and
also of a grand parade of returned soldiers.

I had not half finished it, when I was seized with such a pang of
homesickness as I hope never to feel again; in fact, I do not believe
that I ever could feel another such pang. It penetrated my entire being;
I could not swallow a mouthful of breakfast. It seemed to me that I
should choke and die right there, if I did not get up and start for home
that very minute;--and I knew I could not go. Blue is no adequate word
with which to describe such sensations. In the course of an hour,
however, this first fit passed off for the most part, but left me very
pensive and melancholy. I was aware, too, that the Old Squire had
noticed my mood.

As we hoed corn that forenoon, a boy came driving a horse and "drag"
into the field; it was Edgar Wilbur, one of the lads whom I had seen the
day before while coming from church. The Wilburs lived at the farm next
beyond the Edwardses, about three-quarters of a mile distant from us.
Mr. Wilbur was not a wholly thrifty farmer, and often borrowed tools at
the Old Squire's. Edgar had now come for the "cultivator," for their
corn.

While we were loading it on the drag for him, Edgar told us boys that he
had to go to the back pasture to salt their sheep that afternoon, and
asked us to go with him. Addison replied that we were too busy with our
hoeing; but the Old Squire, who had overheard what was said, looked at
me with a compassionate smile, and said that I might go if I liked. I
suppose he hoped that the trip with Edgar would cheer me up.
Accordingly, after dinner, I was given my liberty, and set off for the
Wilburs, leaving Halstead grumbling over what he deemed my unmerited
good fortune.

The Wilburs lived in a one-story red house; and their barn was a
somewhat weather-beaten, infirm old structure, yet the place had a cozy
appearance; there were beds of flowers by the house door, and a great
bunch of pink hedge roses on one side of the way leading into the yard,
with a thick bush of lilacs on the other. Elsie and Georgie were at the
district school; but Mrs. Wilbur, a fresh-faced, pleasant woman, came to
the door and very kindly asked me in, offering me presently a glass of
spruce beer which had a queer flavor, I thought, and which I was not
quite able to finish.

Meantime Edgar--or Ned, as his mother called him--had filled a six-quart
pail with salt, and we set off immediately for the sheep pasture. The
distance was considerable, fu