"Did you know about Aunt Cadwallader bein' in the war?"
"No; I never heard she was in the war."
"Well, she was. She was about four years old, and the British were firing on Fort McHenry, and all the doors and windows in Baltimore were shut, and nobody went out, and everybody was living in the cellar, so's not to get shot, and bombs were exploding in the garden, and the fambly missed Aunt Cadwallader—"
"Oh yes," said Aunt Valeria; "she was out in the garden, wasn't she, picking up the bullets?"
"Yes; they were raining all about, and she was putting them in a little egg-basket she carried on her arm." Ethan finished, a shade crestfallen to find his scheme to entertain and, above all, to detain his aunt had been forestalled. "I thought perhaps if I told you you'd remember something that happened to you—when you were young, you know."
"I'm sorry I don't know any stories."
"Don't you know the one about the poor man over your fireplace?"
"What poor man?" she repeated, bewildered.
"The man without his clo'es on, tied to the wild horse."