant trumpet these wights experienced a tense bracing of the
nerves to await helplessly the inevitable and, alas! the inexorable.

"They say that he is a tumble, tumble man," the blacksmith averred, ever
and anon rubbing the stump of his amputated hammer-arm, in which, though
bundled in its jeans' sleeve, he had the illusion of the sensation of
its hand and fingers. He suddenly shaded his brow with his broad palm to
eye that significant line which marked the road among the pines on the
eastern slope, beyond the Indian corn that stood tall and rank of growth
in the rich bottom-lands.

Ethelinda's heart sank. All unprescient of the day's impending event,
she had come to the forge with the sley of her loom to be mended, and
she now stood holding the long shaft in her mechanical clasp, while she
listened spell-bound to the agitated talk of the group. The boughs of a
great yellow hickory waved above her head; near by was the trough,
and here a horse, brought to be shod, was utilizing the interval by
a draught; he had ceased to draw in the clear, cold spring water, but
still stood with his muzzle close to the surface, his lips dripping,
gazing with un-imagined thoughts at the reflection of his big equine
eyes, the blue sky inverted, the dappling yellow leaves, more golden
even than the sunshine, and the glimmering flight of birds, with a
stellular light upon their wings.

"A turrible man?--w-w-well," stuttered the idiot, who had of late
assumed all the port of coherence; he snatched and