Sitting on the doorstep, Elizabeth Scott leaned her head against the stone wall of the old house. The June twilight was closing in and a hard day’s work was done. Three meals had been prepared and half of the large garden had been hoed and weeded. Feeling that their gardening knowledge was limited, Elizabeth and her brother made up by an excess of cultivation.

A tall, slender boy came round the corner of the house and called “Elizabeth!” There was a dependent quality in his voice; one would have guessed that he was a good deal younger and a good deal less enterprising than the sister whom he addressed.

“Yes, Herbert!” Elizabeth looked up smilingly. Her voice was soft like his, but the words were briskly and firmly spoken. Briskness and firmness were two of Elizabeth’s most noticeable qualities. Those who opposed her called her firmness stubbornness.

There was another quality expressed in her voice—an intense affection for the brother whom she addressed.

“Aren’t you going to bed, Elizabeth?”

“Not yet. Come and sit down.”

Herbert dropped to the doorstep beside his sister. His motions still showed the effect of a long illness from which he had not entirely recovered.

“Are you very tired, Herbert?”

“Not very.”

For a long time both were quiet. The old house seemed gradually to sink into the woodland which rose behind it against the wall of the higher mountains, the shadows of night crept over the miles of fields and orchards which dropped to the distant plain, the garden between the house and the road was blotted out, and the old oak trees on the other side came closer and closer. In the woods whip-poor-wills called, and once an owl flapped low above the doorstep. At that Herbert started and Elizabeth spoke reassuringly.

“Nothing but an owl, dear! He looked like a great moth, didn’t he? Herbert, when we can, we must restore the old driveway. It used to come in from the road in a beautiful curve to the door. Then the garden can be moved, and I believe if we’d cut away that clump of poor trees we could sit here on our own doorstep and see Gettysburg. Think of it, Herbert!”

“Yes,” said Herbert. His voice expressed pleasure, but a qualified pleasure.

“I can’t make it seem real,” said Elizabeth.

“If we can only succeed!”

“Of course we shall succeed!” Any one listening to Elizabeth would have said “Of course!” “In the first place, we have this house, blessed, substantial old thing that it is, only occasionally occupied during forty years and yet habitable after a little mending of the roof. John Baring’s character can be seen in the way he built his house. I’m more proud of him every day. Then we have the acres and acres of woodland behind us, and our garden—think of the produce we have to sell to-morrow! And soon we shall have our orchard,—our orchard, Herbert. They say that men within a few miles have sold a single crop for ten thousand dollars. It will mean work and saving and then comfort for all our lives. Why, we are the most fortunate people in the world!”

Herbert looked back over his shoulder into the dark hall. At the other end a door opened against the black wall of the woodland.

“Doesn’t it make you nervous to think of those men prowling round with their guns and dogs?”

“Not at all. They’ll have to be warned away. I suppose they’re so used to roaming about that they think the place is theirs. I’m not so much afraid of them as I am of their big dogs running over the garden.”

“What is that noise, Elizabeth?”

Elizabeth listened intently. Herbert often heard alarming noises. There was a soft rustle of leaves near at hand.

“A deer, I guess,” she answered cheerfully, “or some other wild thing—nothing to hurt us, I’m sure. I cannot see why our people ever went away from here. Grandfather Baring was a man of standing—why, this must have been the finest place for miles around! Wait till we have a new portico and a little paint on the woodwork and some shrubbery! I should think mother would have been continually homesick.”

“Did she ever say she was?”

“No. When I asked her she used to tell me what she remembered hearing people say about the battle. She was not a talkative person. But all these years the taxes have been paid and there wasn’t even always a renter.”“Do you think she believed we should ever come back? Do you—” Herbert interrupted himself. “There is some one looking at us now!”

“Where?”

“There’s a man at the edge of the woods with a big dog and a gun!”

Elizabeth turned her head. The moon had risen and its rays shone on a long object of bright steel. This object was not pointed in the direction of the two on the doorstep; it slanted backward from the shoulder which supported it, but it was none the less menacing.

Elizabeth sprang up, a short, somewhat stocky, swiftly moving figure.

“Well, neighbor!” she said loudly. “How are you this evening?”

The man drew back into the shadows, but he was not to be allowed to slink away. Elizabeth went closer to him.

“Aren’t you a neighbor?” she persisted.

“Not close,” was the sullen answer.“Have you lived about here a long time?”

