But at last it came. They heard the strains of a band swelling loud as some distant corner was turned, then, in the darkness of the November night, far away through the trees, they caught the lick of a torch's flame, then another and another, until they made a river of yellow fire that poured itself down the street from curb to curb, rising and falling as the marchers' feet kept time to the punctuated rolling of the drums. Along the sidewalks streamed a crowd of boys, and men like boys, the same that had trudged through the dust beside Garwood's carriage that hot day in August, the same that had flanked the Bromley parade a few weeks before. The girls had been followed to the veranda by Mr. Harkness and Mrs. Garwood, and as the old man and the old woman pressed forward in an interest they disliked to own, the two girls clutching each other at last in a definite embrace teetered on the very edge of the steps, their teeth chattering with nervousness. Jasper had driven the carriage around and stood at the heads of the horses, who pricked their ears towards the oncoming mass of men and fire, and gazed at it with startled eyes, jerking their heads now and then and blowing through their soft sensitive nostrils. The procession had drawn so near that it was possible to distinguish the details that made the mass, the four policemen, in double-breasted sack coats who had been announced as a platoon; the grand marshal of the parade, decked out bravely in rosettes and patriotic bunting, trying to sit his buggy-horse with the military seat; the flag bearer, with bent back, straining under his load; the faces of the marchers themselves red and unfamiliar in the glare that lit them up, like faces transfigured in the glamour that saves a tableau from contempt. There were clubs from each ward, uniformed in the oil-cloth capes and caps of that day, with wide intervals between their sets of fours, and eked out by small boys in the rear ranks; there was a company of railroad men--at least their transparencies said they were railroad men--wearing overalls, and swinging lighted lanterns, and these were vouchsafed most patronizing applause from the lawns and verandas, as if they were nobly sacrificing themselves for the salvation of their nation. The lines were well formed, and marched with an effect of military precision, though the procession had to stop now and then to mark time and dress its intervals.