As I passed by a little
second-hand clothing-store of the meanest kind, in a poor, back street,
I saw hanging up outside an old gray jacket. I stopped to examine it.
It was stained behind with mud, and in front with a darker color.
An old patch hid a part of the front; but a close examination showed
two holes over the breast. It was "No. 4"'s lost jacket.
I asked the shopman about it. He had bought it, he said, of a pawnbroker
who had got it from some drunkard, who had probably stolen it last year
from some old soldier. He readily sold it, and I took it back with me;
and the others being gone, an old woman and I cut the patch off it
and put "No. 4"'s stiffening arms into the sleeves. Word was sent to us
during the day to say that the city would bury him in the poorhouse grounds.
But we told them that arrangements had been made; that he would have
a soldier's burial. And he had it.
Miss Dangerlie's Roses
Henry Floyd was a crank, at least so many people said; a few thought
he was a wonderful person: these were mostly children, old women,
and people not in the directory, and persons not in the directory
do not count for much. He was in fact a singular fellow.
It was all natural enough to him; he was just like what he believed
his father had been, his father of whom his mother used to tell him,
and whom he remembered so vaguely except when he had suddenly loomed up
in his uniform at the head of his company, when they went away on that march
from which he had never returned.
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