"'Lection bonfire--high wind--woodshed must 'a' caught," replied Abner, sententiously. "So you reely got down South, eh?"
"An' Siss here, too," commented Ni, with provoking disregard for the farmer's suggestions; "a reg'lar family party. An', hello!"
His roving eye had fallen upon the recumbent form on the made-up bed, under the muffling blankets, and he lifted his sandy wisps of eyebrows in inquiry.
"Sh! It's father," explained Esther. "He isn't feeling very well. I think he's asleep."
The boy's freckled, whimsical face melted upon reflection into a distinct grin. "Why," he said, "you've been havin' a reg'lar old love-feast up here. I guess it was _that_ that set the house on fire! An' speakin' o' feasts, if you've got a mouthful o' somethin' to eat handy--"
The women were off like a shot to the impromptu larder at the far end of the barn.
"Well, thin," put in Hurley, taking advantage of their absence, "an' had ye the luck to see anny rale fightin'?"
"Never mind that," said Abner; "when he gits around to it he'll tell us everything. But, fust of all--why, he knows what I want to hear about."
"Why, the last time I talked with you, Abner--" Ni began, squinting up one of his eyes and giving a quaint drawl to his words.
"That's a good while ago," said the farmer, quietly.
"Things have took a change, eh?" inquired Ni.
"That's neither here nor there," replied Abner, somewhat testily. "You oughtn't to need so dummed much explainin'. I've told you what I want specially to hear. An' that's what we all want to hear."
When the women had returned, and Ni, with much deliberation, had filled both hands with selected eatables, the recital at last got under way. Its progress was blocked from time to time by sheer force of tantalizing perversity on the part of the narrator, and it suffered steadily from the incidental hitches of mastication; but such as it was we listened to it with all our ears, sitting or standing about, and keeping our eyes intently upon the freckled young hero.
"It wasn't so much of a job to git down there as I'd figured on," Ni said, between mouthfuls. "I got along on freight trains--once worked my way a while on a hand-car--as far as Albany, an' on down to New York on a river-boat, cheap, an' then, after foolin' round a few days, I hitched up with the Sanitary Commission folks, an' got them to let me sail on one o' their boats round to 'Napolis. I thought I was goin' to die most o' the voyage, but I didn't, you see, an' when I struck 'Napolis I hung around Camp Parole there quite a spell, talkin' with fellers that'd bin pris'ners down in Richmond an' got exchanged an' sent North. They said there was a whole slew of our fellers down there still that'd been brought in after Antietam. They didn't know none o' their names, but they said they'd all be sent North in time, in exchange for Johnny Rebs that we'd captured. An' so I waited round--"