"Then, you never got homesick?" His voice wavered a little, and then, quite firmly, he added: "Grandmamma did, and she used to go off by herself to meet the postman, who came only once a week, and she'd walk and walk till she heard him wind his horn. How do you 'spose he wound it?" "He just blew a long blast." "Did that make it wind? Well, anyhow, when he wound it, that used to make grandmamma homesicker than ever. It used to echo all about among her grandfather's mountains, and when she heard that she used to stop running, and sit down on a rock and cry and cry. You see, she was so afraid the postman wasn't bringing the letter to say Aunt Cadwallader was coming to take her home." "Did my mother tell you that story to-night?" inquired Aunt Valeria, without enthusiasm. "No; it was this morning, when I said I wasn't a bit homesick like Aunt Hannah said I'd be. Grandmamma seemed to think it didn't matter if I _was_ homesick. The Ganos nearly always are, but in the end they're always glad they came." This obscure saying seemed not to rivet Aunt Valeria's attention; she moved as if she were going. Ethan sat up in bed and asked, a little feverishly: "Did you know about Aunt Cadwallader bein' in the war?" "No; I never heard she was in the war." "Well, she _was_. She was about four years old, and the British were firing on Fort McHenry, and all the doors and windows in Baltimore were shut, and nobody went out, and everybody was living in the cellar, so's not to get shot, and bombs were exploding in the garden, and the fambly missed Aunt Cadwallader--" "Oh yes," said Aunt Valeria; "she was out in the garden, wasn't she, picking up the bullets?" "Yes; they were raining all about, and she was putting them in a little egg-basket she carried on her arm." Ethan finished, a shade crestfallen to find his scheme to entertain and, above all, to detain his aunt had been forestalled. "I thought perhaps if I told you you'd remember something that happened to _you_--when you were young, you know." "I'm sorry I don't know any stories." "Don't you know the one about the poor man over your fireplace?" "What poor man?" she repeated, bewildered. "The man without his clo'es on, tied to the wild horse." "Oh, you mean the Mazeppa on the iron fire frame." "Yes"--Ethan sat up again, with dilated eyes--"wolfs comin' after him, wif mouths wide open." "Oh, well, they don't eat him up; he gets away, and lives happy ever after." "I _am_ glad!" He lay down, and she covered him up. "I'd sing to you, but I'm afraid it would disturb my mother." "Then, couldn't you say some more poetry or something?" "I don't believe I know anything you'd like." "Oh, I'd like anything--except the 'May Queen.'" She sat silent a moment, and then began: "'Once upon a midnight dreary--' "H'm!"--and she stopped. "Can't you remember any more?" inquired the boy, eagerly. "Well--a--perhaps something else;" and she made a fresh start: