win-brothers
ceased to talk of him. But it was because they had begun to think of him
with that strained, tense attention with which we sit and listen for the
steps of one who long delays his coming, and who may be dead by the way.

He might come back any day, with a crown of glory on his head. Or--was
he dead? So many ships went down in that dim outer world--so many
cities were burned; legions of men were swept away in battle; in short,
the millions of graves which dotted the earth's surface only meant to
these Boyers the one possible grave where he might lie. The gray-headed
old men went stealthily alone at night sometimes to the big chest and
turned over again the poems and essays yellow now with age, and the
gilded prize-books. But they never spoke to each other of them.

* * * * *

About eighty miles from Black Mountains, in a hamlet on the Nantahela
range, the whereabouts of Peter Boyer was discussed one July day as a
subject of more practical interest. All the men in Sevier--a dozen, all
told--were gathered as usual under the great oak which stood by the pump
in the middle of the square. It was a grassy, weedy square: one or two
cows lay chewing the cud on it, as they did all day long. Why not? There
was never enough noise in the little street which ran round its four
sides to disturb them. In the evening the women went out and milked them
just where they were: occasionally, a meditative sow with her litter, or
a slouching boy, passed them; or a canvas-covered wagon drawn by a steer
would lumber slowly along, stop, and a woman get out of it with a bag of
ginseng or angelica to barter for sugar and shoes; or a farmer in
butternut homespun would jog up the street on his mule, his gun and bag
of rations strapped behind, on his way to the higher peaks to salt his
wild cattle; or a party of Cherokees from Qualla would come in with
baskets to sell; or Seth Keen, the dwarf hunter, would bring in a roll
of wolf-skins, and stay to tell his old stories over for the hundredth
time. But these were rare events: on ordinary days the cows dozed
undisturbed in the sleepy, foggy air, and the men lounged on the trough
by the pump, and smoked from morning until bed-time, and cracked jokes
on each other, and told marvellous stories of the war and its ravages.

"It giv' Sevier a staggerin' blow, gentlemen," old Judge Scroope would
say: "we'll never recover from it. I tell you, Jefferson Davis an'
Lin