"It didn't take us a minute to open on 'em. We had our guns trained in no time, an' we made it mighty hot for 'em as they come across that valley. One bunch come right for my guns, but we had loaded with grape an' we just blew 'em to smithereens. They turned round, what was left of 'em, an' run back like Jesse. There was a rebel general on a brown hoss, an' his hoss went down, an' we nearly got _him_."
He stopped. After waiting a moment, we all burst out:--
"Why, nothin'. The battle was over. The rebels had skedaddled. But the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, he called me 'round to his tent that night, an' he give me this cane."
"This one. He says, says he: 'I like the way you worked your guns to-day, an' I want you to keep this stick to remember me by. I cut it myself.'"
He let each boy of us take the stick in his hand and examine it reverently. It was a cane of some brown wood, with a round knob at the top, made of ivory or bone.
Then he took a fat silver watch out of his pocket, and looked at that.
"It's pretty nigh supper-time, an' I'm goin' along."
He rose from the bench and walked slowly away, limping slightly, and leaning on the cane--the cane that Napoleon had given him!
We walked toward our homes, maintaining a profound silence. On the other side of the pond we met Rob Currier, who was catching hornpouts. He addressed us derisively.
"Was that old Napoleon Jones you were talking with? He been giving you some of his yarns? My father says he's cracked. He was in the Civil War, but some one got him all worked up about Napoleon, till he thinks he has seen him."
If Rob had hit each one of us in the face with a wet hornpout, the effect would have been more agreeable. We encountered a realist for the first time when we met Rob that afternoon. We were walking through a golden haze of romance, when he suddenly drew this leaden-gray cloud across the sky.
"You make me sick!" declared Ed Mason; "didn't he show us the very cane that Napoleon gave him?"
"Of course he did!" replied Jimmy Toppan.
So we fell on Rob Currier, dragged him down on the turf, and stuffed grass and clover down the back of his neck until he yelled:--
In the garden, at the side of our house, there was an apple tree. There were two routes to the top of it. One, the common everyday path, was obvious and easy, almost like climbing a ladder. You took hold of the large limb nearest the ground, curled one leg and then the other around it, and so wriggled upon its upper side. From that point you could climb from one branch to another, without any difficulty, till you had reached the top of the tree. That was the prosaic method for ordinary occasions.