"I know he'd like to have you. Look yere! He's got some Roman candles he's goin' to fire off to-night; so you stop as you go home this evening. It's right on your way. Can't you?"

"I reckon so," answered Marley, his heart throbbing with pleasure.

"Look here, Marley," Mandy added, suddenly. "Don't say anything about that deer, and I wont tell; so nobody'll know anything about it."

"I must tell General Bradshaw. There he is coming this way now, to take you to 'the stand.'"

"Well, tell him, and I'll ask him not to tell."

When Marley had "owned up," the General gave him a hearty slap on the back, calling him a brave lad and a good shot, and promised Mandy never to tell as long as he lived. When Marley spoke of the antlers, etc., he was told that he should keep them.

Then they went up to "the stand," and not a boy in the assemblage felt in a better mood than Marley for applauding the patriotic music, and the old "Declaration," and Mr. Delaney's ardent oration. At every allusion to the star-spangled banner, Marley cheered; and when the orator apostrophized the national bird, perched with one talon an the Alleghany and the other on the Sierras, dipping his beak now in the Atlantic and now in the Pacific, preening his feathers with the mighty Lakes as his mirror, our Marley shouted in a patriotic transport from a stump, and threw up his cap, and threw it up till it lodged in a tree, and he could toss it no longer. He shook it down just as the marshal of the day announced that he would proceed to blow the horn for dinner, to which everybody, rich and poor, bond and free, was most cordially invited—ladies to be served first, then the gentlemen, then the colored people. They would please form by twos, and march to the tables as the band played "Hail Columbia!"

Then a great bullock's horn, decorated with our blessed colors, was raised to the marshal's lips, and he blew and blew and blew such blasts; and when he had ended, the multitude—especially the boys—shouted such shouts as might have leveled the walls of another Jericho, if horn-blasts and shouts could do such things in these days.

Then the people, in long, fantastic line, wound in and out among the trees to the tables in the thick shade; and Marley walked beside Mandy Bradshaw, keeping step to the spirited music, and feeling heroic enough to charge an army.