ghing, talking,
footfalls, hurrying, as men came or went on one errand or another. A
large party had evidently arrived on a conveyance earlier than my own. I
leaned against the front rail of the tavern gallery and waited for some
stable-boy to come. The postmaster carried away his mail sack, the
loungers at the stoop gradually disappeared, and so presently I began to
look about me. I found my eyes resting upon a long figure at the farther
end of the gallery, sitting in the shade of the steep hill which came
down, almost sharp as a house roof, back of the tavern, and so cut off
the evening sun. It was apparently a woman, tall and thin, clad in a
loose, stayless gown, her face hid in an extraordinarily long, green
sun-bonnet. Her arms were folded, and she was motionless. But now and
then there came a puff of smoke from within the caverns of the
sun-bonnet, accompanied with the fragrant odor of natural leaf, whose
presence brooked no debate by the human nose. I looked at this stranger
again and yet again, then slowly walked up and held out my hand. No one
in all the world who could counterfeit Mandy McGovern, even so far away,
and under conditions seemingly impossible for her presence!

Mandy's pipe well-nigh fell from her lips. "Well, good God A'mighty! If
it ain't you, son!" she exclaimed.

"Yes," I smiled.

"They told me you-all lived somewheres around here."

"Aunt Mandy," I interrupted. "Tell me, what in the world are you doing
here?"

"Why, me and the folks just come down to look around. Her and her Pa was
comin', and I come, too."

"_Who_ came with you, Aunt Mandy?"

"Still askin' fool questions like you didn't know! Why, you know who it
was. The Colonel's ordered to jine his rigiment at Fort Henry. Gal come
along o' him, o' course. I come along with the gal, o' course. My boy
and my husband come along with me, o' course."

"Your son, Andrew Jackson?"

"Uh-huh. He's somewheres 'round, I reckon. I see him lickin' a nigger a
few minutes ago. Say, that boy's come out to be the fightenest feller I
ever did see. Him allowin' he got that there Injun, day we had the fight
down on the Platte, it just made a new man out'n him. 'Fore long he
whupped a teamster that got sassy with him. Then he taken a rock and
lammed the cook 'cause he looked like he was laffin' at him. Not long
atter that, he killed a Injun he 'lowed was crawlin' 'round our
place--done kilt him and taken his skulp 'fore I had time to explain to
hi