"Merciful Father," ejaculated Mrs. Klegg, sinking into a chair in so nearly a faint that Maria ran into the next room for the camphor-bottle, while Sophy rushed outside and blew the horn for the Deacon. Presently he entered, his sleeves rolled to the elbow over his brawny arms, and his shirt and pantaloons covered with the spanish-needles and burrs which would grow, even in so well-tilled fields as Deacon Klegg's.
"What's the matter, mother? What's the matter, girls?" he asked anxiously.
Mrs. Klegg could only look at him in speechless misery.
"We've got a telegraph dispatch," finally answered Maria, bursting in a torrent of tears, into which Sophia joined sympathetically, "and we know it's about poor Si."
"Yes, it must be about poor Si; nobody else but him," added Sophia with a wail.
The father's face grew more sorrowful than be fore. "What does it say?" he nerved himself to ask, after a moment's pause.
"We don't know," sobbed Maria. "We haint opened it. We're afraid to. Here it is."
The father took it with trembling hand. "Well," he said after a little hesitation, "it can't tell nothin' no worse than we've already heard. Let's open it. Bring me my specs."
Maria ran for the spectacles, while her father, making a strong effort to calm himself, slit open the envelope with a jack-knife, adjusted his glasses, and read the inclosure over very slowly.
"Josiah Nott killed Hospital at Chattanooga badly wounded E. C. Bower's ox. What on airth does that mean? I can't for the life o' me make it out."