“’Bout’s long as I’ve lived anywhere.” It was impossible to tell whether this was a humorous way of saying that he had lived here always, or whether it was meant to indicate that he was a wanderer.

“We are going to stay here,” went on Elizabeth. “After a while when our orchard is set out, we shall need a good deal of help. Could you give us a hand sometimes?”

“No.”

“Do you know any one who could?”

“No.”

“We really belong here,” explained Elizabeth pleasantly.

The stranger seemed startled.

“What do you mean by that?”

“This was our grandfather’s place. We were born in the West, but our people are gone, and so we have come back. We’re going to raise apples. The fields in front of the house are to be turned into an orchard.”It seemed that the stranger could take in but one thought at a time.

“Your gran’paw lived here?”

“Yes.”

“What mought ’a’ been his name?”

“John Baring was his name. Did you ever hear of him?”

“I heard of him.” The answer, begun near at hand, receded into the shadows, as man and dog disappeared.

Elizabeth returned to the doorstep.

“I told him our pedigree and our intentions. If he had stayed a little longer, I should have told him to keep out of our woodland. Now, my dear, it’s time for bed.”

Herbert rose stiffly.

“Everything is ready, isn’t it, Elizabeth?”

“Yes, everything; the onions and the radishes and the lettuce and the peas.”

“Doesn’t it make you a little uncomfortable to think of going about peddling things from door to door to strange people?”“Not a bit! It’s just as honorable to sell onions as diamonds or books. I’m so proud of my garden sass, I’d drive to the gate of the White House and offer it there. And I don’t mean my patrons to be strangers, I mean them to be friends. It’s quite time that we made acquaintances.”

Herbert sighed as he went into the house. Elizabeth stood for a while looking at the illuminated landscape and thinking, not of the morrow or of the menacing gun, but of a deeper source of anxiety. Would Herbert never get well and grow up to be a man? She did not mind hard work, but she wished now to share responsibility. He was anxious to do his part, but he was like a child, requiring direction and encouragement.

It was well that the wagon was already packed with the produce which Elizabeth meant to offer, because in the morning she had but one thought—she would see the battle-field of Gettysburg. Her curiosity had been only half gratified by her mother’s answers to her questions and her meager accounts in her school histories had told her little more. She meant to try to find books which described the battle, so that looking from her doorstep she should be able to picture to herself in detail the conflict which, she believed, had saved her country. She was intensely patriotic; long ago she had hung from one of the upper windows of the old house a little flag.

The brother and sister spoke but seldom as they drove down the hills. The morning was clear and bright, they were young, and a great adventure awaited them. It seemed to Elizabeth that each old farmhouse must have some patriotic significance, that each old tree could tell tales of valor.

“I wish I knew what had happened on this road!” said she.

Herbert shivered.

“Do you suppose there was fighting here?”

“It’s very likely,” said Elizabeth. “There’s got to be fighting,” she went on a little impatiently. “Everything we have has been fought and suffered for, Herbert. Why, look!”

She pulled the old horse up and climbing out of the wagon went to the side of the road.

“Here is a marker with an inscription on it!”

Even Herbert showed interest.

“Do you think Joe’ll stand?” he asked.

“Either that or he’ll lie down,” answered Elizabeth gayly. “He won’t run, that’s certain.”

Together the two read the inscription:

First Shot at Gettysburg
July 1, 1863, 7.30 A.M.
By Captain Jones, Lieut. Riddler and Serg. Shafer

Fired by Captain Jones with Serg. Shafer’s Carbine
Co. E.
8th Illinois Cavalry

Erected 1886Then they climbed silently back into the wagon.

A few miles farther on more elaborate monuments greeted their eager eyes, a Union general on horseback and a Union officer, booted and spurred, standing with field-glasses in hand, looking earnestly and inquiringly toward the west from which Elizabeth and Herbert had come.

“The Confederates must have come by our house!” said Herbert.

At the brow of the next hill they saw Gettysburg, spread before them. Beyond another rise they could see white marble shafts. To the right a tall building lifted its cupola above the trees of a thick grove.

“This must be the Seminary,” said Elizabeth. “You remember there was a Seminary Ridge!”

Old Joe traveled slowly down the leafy avenue and at the first house stopped of his own accord. He had been a huckster’s horse, a fact which accounted for various peculiarities.Elizabeth went into the yard and offered her wares to a lady on the porch. She had looked at Herbert hopefully, but he made no sign of intending to act as agent.

