It allus goes to me like this: 'Goes the day, Far
away, With the light, And the night Comes along--Comes along--Comes
along--Like a-a so-o-ong.'" She here lifted her voice, a sweet, fresh,
boyish contralto, in such an admirable imitation of the bugle that her
brother, after the fashion of more select auditors, was for a moment
quite convinced that the words meant something. Nevertheless, as a
brother, it was his duty to crush this weakness. "Yes; and it
says:'shut your head, Go to bed,'" he returned irascibly; "and YOU'D
better come along, if we're goin' to hev any supper. There's Yeller
Bob hez got ahead of us over there with the game already."

The girl glanced towards a slouching burdened figure that now appeared
to be preceding them, straightened herself suddenly, and then looked
attentively towards the Marsh.

"Not the sodgers again?" said her brother impatiently.

"No," she said quickly; "but if that don't beat anythin'! I'd hev
sworn, Jim, that Yeller Bob was somewhere behind us. I saw him only
jest now when 'Taps' sounded, somewhere over thar." She pointed with a
half-uneasy expression in quite another direction from that in which
the slouching Yellow Bob had just loomed.

"Tell ye what, Mag, makin' poetry outer bugle calls hez kinder muddled
ye. THAT'S Yeller Bob ahead, and ye orter know Injins well enuff by
this time to remember that they allus crop up jest when ye don't expect
them. And there's the bresh jest afore us. Come!"

The 'bresh,' or low bushes, was really a line of stunted willows and
alders that seemed to have gradually sunk into the level of the plain,
but increased in size farther inland, until they grew to the height and
density of a wood. Seen from the channel it had the appearance of a
green cape or promontory thrust upon the Marsh. Passing through its
tangled recesses, with the aid of some unerring instinct, the two
companions emerged upon another and much larger level that seemed as
illimitable as the bay. The strong breath of the ocean lying just
beyond the bar and estuary they were now facing came to them salt and
humid as another tide. The nearer expanse of open water reflected the
after-glow, and lightened the landscape. And between the two wayfarers
and the horizon rose, bleak and startling, the strange outlines of
their home.

At first it seemed a ruined colonnade of many pillars, whose base and
pediment were buried in the earth, supporting a long parallelogram of