“Wal, I was. Shucks! I was something of a sharpshooter, too. And we old fellers—course I was nothin’ but a boy, then—we could shoot. We’d l’arn’t to shoot on the farm. Powder an’ shot was hard to git and we l’arn’t to make every bullet count. My old Betsey—didn’t ye ever see my Civil War rifle?” he demanded of Ruth.
“You mean the old brown gun that hangs over your bed and that Aunt Alvirah is so much afraid of?”
“That’s old Betsey. Sharpe’s rifle. In them days it was jest about the last thing in weepons. I brung it home after the Grand Army of the Potomac was disbanded. Know how I did it? Government claimed all the guns; but I took old Betsey apart and me an’ my mates hid the pieces away in our clothes, and so got her home. Then I assembled her again,” and Uncle Jabez broke into a chuckle that was actually almost startling to the girls, for the miller seldom laughed.
“Say!” he exclaimed, in his strange excitement. “I’ll show her to ye.”
He hurried out of the room, evidently in search of “Old Betsey.” Helen said to the miller’s niece:
“Goodness, Ruth! what has happened to your Uncle Jabez?”
“Just what has happened to Tom—and your father,” returned the girl of the Red Mill. “I’ve seen it coming on. Uncle Jabez has been getting more and more excited ever since war was declared. You know, when we came home from college a month ago and decided to remain here and help in the Red Cross work instead of finishing our sophomore year at Ardmore, my decision was really the first one I ever made that Uncle Jabez seemed to approve of immediately.
“He is thoroughly patriotic. When I told him I could study later—when the war was over—but that I must work for the soldiers now, he said I was a good girl. What do you think of that?”
“Cheslow is not doing its share,” Helen said thoughtfully, her mind switched by Ruth’s last words to the matter that had completely filled her own and her chum’s thoughts for weeks. “The people are not awake. They do not know we are at war yet. They have not done half for the Red Cross that they should do.”
“We’ll make ’em!” declared Ruth Fielding. “We must get the women and girls to pull together.”