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A clean white bed was in one corner of the room, and opposite it was a square pine table covered with a black woolen blanket. Without removing my hat from my head, I seated myself in one of the two stiff-backed chairs that were placed beside the table. For several heart throbs I sat still looking from ceiling to floor, from wall to wall, trying hard to imagine years of contentment there.
The Mercer girls were hysterically giggling, and Aunt Selina sat on a stiff-backed chair and took aromatic spirits of ammonia. As for Jim, he had collapsed on the lowest step of the stairs, and sat there with his head in his hands. When he did look up, he didn't dare to look at me.
To Union eyes the 15,000 easily appeared to be 30,000. Panic seized men and officers alike, and a stampede for Washington and safer ground followed. Arms, provisions, horses, even, and the carriages of stiff-backed Republican Congressmen, who had left their posts to see the fun, were left upon the field and along the wayside as memorials of the first battle.
"Miss Christie Maclaire?" he asked, as though in doubt. "Yes," graciously, won instantly by the man's appearance and manner, "you wished to see me? Will you be seated?" He crossed the narrow room to the stiff-backed chair indicated, and the lady sank negligently down into her own, resting her head against a pillow, and regarding him expectantly.
When they fell back a little, he joined them on the porch, standing always so that he could watch the body and see that no one changed its attitude or even approached it. His eyes studied keenly all the furniture in the room. Save for one overturned stiff-backed chair, it apparently had not been disturbed. The doctor arrived and, waiting for no information, approached the murdered woman.
Then he presented himself, somewhat out of breath, to the attendants at the south doors, where he had been directed to report. A moment later he was in the Castle of Graustark, following a stiff-backed soldier through mediæval halls of marble, past the historic staircase, down to the door of the council chamber. He was filled with the most delicious sensation of awe and reverence.
"I have seen a good deal of life," he said suddenly, arousing himself and sitting upright in the stiff-backed chair, "here and there in the world; and I have found that the happiest people are those who began by thinking that it was too late. The romance of youth is only fit to write about in books. It is too delicate a fabric for everyday use. It soon wears out or gets torn."
It rose before her, a dark background with touches of clear colour: the little girls working by the luminous window with the muslin curtains and the hanging pot of greenstuff; the stiff-backed woman moving about with plates and dishes in her hands; the invalid wheezing on the little red calico sofa. The past was still reality, and the present a fable.
The patrol leader of the Foxes had left the key of his locker at home, and Fox patrol scouts who had expected to brush their shoes before the meeting was called found themselves face to face with a difficulty. The "fall in" signal came all too soon for the flustered Foxes. Quietly Mr. Wall walked down the line of stiff-backed, silent boys. "A perfect score for the Wolves," he said.
The sun was shining brightly outside, and at the curbing in front of the store were several handsome private carriages, with stiff-backed, motionless coachmen, in bottle-green livery, perched on their boxes, all of which plainly indicated the very desirable patronage accorded the firm mentioned.
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