It had been agreed for that time to drop all political distinctions. Federalists and Democrats, Town Hill folk and outside folk, were all of one mind and spirit to make this a celebration worthy of Poganuc Center and the great cause of American Independence. A veritable cannon had been hauled up upon the village green and fired once or twice to relieve the bursting impatience of the boys and men who had helped put it there. The flag with its stars and stripes was already waving from the top of the Court-house, and a platform was being put up in the Meeting-house, and people were running this way and that, and standing in house-doors, and talking with each other over fences, in a way that showed that something was impending. Hiel sprang from his box, and, after attending to his horses, speedily appeared on the green to see to things--for how could the celebration to-morrow be properly presented without Hiel's counsels? "Look here, now, boys," he said to the group assembled around the cannon, "don't be a burnin' out yer powder. Keep it for to-morrow. Let her be now; ye don't want to keep bangin' and bangin' afore the time. To-morrow mornin' we'll let 'er rip bright and early, and wake all the folks. Clear out, now, and go home to yer suppers, and don't be a blowin' yerselves up with powder so that ye can't see the show to-morrow." Hiel then proceeded into the Meeting-house and criticised proceedings there. "Look here, Jake, you jest stretch that air carpet a leetle forrard; ye see, ye want the most out in front where't shows; back there, why, the chairs and table 'll kiver it; it ain't so much matter. Wonder now ef them air boards is firm? Wouldn't do, lettin' on 'em all down into the pews in the midst on't. Look here, Seth Chickering, ye need another prop under there; ye hain't calkerlated for the heft o' them fellers--governors and colonels and ministers weighs putty heavy, and there ain't no glory in a gineral smash-up, and we're a goin' in for glory to-morrow; we're goin' to sarve it out clear, and no mistake." Hiel was a general favorite; his word of criticism was duly accepted, and things were pretty comfortably adjusted to his mind when he went home to eat his supper and try on his regimentals. The dry, hard, colorless life of a Yankee boy in those days found some relief in the periods called "training-days," when the militia assembled in uniform and marched and drilled to the sound of fife and drum. Hiel had expended quite a round sum upon his uniform and was not insensible to the transformation which it wrought in his personal appearance. The widow Jones kept his gold-laced cocked-hat, his bright gold epaulets, his whole soldier suit in fact, enveloped in many papers and napkins, and locked away in one of her most sacred recesses; but it was with pride that she gave him up the key, and when he came out before her, all in full array, her soul was inly uplifted. Her son was a hero in her eyes.