‘I should say so,’ went on Lucius. ‘He’s a stark fighter, he is, and he keeps them down to it. They’re drilling and marching, and marching and drilling, all day long; and at night they have camp-fires, and sentries, and everything. You never saw such a show. And oh! Grizzly, what do you think? Captain Imboden let me fire off a cannon.’ ‘Ye don’t say so!’ exclaimed Ephraim, his sallow face lighting up. ‘How many Yanks did ye shoot?’ Lucius burst out laughing. ‘Why, it wasn’t loaded, stupid,’ he said, ‘except with blank cartridge. But I touched her off, and she made an awful good row.’ [Illustration: ‘Hyar I am,’ said Ephraim. ] ‘I reckon,’ said Ephraim simply, adding with some anxiety in his voice: ‘Then ye warn’t in no battle, Luce?’ ‘Battle! No,’ answered Lucius. ‘There hasn’t been one so far, and I imagine they wouldn’t have had me around while it was going on. There’s sure to be one soon, though; so they all say. Don’t I wish we could be there to see it. There’ll only be one, you know,’ he added confidently. ‘We shall whip the Yanks, and then everybody will come home again.’ ‘Thet’s so,’ remarked Ephraim sententiously, ‘’ceptin’ them as is killed, of co’se.’ He fell to considering the piece of wood which he held in his hand. ‘What are you making there?’ demanded Lucius. ‘A gun-stock. I got a bar’l in thar.’ ‘I’ll come and watch you,’ said Lucius, ‘and then I can tell you all about the camp.’ He followed Ephraim into his workshop and sat down upon the edge of a small tub, in which were set two huge glass jars, partly filled with fluid. ‘Don’t ye set down thar,’ cried Ephraim, pushing him off. ‘Jerushy! A little more and ye’d have been through the roof.’ ‘Why, what’s in them?’ inquired Lucius, looking rather scared, as he shifted his seat to the dusty bench at which Ephraim worked. ‘They’re chemicals—different sorts, ye know,’ explained Grizzly. ‘Just’s long as they’re by themselves they’re all right, ye onderstand; but wanst they come together there’s the all-firedest kick-up ye ever see.’ ‘What a fellow you are!’ said Lucius, glancing round the room with its mixture of tools, cog-wheels, small engine bars, glass retorts, and what not. ‘You’ll blow your own head off some of these fine days.’ ‘I nearly done it last Toosday,’ grinned Ephraim genially; ‘and old Aunty Chris war thet skeert, she run down the street hollerin’ thieves and murder.’ He laughed quietly at the recollection. ‘That’s all very well,’ said Lucius; ‘but you shouldn’t leave them so close to one another if they are so dangerous as you say they are.’ ‘Thet’s so,’ acquiesced Ephraim, removing one of the jars to a corner of the room. ‘It don’t matter a cob of corn what goes wrong with me, but I ’low I’d never forgive myself if harm came to you.’ ‘How’s the pile, Grizzly?’ asked Lucius irrelevantly. ‘It’s growing, sonny; it’s growing. It ain’t the wuth of a gold mine yet; but it’s coming along. War ye wanting a trifle, maybe?’