Faint and far and clarion-clear, it trembled through Leafland, low but ominous. Mapleton heard it and wondered; Elmthorpe and Ashby and Nutham repeated it, looking into one another's eyes for a meaning. Proud old Oakwich tried to assume a grave aspect, but was inwardly at her wits' end. "The Red-coats are coming." All the ancient men and women, great-great-great-great-grandfathers and grandmothers, whose childhood lay wellnigh lost in the infinite past of April days, said it over to each other with thin, quavering voices; but all their experience gave them no key to the mysterious message. Then the post-riders were brought into requisition. The whole corporation of Gale, Breeze, Zephyr, & Co., Express Company, all their clerks, agents, and errand-boys, were sent to and fro through the Commonwealth, to see if any one anywhere had a little light to bestow upon the subject. Alas! the light came all too soon, and brought infinite sighing and sobbing. A thought suddenly broke loose in Oakwich, and up spake an old Oakwichian. "Oh! and oh! and woe is me for my miserable land now, now about to be bereft of her children! All her strength destroyed, all her loveliness laid desolate!" Straightway throughout Leafland rose the voice of wailing, "Woe! woe! woe! for the miserable land!" but none of them knew what they were crying for; only the Oakwichian began it, and nothing better occurred to them to do than to join in; which soon made the sunny day overcast, and all the people walking in Netherworld where it approaches Leafland wrapped their old cloaks about them, and said spitefully, "What a disagreeable, raw east-wind it is, to be sure!" But by and by, when their throats were quite dry and sore with wailing, one of the Mapletonians, a very sensible young woman, quite famous indeed for her wisdom, bethought herself to inquire what it was all about. Then there was a very pretty outburst of indignation. For a moment they forgot their grief, and, what was still worse, their good manners, and turned upon the unfortunate young woman. "And so you set yourself above your betters, and fiddle while Leafland is burning!" cried one. "And pray, Miss Wiseacre," asked another, "how came _you_ to know so much more than any one else? Who told _you_ that nothing was the matter?" "Oh! if women would only mind the house, and not meddle with what does not belong to them!" exclaimed a third. All very unjust as you see, for surely the destruction of Leafland concerned the women as much as the men, and poor "Miss Wiseacre" had not so much as made an assertion,--only asked a question. However, the Leaflanders must be excused, because they were quite beside themselves with terror, and, moreover, a question is sometimes more exasperating than fire and sword.