parts
of his clothes, and though his cocked hat was of pasteboard, it was
decorated with gilding and bright rosettes, and floated a red feather
that made his heart beat with martial fury whenever he looked at it. The
effect of this uniform upon the girls was not a matter of conjecture. I
think they really cared nothing about it, but they pretended to think
it fine, and they fed the poor boy's vanity, the weakness by which women
govern the world.

The exalted happiness of John in this military service I daresay was
never equaled in any subsequent occupation. The display of the company
in the village filled him with the loftiest heroism. There was nothing
wanting but an enemy to fight, but this could only be had by half the
company staining themselves with elderberry juice and going into the
woods as Indians, to fight the artillery from behind trees with bows
and arrows, or to ambush it and tomahawk the gunners. This, however, was
made to seem very like real war. Traditions of Indian cruelty were still
fresh in western Massachusetts. Behind John's house in the orchard were
some old slate tombstones, sunken and leaning, which recorded the names
of Captain Moses Rice and Phineas Arms, who had been killed by Indians
in the last century while at work in the meadow by the river, and who
slept there in the hope of the glorious resurrection. Phineas Arms
martial name--was long since dust, and even the mortal part of the great
Captain Moses Rice had been absorbed in the soil and passed perhaps with
the sap up into the old but still blooming apple-trees. It was a quiet
place where they lay, but they might have heard--if hear they could--the
loud, continuous roar of the Deerfield, and the stirring of the long
grass on that sunny slope. There was a tradition that years ago an
Indian, probably the last of his race, had been seen moving along the
crest of the mountain, and gazing down into the lovely valley which had
been the favorite home of his tribe, upon the fields where he grew his
corn, and the sparkling stream whence he drew his fish. John used to
fancy at times, as he sat there, that he could see that red specter
gliding among the trees on the hill; and if the tombstone suggested to
him the trump of judgment, he could not separate it from the war-whoop
that had been the last sound in the ear of Phineas Arms. The Indian
always preceded murder by the war-whoop; and this was an advantage
that the artillery had in the fight with