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I was sure thankful when that burial fatigue was over, and early in the forenoon we started back to rest. Rest, did I say? Not that trip. We were hardly back to Mametz and down to breakfast when along came an order to fall in for a carrying party. All that day we carried boxes of Millses up to the dump that was by High Wood, three long miles over hard going.
She went over again, from time to time, for it was not a period to keep up open hostilities, and she was younger than Mrs. Stanley and better off; but Vashti never went, and Mrs. Stanley never asked after her or came. The company in which Little Darby and the Millses had enlisted was one of the many hundred infantry companies which joined and were merged in the Confederate army.
Being a corporal had its compensations at this game, as I had no carrying to do; but inasmuch as the bombs were moved two boxes to a man, I got my share of the hard work helping men out of holes and lending a hand when they were mired. Millses are packed with the bombs and detonators separate in the box, and the men are very careful in the handling of them.
Douwill appeared in person it came nearer, though still few, if any, quite took it in that it could be actual and immediate. Among those at the Cross-roads that day were the Millses, father and sons, who looked a little critically at the speaker as one who had always been on the other side. Little Darby was also there, silent as usual, but with a light burning in his blue eyes.
The question was on one side, Secession, with probable war; and on the other, the Union as it was. The Millses were for the candidate who advocated the latter, and Little Darby was for him who wanted secession. Both candidates were men of position and popularity, the one a young man and the other older, and both were neighbors.
When old Darby died the Millses all went to the funeral, of course; but that did not prevent their having the same feeling toward Little Darby afterward, and the breach continued. At first he used to go over occasionally to see Vashti and carry her little presents, as he had done at school; but he soon found that it was not the same thing.
At first there was some debate over at Darby Stanley's place, whether they should show their contempt for the new departure of the Millses, by standing out against them, or should follow their example. It was hard for a Stanley to have to follow a Mills in anything. So they stood out for a year.
Three or four Germans appeared, running down communication trenches, and the bombers sent a few Millses after them. Then we came to a dug-out door in fact, several, as Fritz, like a woodchuck, always has more than one entrance to his burrow. We broke these in in jig time and looked down a thirty-foot hole on a dug-out full of graybacks. There must have been a lot of them.
Be that as it may, the Millses engaged Peter special, and brought him down with a great retainer, in a chaise and four, flags flying, and favors in the postillions' hats, and a fiddler on the roof playing the 'hare in the corn. The inn was illuminated the same evening, and Peter made a speech from the windows upon the liberty of the press and religious freedom all over the globe, and there wasn't a man in the mob didn't cheer him, which was the more civil, because few of them knew a word of English, and the others thought he was a play-actor.
Most of them were men who had been at Dover with me. I felt like an executioner when I notified them of their selection. At nine-thirty we were ready, stripped to the lightest of necessary equipment. Each of the men was armed with a bucket of bombs. Some carried an extra supply in satchels, so we knew there would be no shortage of Millses.
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