An incident has been neglected in this account. When John Appleman bought those barrels, the son of the distiller, a boy of ten, was told to see that two designated barrels were rolled out from the storeroom. The boy marked them, utilizing the great chunk of red chalk which every country boy carried in his pocket some forty years ago. Furthermore, being a boy and having time to waste, he decorated the barrels with various grotesque figures, the ungainly fruit of his imagination. This boy's work with that piece of red chalk had an effect upon the future of John Appleman. So things drifted, the whisky in the cave getting a little older, the friction between John Appleman and his more business-like wife getting somewhat more vigorous and emitting more domestic sparks, until there came a change to every one. The farmer, who had read of martial music, heard with his own ears the roll of the drum and the shrieking, encouraging call of the fife. War was on, and good men abandoned homes and families and surroundings because of what we call patriotism and principle. As for John Appleman, he was among the very first to enlist. He went into the army blithely. It is to be feared that John Appleman, like many a worthier man, preferred the various conditions appertaining to the tented field and the field of battle to that narrower scene of conflict called the home. Before leaving, however, he crept into the cave and varnished those two barrels with exceeding thoroughness. "That will rather modify the process of evaporation. There will be good whisky there when I come home next year," he said. John Appleman went to the war with a Michigan regiment, and it is but justice to him to say that he made an amazingly good soldier. He was made corporal and sergeant, and later second lieutenant, and filled that position gallantly until the war ended. That was his record in the great struggle. Meanwhile his home relations had somewhat changed. Rather happier in the army than on the farm, John Appleman had felt a sense of half-gratitude that there had been no objection to his departure, and for months after he left Michigan he sent most of his soldier's pay home to his wife. Then came promotion and little attendant expenses, and he sent less. There came no letter, and after a while he sent nothing at all. "They have a good farm there which should support them," so he said to himself; "as for me, I am a poor fellow battling along down here, and what little I get I need." There ceased to be any remittances, and there ceased to be any correspondence.