jolted over the
execrable roads and through the shiftless, run-down country before they
found anything worth while putting in the wagons.

"Great country, Pap," said Si suggestively.

"Yes; it'd be a great country," said his father disdainfully, "if you
could put a wagonload o' manure on every foot and import some Injianny
men to take care of it. The water and the sunshine down here seem all
right, but the land and the people and the pigs and stock seem to be
cullin's throwed out when they made Injianny."

At length the train halted by a double log house of much more
pretentious character than any they had so far seen. There were a couple
of well-filled corn-cribs, a large stack of fodder, and other evidences
of plenty. The Deacon's practiced eye noticed that there was no stock in
the fields, but Si explained this by saying that everything on hoofs had
been driven off to supply the rebel army. "They're now trying to git
a corn-crib and a fodder-stack with four legs, but hain't succeeded so
far."

The Captain ordered the fence thrown down and the wagons driven in to
be filled. The surrounding horizon was scanned for signs of rebels,
but none appeared anywhere. The landscape was as tranquil, as
peace-breathing as a Spring morning on the Wabash, and the Deacon's mind
reverted to the condition of things on his farm. It was too wet to plow,
but he would like to take a walk over the fields and see how his wheat
had come out, and look over the{240} peach-buds and ascertain how they
had stood the Winter. He noticed how some service-trees had already
unfolded their white petals, like flags of truce breaking the long array
of green cedars and rusty-brown oaks.

The company stacked arms in the road, the Captain went to direct
the filling of the wagons, and Si and Shorty started on a private
reconnoissance for something for their larder.

The Deacon strolled around the yard for awhile inspecting the buildings
and farm implements with an eye of professional curiosity, and arrived
at very unfavorable opinions. He then walked up on the porch of
the house, where a woman of about his own age sat in a split-bottom
rocking-chair knitting and viewing the proceedings with frowning eyes.

"Good day, ma'am," said he. "Warm day, ma'am."

"'Tain't as warm as it orter to be for sich fellers as yo'uns," she
snapped. "You'd better be in the brimstone pit if you had your just
deserts."

The Deacon always tried to be good-humored with an