“Good-morning. Do you need any vegetables?”

“Why, yes,” answered the lady. “I shall be glad to have vegetables. Now that we have a curb market in the town, no one stops here.”

“We have onions and peas and lettuce and radishes.”

The lady came out to inspect the wares.

“They’re fine! I’ll have some of each.”

When the bargain was complete, Elizabeth, in friendly fashion, told who she was. The crisp bill in her hand was an earnest of future success.

“Our grandfather was John Baring who lived in one of the old houses between here and Chambersburg. It stands a little back from the road on the first steep hill above Cashtown. Perhaps you’ve seen it?”The lady did not say. She looked curiously at Elizabeth.

“We mean to live there and raise apples. We came early in the spring and planted our garden and it has grown splendidly. You are our first customer. When would you like another supply? The day after to-morrow?”

The lady hesitated. Her expression had changed. Then she began to speak rapidly.

“There is a curb market, you know. I don’t know whether you will find much business. Many people have their own gardens.” She seemed to realize the contradiction between her first enthusiasm and this deterring advice, for she no longer looked at Elizabeth. “Perhaps you had better try to sell your produce at Chambersburg.”

Elizabeth was mystified and a little hurt.

“Thank you,” said she as she climbed back into the wagon.

She stopped at the next house and the next. At both, before she offered her wares she told her name and her grandfather’s name. She sold nothing, however, in spite of her friendliness. It could not be possible that her friendliness repelled these people!

From the porch of one large house a kindly old gentleman walked to meet her, book in hand.

“No, thank you,” he said before she had time to speak. “We have a garden. But you have fine-looking vegetables and I wish you luck.”

He even waved his hand as they drove away. Elizabeth liked him because of his smile and she wished that she might stop and talk to him; he would probably know all about the battle.

As for the old gentleman, he liked Elizabeth and spoke of her to his family. “A capable-looking soul, not pretty, exactly, but with unexpectedly blue eyes. She looked like an interesting girl.”

“Now, Sherlock Holmes,” said the old gentleman’s daughter. “How did you make that out? You are always finding interesting persons.”“From the way she looked at the book which I had in my hand.”

Elizabeth made no more sales. In the end she disposed of the remainder of her goods at a store and turned Joe’s head homeward. Herbert was depressed by their bad luck.

“Perhaps it is all a mistake!”

Elizabeth slapped the lines on Joe’s back. Unconsciously she had taken them from Herbert and as unconsciously he had handed them to her. It was too late now to return them, but the next responsibility, however great or small, Herbert must shoulder.

“Of course it isn’t a mistake! They were just supplied, that is all. We’ll go on a day when there is no curb market.”

In encouraging Herbert, she forgot her own disturbance of mind. “We have ten dollars, at any rate, and that is as good as found.”

The June afternoon had grown cool; as the two drove across the grass to the doorway of the stone house the shadows of the mountain lay darkly about them. The house looked larger; it might have appeared, to one who did not love it, sinister. In the stone above the door the name John Baring was deeply carved; it seemed to Elizabeth suddenly to have no relation to her; it looked strange as even familiar words may look at times. But she spoke in her usual soft, brisk tone.

“To-morrow we’ll try Chambersburg. It is so much larger and there will not be so many gardens. Stable your war-horse, Herbert, and I’ll make waffles for supper.”

Elizabeth went into her room, originally a sitting-room behind the larger parlor with windows opening toward the woods. On the floor lay a piece of paper which had not been there when she went away. She picked it up and carried it to the window.

“What in the world!” she cried. With difficulty she deciphered the awkward writing.

This ant no place to rase apels. Nor yit for those what are kin to John Baring.As if to add the last touch of melodrama to his warning, the author had executed a sketch of what was intended to be a skull and cross-bones.

Elizabeth looked at the paper and turned it over. After a while she heard the sound of Herbert’s footsteps and knew that in a second she would hear the familiar “Elizabeth!” This was not a responsibility to be shared with frightened Herbert. She laid the paper under the scarf on her bureau and crossed the hall to the kitchen, and there, as she moved about gathering her materials for supper, she had astonished and bitter thoughts.

“I didn’t make friends with the neighbors at first because I thought they might feel under obligations to help us! I thought that was the Eastern way!” She looked out into the darkening woods. “This is a polite neighborhood into which we have moved!” said she.