other wagons, loaded to the
rim with men, women and children. Up and down the line rode Milton
Jennings, the marshal of the day, exalted by the baton he held and the
gay red sash looped across his shoulders. Everywhere rose merry shouts,
and far away at the head of the procession the Burr Oak band was
playing. All waited for the flag whose beautiful folds flamed afar in
the bright sunlight.

Every member of the grange wore its quaint regalia, apron, sash, and
pouch of white, orange, buff and red. Each grange was headed by
banners, worked in silk by the patient fingers of the women. Counting
the banners there were three Granges present--Liberty Grange, Meadow
Grange, and Burr Oak Grange at the lead with the band. The marshal of
the leading grange came charging back along the line, riding
magnificently, his fiery little horse a-foam.

"Are we all ready?" he shouted like a field officer.

"Yaas!"

"All ready, Tom?"

"Ready when you are," came the fusillade of replies.

He consulted a moment with Milton, the two horses prancing with
unwonted excitement that transformed them into fiery chargers of
romance, in the eyes of the boys and girls, just as the sash and baton
transfigured Milton into something martial.

"All ready there!" shouted the marshals with grandiloquent gestures of
their be-ribboned rods, the band blared out again and the teams began
to move toward the west. The men stood up to look ahead, while the boys
in the back end of the wagons craned perilously over the edge of the
box to see how long the line was. It seemed enormous to them, and their
admiration of the marshals broke forth in shrill cries of primitive
wildness.

Many of the young fellows had hired at ruinous expense the carriages in
which they sat with their girls, wearing a quiet air of aristocratic
reserve which did not allow them to shout sarcasms at Milton, when his
horse broke into a trot and jounced him up and down till his hat flew
off. But mainly the young people were in huge bowered lumber wagons in
wildly hilarious groups. The girls in their simple white dresses tied
with blue ribbon at the waist, and the boys in their thick woolen suits
which did all-round duty for best wear.

As they moved off across the prairie toward the dim blue belt of timber
which marked the banks of Rock River, other processions joined them
with banner, and bands, and choirs, all making a peaceful and
significant parade, an army of reapers of grain, not