"Oh, he's fishing, as usual. Did you folks have plenty of fish this morning?" and then Charlie told absurd Munchhausen fish stories till the girls were convulsed with girlish laughter. "What became of Boyle, the elegant?" asked Charlie. "Me thinks I see not his fringed pantaloons, nor his gay, red shirt. Hast seen his ludship this bright morning?" There was a wicked echo in the back regions of the Winthrop tent as Charlie asked this, and a chorus of childish voices piped up, "Come and kiss yoo papa," and Dian and Ellen were again too overcome with successive peals of cruel, heartless merriment even to reply to Charlie. "Dian," called Rachel, from the tent door, "come here a moment. I want you to find that flat-iron you laid away somewhere." "Why, Rachel, the bugle has sounded for us to gather for morning exercises in the bowery. What do you want of the flat-iron?" "I want the tub, too; Harvey, you carry that tub right down to the creek this minute, and if I catch you up to any more of your monkeyshines, I will have your father punish you. Do you hear, sir?" "Why, Rachel, Rachel," protested Dian, "don't get angry with Harvey up here. Surely he is not up to mischief in this lovely place?" "Do you know what he did?" exclaimed his mother, more inclined to laugh after all than to scold, "he took Henry Boyle's new red shirt out of his tent and then soused it in the creek and left it soaking there all night. He dragged it this morning through the black mud of this horrid valley until you can't tell what it is. Brother Boyle can't get up, I tell you, till I wash and iron his shirt. I am almost inclined to whip Harvey myself." But she refrained; and the two women dragged the shirt out amid smothered peals of laughter, and sent Harvey to his duty in the crack juvenile regiment of Rifles, while Dian herself was not unwilling to be urged by Rachel to go on with Ellen to the exercises, permitting her kind-hearted sister-in-law to prepare the shirt for future service. And still there floated at mysterious intervals that jeering cry about the tent of the fallen hero, as he lay ruminating within the inner sanctuary of his own tent on the mischances of fickle fortune. "Come and kiss yoo papa," wailed the children, as they, too, departed for the exercises in the bowery. The scene in the central pavilion was impressive! After prayers had been offered by Apostle Amasa Lyman, the great silken flag, taken down through the dewy shades of night, was unfurled from the tallest tree in the vicinity, by the youthful John Smith, son of the murdered patriarch, and once more the bands broke into crashing melody, and again the cannon roared across the affrighted silence, while the people shouted as the emblem of Liberty was unfurled to the morning breeze.